The first Star Wars trilogy was a cultural phenomenon. It did something that hadn't happened before, creating a through-line in three distinct movies that were blockbusters. Other than the A Fist Full of Dollars trilogy (which was more niche), I can't think of another one like this that came before. The reason it became that phenomenon was the strength of the first two movies. The third was an adequate ending, but Lucas had been bitten by the merchandising bug by then. But it was fine. Yes, they are space westerns, not really sci-fi, yes, there are problems with those movies, but, in general, the acting was solid (enough)--and highlighted by good chemistry between the actors, the story was well paced, the effects were top notch for the time, and there was a culturally relevant sub-plot that Americans connected with.
Everything that came after has to be judged against the phenomenon that made it possible in the first place. The prequels are fun-ish, do some more world building, but suffered from poor script writing, poor chemistry--particularly with two of the main characters--not living up to the world building reputation that flowed from two decades of post-trilogy writing, interviews, etc--and, yes, relied too much on CGI (that wasn't even all that advanced yet). Revenge of the Sith told the story that everyone wanted from the original trilogy, but is still marred by a poor script, poor acting, and poor chemistry. But they were still fun space westerns--with light saber duels, aliens, cool ships, etc. And, yeah, the kids from that generation liked it well enough.
For the true Star Wars nerds, there were plenty of other things to like going on: the animated serials were--I'm told--quite good, and pointed to the future we are living now with our big media serials, where you pick up a lot of plot points through the TV spin offs, sometimes to the detriment of the feature length films.
I enjoyed each of the "final" trilogy movies on their own, but they didn't present a coherent story, largely because Disney didn't have them well-mapped out in advance, and tried to be avant gard with the director choice for the second film. I liked the characters in the last trilogy better than in the prequel, the script writing was better, and the chemistry between actors was improved. But the lack of a coherent story through the three movies really holds them back as a collection. And, again, the true Star Wars fanatics can find endless things wrong with them--and the culture critics can point to them trying to do too much inclusion--at times it felt forced, and for its critics, it probably felt more than that. I'm one of the few people who liked the second film best of the three--but it certainly had some big flaws. I liked the concept that it set out to democratize the Force. But the third movie completely reversed that. I think a lot of what they did on the third movie was fan service to try to recover from the poor reception to the second one. In doing that, they fell back on bringing the whole thing back to characters from the original trilogy, which--IMO--missed an opportunity to move on from it. From the perspective of someone who read the Thrawn Trilogy, but none of the other Star Wars books, there was a post-original trilogy world with new and different villains that could have been really interesting, but instead they told basically the same story again, even ending with the same old bad guy. A missed opportunity. Each was reasonably fun in its own right, but none were great movies. They were a decent way to retire the main cast from the original trilogy but failed to introduce a new world to build from. It's unfortunate, I thought the Daisy Ridley character was a good one. But I also thought that turning her into the royal bloodline was a poor choice.
The spinoffs have been hit or miss for me. I thought Solo was a downright bad movie. I thought Rogue One was excellent--it's falls behind Star Wars and Empire on my ranking of the films. I've enjoyed the Mandalorian, but it's just a run of the mill western. I thought the Boba Fett thing was a waste of my time, which soured me on the other shows. I hear I should watch Andor, and perhaps the Obi Wan thing, but they are low on my list, largely due to Star Wars fatigue.
