Where Disney REALLY fucked up with the SW movies...

The Star Wars problem is very easy to understand. There are two options. Original story or rehashing an old story.

Not counting New Hope, the only original Star Wars movie that worked well was Empire. ROTJ was a retread of New Hope. ROTJ proved you could just rehash the original and have people like your movie.

Abrams set out to create another ROTJ with Force Awakens, and to his credit he kinda succeeded (opinions vary because ROTJ is so near and dear to our childhoods). Johnson set out to make another Empire and fell flat on his face because he failed to make an interesting story. A similar thing happened with Lucas' prequels.

Originality is tough. Nostalgia is easy. Its easy because you're rehashing a story that has known to work in the past.

Another problem is time constraints. Disney wants these movies pumped out too quickly. The original screenwriter for Force Awakens was kicked out because he needed 18 months. Abrams did it in two weeks. Most liked it. Then Rian Johnson shows up and says he has a wonderful direction to take Star Wars thats original. Bzzzt! Fans hated it. He's out, and now Disney has to start all over with no time. So here comes Abrams again to use the shortcut of nostalgia but this time its Palpatine.

Even if given the time, original stories just aren't guaranteed to work in the Star Wars universe. Lucas was sitting on his prequel ideas for decades. Only New Hope and Empire have succeeded. Its easy to say Disney should've figured this stuff out before even filming. But the reality is its been 40 years and nobody has figured out how to make it both original and entertaining. :/

As much as an atrocious clusterf*ck that the Di$ney sequel trilogy may be, the people who overemphasize the "SJW" crap in their criticisms make me cringe. There is so much more wrong with than that where you're really undermining your own argument by overemphasizing it when the main issues are poorly plagiarizing & undermining the OT, poor storytelling, poor characterizations, zero world building & no creative vision.

The OP's comment is the best one I've read so far about what's wrong with the sequel trilogy.

Even worse, there was a whole treasure trove of stories from the Expanded Universe that they could have harvested for these sequels, stuff that was far more canon than the crap they shelled out. But nope. They just threw out the books and did whatever the hell they wanted, just like many arrogant jerks in Hollywood who think they know better.

I kind of disagree in that I do think that the prevailing SJW mindset of today has contributed in some respect to the mess the storyline now is. However the "blame", if you want to call it that, is Lucas', entrenched in the mythos of the OT and the rub of that against what followed.

Star Wars was a very simple tale of a boy who although he didn't know it was very SPECIAL. He was the last hope (yes revised), the last remaining Jedi after they'd been wiped out. We learn that Obi-Wan was camped out watching over this special kid of years waiting for him to become old enough (yes revised) to fulfill his potential. He did it, destroyed the evil Emperor, and saved the galaxy! Hooray, end of story...

However, what followed with the prequels was that anyone could be a Jedi, the midi-chlorian nonsense opened up the door to anyone suddenly appearing as a powerful Jedi. Nothing wrong with that in itself but it destroys the story at the heart of the OT, Luke is no longer the special last hope, Obi-Wan hanging about on Tatooine for years makes no sense, viewed from the PT's perspective.

And it's this that kills any attempt at a ST. Rey should only ever have existed as an offspring of Luke / Leia. That's the only way the OT's story could continue - if it really needed to at all. However today's society doesn't want that story - EVERYONE can be special. So selling a more mythical story of lineage, etc is out. Broom boy and nobody parents Rey are in. And barring a last minute retcon to correct this in episode IX (which still won't fix watching these films as a "trilogy") there's nothing left to actually make this part of any "Skywalker" series.

The story/writing just isn't any good and they are breaking canon.