I know it’s popular to defend TLJ because the main detractors against it are all racist chuds who hate it for the stupidest reasons, but it’s still a terrible movie. The plot goes nowhere, the world building is an affront to basic human sanity, and every character in the movie had a clause in their contract to grab hold of The Idiot Ball the second they came on screen and never let go of it lest any of them use their brains for long enough to negate the gigantic plot holes and stupid decisions permeating every scene. It had some great ideas that would have been fresh and exciting if they were executed better and weren’t in the second movie of a trilogy that was never intended to have those themes (you can’t really pull the “heroes can come from anywhere and be nobodies” theme when your entire trilogy is nostalgia bait glazing all the legendary figures from the OG trilogy in every other scene).

If you put a gun to my head and made me pick a best film out of that trilogy I’d unfortunately say TFA, with the caveat that it’s just a significantly worse version of A New Hope that hadn’t completely squandered its cast yet.