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TFA is indeed not a very original movie, but at least Abrams is a competent director. The same can absolutely not be said of Lucas.
Before watching TFA I decided to rewatch the whole prequel trilogy with my girlfriend, since she hadn't seen it. We made it through The Phantom Menace, but we had to stop, because it was just too fucking awful. It is literally bad B movie level bad, like something you would see on MS3K, but where the only difference was a bigger special effects budget (and not even those hold up well by today's standards). I genuinely don't feel that it would be too much of a hyperbole to say that not a single good decision was taken when that movie was made. The contrast to TFA, which I watched a few days later was immense. Yes, finally! Basic level competence! Abrams can actually tell a story! And direct an exciting scene! He can even direct actors so they sound vaguely natural! And this actually feels like a movie made by a professional filmmaker!
The fact that people defend the prequels are for this reason completely incomprehensible to me. The only argument that even comes close to making sense is that at least Lucas tried to tell a more ambitious story about the fall of the Republic and Anakin's conversion to the dark side, but this is an extremely weak argument. Firstly, ambition means nothing if you can't write (and Lucas can't) and secondly, it is not like anything in the prequels is really that deep or complex. You easily find better written and more complex ideas in the rejection pile of your average science fiction publisher, or even your favourite fanfic repository.
I'm not going to defend TLJ and ROS though. They are indeed really, really, really bad movies. Genuinely awful. They might even be close to being as bad as the prequels, but they are definitely not any worse.
I'm personally partial to the argument that Jar Jar Binks was intended to be an "evil Yoda" type character. He's got supernatural luck at avoiding harm, he ended up getting himself into a position to hand the republic over to a chosen sith - like, he's already a fantastic villain.
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