His knowledge of Star Wars, in-universe and real-world lore and history, is indeed prodigious. Why I don't dismiss him out of hand. But he
is also the very definition of an apologist, in both the literal sense and the vernacular (no, seriously, you can check me on this -- go look it up). Yes, there are a few people who are determined to hate all the "Disney Star Wars" offerings in all media, and I feel pity for them. Others, like myself, could go toe-to-toe with him on deep-delve lore (like how George actually hadn't read or heard of Joseph Campbell when he wrote Star Wars, and it was only people telling him how his movie was the Hero's Journey that prompted him to afterward, or how Harrison re-wrote most of the horrible dialogue George had written for Han, or how the Sequel Trilogy plot thumbnail was written by George well before the sale to Disney, or... but you get the idea). But it's more than that.
I have been reading since I was 2 or 3. I remember getting up early before school in kindergarten to watch Star Blazers. I was a well-behaved kid and my parents took me with them to the movies, so I saw Star Wars when I was 2, Star Trek: TMP and ESB when I was 5, Wrath of Khan when I was 6, ROTJ when I was 8... And kicked into higher gear once I hit 9 and 10 years old -- Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Buckaroo Banzai, 2010, Terminator, Search for Spock, Back to the Future... They were also first-generation Trekkies, in college at the time, and some of those who wrote in to try to save the show each time. So I grew up with that on as background noise. Being raised by people with such inquisitive minds, dedicated bibliophiles, audiophiles, cinemaphiles... Well, these days I've got well over a thousand books (of which only about fifty are in my to-be-read stack), three thousand comics, hundreds of movies, anime, TV series, documentaries...
I have gotten, I like to think, a decently-honed sense of what constitutes a well-structured, well-written story, in all those media and more. And my -- and others' -- well-informed critique that George had a lot of ideas but never liked actually
writing, that he liked the technology and process but hated working with people, that his inherent lack of a writer's instinct led to egregious and irreparable flaws in the structure of his Star Wars universe right from the get-go, that other people coming in later and misinterpreting things or being otherwise intellectually lazy has sometimes contributed gems, but more often compounded existing issues or introduced new ones -- all that is based on understanding, not lack of.
George had occasional spasms of self-awareness, when he told on himself, when he acknowledged his shortcomings and sought assistance to shore them up, which makes the rest of it all the more frustrating to us. We see, from what we've gotten, hints of what it could have been with a skilled writer taking his ideas and fleshing them out, a knowledgeable producer to ease the load on his shoulders and encourage him to let the story take as long as it takes to tell and not rush it, an instinctive editor like Marcia who can push for inclusions and exclusions that help the story, and so on like that. We love what we love, and because we know what we do about the craft, we know how much better it could have been, and how easily it could have been so. You said above that what might be "better" for some might be worse for those who like what we've got. I argue we're not really trying to undo any of the major story beats -- just present them better. Like Animaniacs had stuff that appealed to adults while sailing over kids' heads, but also had stuff that appealed to kids that adults enjoyed, too, I don't think it's an impossible goal.
Psab keel can tell you the degree to which I believe this, but you seem to not be a fan of his, so there's that.
When we say that the shot framing in the prequels is flat and amateurish, we can (and have) pointed to exactly what we mean, and provide comparisons. When we say that the story is compressed and vital information is missing, we're not just stupid or lack movie-comprehension skills. We know there's stuff in the ancillary material (video games, comics, novels, magazine articles) that fills in
some of the holes, but it is a valid argument that one should not
have to read the tie-in fiction to be able to follow what's going on. The failure of the people actually
writing the Sequel Trilogy is that they started
in media res, like the original, but that doesn't work, because there's a body of six films and a TV series behind it now. The prior episode left off with a particular state of affairs. The opening crawl of the first new episode needs to bring the audience up to speed with absolute need-to-know. First paragraph, the tone of this episode and what happened previously. Second paragraph, a thumbnail of what's happened between then and now. Third/final paragraph, setting up context of the opening shot.
TFA's crawl did okay on #3 (Leia's sent Poe to get the map piece, and that's what we see, more or less, once we transition from the crawl to the movie), but failed utterly on #1. Luke disappearing needs to be later, not the first sentence. To tell us what's happened since the Ewok party, the context we're coming into, it needs to read more like:
Or something. It is a valid criticism to say the audience needed to be better informed of what had transpired since the last episode. Not
everything, but enough to not be spending the whole movie trying to figure out what was going on. And, further, it is valid to say there needed to be a little more of the "old normal" ROTJ established at the beginning, even as things were crumbling. It is valid to say it should not be treated like the original film, i.e. hinting at nonexistent previous episodes that we just "missed". WE are going from episode VI to VII and
theoretically haven't missed anything. We, the audience, should have, based on how people
in the movie are responding to things,
seen Luke training Ben, Ben's turn, the destruction of the training center, Luke telling Han and Leia and leaving despite their pleas, and the First Order finally making their move
at least before moving on from there with Poe getting the map piece and so forth.
We have also, with few exceptions, maintaind all along that there are a lot of moments and elements and aspects of all the films that we like, to varying individual degrees and including the Prequels and Sequels, and not a blanket 100% "we hate everything about this movie and anyone who likes it is an idiot" (and the Wook's been banned for beating
that long-dead horse). We are saying we like something (or are trying to like somethign or want to like something) despite its flaws, while the rebuttal we are getting is "you're mistaken -- it has no flaws". Over, and over, and over, and over. We get
Joek3rr's position, and he has frequent good insights and arguments, but he is in error where the facts are concerned in this case. He points out information that explains things people are confused by that was in this novel or that game, while ignoring that it should have been in the movie. He points out that there's limited screen time, while ignoring that there should have been more movies for the story to have the room it needed to be told. He defends every creative choice with the vehemence of a True Believer, impervious to any objective argument about how this character arc is forced, or that sequence was badly staged, or this scene needed to be in this movie while that scene needed to be cut, etc., etc.
Effective would be if he acknowledged our points, considered them, and maybe once in a while conceded that one or another had some credence. The overwhelming sense we who engage with him have is that, to oversimplify, the execution of the Sequel Trilogy has been the Emperor's New Clothes, we're saying the Emperor is naked, and he (and you) are saying no he isn't it's the finest silk and ermine and if you can't see it you obviously need to educate yourself.
