>>1035816521 and 2 are bad movies with bad direction, but their plots are straightforward and coherent. They are badly execution but their conception isn't entirely without merit.
TLJ, on the other hand, is just a mess of a film that started off with bad ideas from the start and then tried to polish them. The scene direction is better, but the actual meat of the movie is far worse and holds together less well.
Consider this: as bad as the prequel movies were, I never once felt like there was something important I needed to know and had not been told. It was a simple story, often times maybe too simple, but the factions in play and the motivations of the various players were explicit and understood.
We are two movies into the new saga, and I still feel like I don't know fucking anything about anyone. I don't know who the First Order is other than 'the bad guys', I don't know what they actually want or how big they are as a faction. TFA makes it look like they are barely more than Starkiller Base and a single Star Destroyer, and a week later in TLJ they have multiple shipkilling fleets.
I don't know anything about the new galactic republic other than "its totally the good guys, just off screen. Oh no they are dead, you really should have seen it they were so important but now they are gone."
I don't know who the fuck the Knights of Ren are, or if they even exist anymore or if they are a dropped plot point. I don't know why Snoke mattered. I don't know why the Resistance is so shitty and why they were the only ones fighting the First Order even when the Republic HAD a fleet (totally offscreen they totally had a fleet we swear).
I don't know ANYTHING about the new era of the Star Wars movies that isn't DIRECTLY relevant to Finn or Rey. They have done a really shitty job of establishing their universe and how it is different (or even how it is the same) from the last time we saw it.
