I haven't been a part of this conversation, but I'm going to say my piece. You might think I'm crazy, but that's okay. This is my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. And let me say, I've been a Star Wars fan since middle school. My first experience of Star Wars on the big screen was when my class watched A New Hope at a nearby college. After that, officially, was the special edition trilogy, followed by the prequels, the clone wars animated film, and then the sequels, Rogue One, and Solo. I've been around the saga long enough to know that every time they do something new, there will be a contingent of fans that hate it so much they want it stricken from the record. The Ewoks were hated for over a decade before Jar Jar Binks became the new Ewok. The People vs George Lucas documentary was born of hate for Lucas's prequel trilogy, which I spent a long time defending. I thought about them a lot and even came up with ideas for how I might handle a reboot of the prequels, and wrote about it. (In it, I attempt to cover up who Darth Vader is behind the mask, something that would be a gargantuan task now that the Clone Wars animated series also exists to spoil that.)
I watched as those that were 8 years old in 1999 were 20 in 2011, and suddenly the prequels were not only accepted but somehow celebrated. After over a decade of feeling like I was alone in enjoying those movies, I was pleased to find that others enjoyed them as well. And like many other things, history is repeating itself. We have a new trilogy, and the response started out celebratory, before turning to hate. Why? I don't know. I stayed out of the conversation. I had a new daughter at home, and I knew that I loved the movie that I saw the night before she was born. When the Blu-ray showed up, I watched it over and over. It became my favorite Star Wars movie. Sure, I was sad that Luke said nothing in the movie and upset about the fate of Han Solo, but that is to be expected. Our minds don't differentiate between people we know in person and people we know through screens, so grief and mourning are perfectly natural and normal responses when characters we've known for an hour or so pass away in a story, and probably more so for characters we've known since 1977, or whenever you first saw a Star Wars film. For me, that was around the early 1990s, so over 20 years. In fact, all three films gave us another character to mourn, with The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, unfortunately, both giving us Leia, because of Carrie Fisher's untimely passing a year before The Last Jedi was released. While it doesn't apply to everyone, I feel that some of the hate directed toward The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker wasn't actually because of the content of those films, but rather, because of the loss of Carrie Fisher. Some, I'm confident, hadn't dealt with the grief that they felt/feel about that. And the scene with Luke and Leia talking in The Last Jedi, to those folks, was like twisting a dagger in their hearts. To me, it was a beautiful moment, and oddly prophetic.
I fully believe that we're about 5-10 years from the entire Skywalker saga being generally accepted. That timeframe makes me sad, because I genuinely love and enjoy each of them.
Anyway, here's where you will think I've gone out of my mind, if you haven't already:
I think the sequel trilogy is the best of the saga. Better than the Original Trilogy, and better than the prequels. Rey is my new favorite character in the Star Wars universe, and I think that J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson did an admirable job of not just continuing the saga, but bringing it to a conclusion that was everything I was hoping it would be.
If anyone has any questions as to why I feel the way I do, feel free to ask.
Also, I have to say this: however some may wish that Disney is going to erase episodes 7-9 from the canon, I would be devastated if they did so. And I can't see them ever decide to erase films that made $4 billion at the box office alone from the canon. I don't read reviews or listen to any others' opinions of any movie before I see it, if I am interested in watching it (if the critics can do that, why can't I?). So I went to each film in the sequel trilogy about as blind as you could, and all three times, I walked out completely satisfied.
I was watching Star Wars, and enjoying it.
Another crazy thing that happened? When The Force Awakens was released, My wife and I had tickets for Thursday, December 17, at 7pm on IMAX, Friday, December 18, at 7pm on IMAX, and Saturday, December 19, but I can't remember what time, or if it was IMAX. We only made it to the first screening. We were in the hospital from Friday to Monday. Our daughter decided that the 18th was a good day to be born. All the nurses were guessing which Star Wars name we were going to give to our daughter, but in the end, we didn't name her a Star Wars name... at the time. We named her Clara Rose, and Rian Johnson seemed to name a character after her. lol
One other thing that I must mention here: at this point, there is enough Star Wars content that there will be movies and shows that not everyone likes. That is completely fine. What we should try to steer clear of is elimination by the erasure of stories that have been made, canon or otherwise (Legends) simply because we don't like this part of it or that. I may love all of the Star Wars movies that have been released so far, but that doesn't mean I love all of the parts of them. I know all of them to have flaws here and there, and that's fine with me. I will give an example, but first, I need to set this up. I have read a LOT of Star Wars books. All of them are part of the Legends timeline, which is fine with me. I knew it would probably happen whenever Lucas or anyone made episodes 7-9, and Pablo Hidalgo even said that all of the books written were considered a separate timeline for a long time before the split. The only true canon until the split was always the movies and TV shows. Until Legends, that meant Episodes 1-6 and The Clone Wars. Of all of the books I have read, there were three that I was probably more excited for than any others: The Bounty Hunter Wars by K.W. Jeter. Boba Fett used to be my favorite character (still up there, just not #1 anymore). But I don't remember reading a more boring Star Wars book, let alone three. It got so bad, that all I had to do was read the dialogue between characters, without descriptions, and I knew what was going on. The inner monologue and descriptions of the locations didn't inform me of anything important to the story the way a Timothy Zahn or Tolkien novel does. At least reading those, you get a sense for the scale of the location, and it informs your reading. But I digress. I mean all of this to say: I do not like those three books. Should they be stricken from the record? No, I would never tell Disney "remove these from the Legends timeline, for I did not agree with the content." Does my hate for these Star Wars books make me less of a Star Wars fan? No. Not at all. Does their existence make me hate Disney or Star Wars or Lucasfilm or Bantam Books? No, nor does their continued existence. But why am I saying this? Because the movies are the same way. You can choose to love or hate any part of the Star Wars universe and that doesn't make you more or less of a Star Wars fan than anyone else. Period.
I'm open to any questions, even the difficult ones about Luke in Last Jedi.