I agree about Rogue One, though I just wish it would have slowed down a little, to give the characters more time. Star Wars has a breakneck pace; but, I always felt they gave the characters enough time to really become established. really, when you watch it vs later films, the pace is almost leisurely.

I also agree about Abrams. Everything he has done seems highly derivative and lacking the emotion of what he is aping. Tarantino wears his influences on his sleeve; but, does something different with them. Abrams seems to want to do the same, with lens flares and little character development. I don't profess to have seen all of his work, though. The Star Trek films are really devoid of the intelligence of the series and the better movies. His feel like action movies with characters who took their names from Trek, but not their personalities. Force Awakens felt much the same. I'm more interested in Po than I am Rey, yet I know she will be the focus. Ben Solo even felt flat to me.

I'd rather see more movies like Rogue One, without having to tie directly into the originals. Let's see other characters deal with things in this world. At one point, I would applaud the Han Solo film, though, after what I have seen, I suspect it won't dwell on the things I think would make it good. I suspect we will get 2 hours of someone trying to be Harrison Ford, rather than seeing how Han evolved from orphaned cabin boy, to court martialled officer, to smuggler and con-artist (assuming they stick with any of that backstory).

I suppose it is a tricky thing; they want the feel of the old, yet want something for a new generation. Make it too knew and you lose fans of the old; too old and the new generation don't care. Thing is, if the new has the spirit, yet treads new ground, the old will follow and the young will come. The other problem is corporate filmmaking. Star Wars was part of that 70s film rebellion. The problem is, that Rebellion grew into an Empire.

This. This is partly why the odds are stacked against any SW film capturing the spirit of the original trilogy. Rogue One came close, but as I said elsewhere recently, that mostly seems to have been a British production and I suspect that's why it was so much better than TFA. Being removed from Hollywood, it had something of that independent spirit that the original trilogy had, despite being a Disney production.

The trailer looks to at least be teasing the possibility of Skywalker embracing some form of neutral Force alignment -- neither light nor dark side. His last line "It's time for the Jedi to end" seems to indicate this. I've read some things online that theorize the whole "bringing balance to the Force" from the prequels is meant to point to this. There was an article, I think it was on Screen Rant, that postulated this theory that the Jedi of the prequel era were basically not much better than the Sith. While they embraced the side of "good", they were also dogmatic, rigid, and complacent to the point that they couldn't even see the threat under their very noses. So their ultimate demise to the Sith was in many ways of their own making, and that the real solution to the dark/light side struggle is not for one to vanquish the other, but for a new order to come along that recognizes the strengths of each and achieves balance between the two.

This would be an interesting development, but I'm not sure how I feel about it quite yet. It feels like a retcon to me personally. The OT trilogy only ever presented the Jedi as the ultimate good guys, and I'm not sure how much I like idea of presenting them as an order Force users with an equally valid (or invalid) perspective on the Force as the Sith.

I always thought it was strange that the Jedi were fine with growing a clone army to fight and die for them.