Okay, there's enough of us left—I'll fly out to do AOTC, Tom can take ROTS, etc. There's a precedent set now, as long as we keep visiting you guys have to keep doing the show

Well, R1 reveres the Original Trilogy in a really shallow way. It's literally trying to reanimate its corpse in its use of CG Tarkin and Leia, and that same superficial appeal to the "spirit" of the old films is there in everything from the shitty in-jokes like Ponda Baba and Dr. Evazan showing up on Jedha to the scene of Darth Vader being badass that was shoehorned into the movie for no reason other than the screams opening night. Hell, the very premise is an attempt to fix a perceived "plot hole" in the OT to make it more impervious to criticism. And I'll be honest, the sugar high worked for a while for me. The more eyerolling fanservice I was never on board with, but the final battle was so cool on a surface level that I let it buoy my opinion of the entire movie for a long time.

TLJ is the inverse of that, which is precisely why it made so many people mad. It loves and respects the OT, but not on the superficial "Wouldn't it be awesome if this character did something awesome they way they used to?" way that R1 does. Luke explicitly lampshades this with disgust: "How did you think this was going to end? I take out my laser sword and fight the entire First Order?" TLJ (and, I maintain, TFA) is about reaching deeper behind the glaze of childhood wonder and trying to develop a mature perspective on the heroes we love, their gigantic flaws and all. TFA balanced that with a lot of gee-whiz excitement, which made it go down easier--TLJ took a more drastic approach, which is why I and a lot of people initially had a mixed reaction. But the more I revisit it the more I love it for that. Meanwhile, a lot of the people who hate it because it doesn't love the OT in the same way they do just stamp their feet and idolize Rogue One because it doesn't require much in the way of examining their hero worship--it's just two hours of awesome things happeing because wouldn't that be cool?