Who cares about reviews the movies the critics like usually don't so well in the box office. It was bound to suffer without George Lucas loving careful touch folks. Imitators rarely excel above the original and Abrahms is guilty of trope farming and using the same all gimmicks.
Well the prequels were pretty mediocre and Lucas was all over that. Star Wars has kind of mostly been mediocre outside of maybe one or two films. I think this new trilogy's problem, although it has many, was that it was even less coherent.
but they present a consistent, coherent narrative,
Only if you like dialogue that sounds like its bad live journal fan fiction. All from GOOD actors who were directed into sounding like some sort of big budget high school production.
George is a wonderful special effects and big idea guy, he's proven pretty bad at film making as a whole when he has total control.
All of the first three had a lot of contributors who steered the movies in directions that made them classics. The 3 prequels where he had carte blanche and total control....yikes.
The originals had a great overall story arc and narrative journey, were 80% fantastic, and 20% cringe. The prequals were hot garbage. I have not seen episode 9, but I personally thought that episode 7 hit the desired balance of homage, faithfulness to the spirit of episode 4-6, new special effects, and slightly new direction to launch a new trilogy. If there was any critique of it, it was mainly that it might have been too much of a rehash of prior movies; if the subsequent movies didn't break new ground, it would just be seen as a rehash. I very much liked episode 8; it made some (relatively) bold choices, brought some new direction.
I'm trying not to get episode 9 spoilers, but based on the general reviews, it sounds like it suffered from overall episodes 7-9 not having a bold single unified vision and arc, and basically re-writing on the fly to please a bunch of loud internet people and give them their beats.
