With no creative involvement from George Lucas, the Star Wars sequel trilogy was always destined to irreparably divide the fanbase. There are some fans who hate the sequels and others who genuinely love them. Both sides of the fence are vocal about their opinions, with the sequel haters claiming the sequels are objectively bad because the trilogy is a Frankenstein’s monster and the sequel enjoyers arguing that nothing can be objectively bad.

RELATED: Star Wars: 10 Storylines From The Sequel Trilogy That Were Never Paid Off

The truth is that with so many different people working on these movies, there’s both a lot to enjoy about them and a lot that misses the mark.

Like: John Williams’ Music

Han and Chewie in The Force Awakens

The one thing about the Star Wars saga that all fans can agree on across the board is that John Williams’ score is beautiful. His sweeping music perfectly pairs with the spectacular visuals to bring real emotional resonance to this weird, pulpy world.

Just like fans who hated Anakin and Padmé’s romance from the prequels can still agree that “Across the Stars” is a great piece of music, fans who hated the Resistance being derivative of the Rebellion can still agree that “March of the Resistance” is spectacular.

Flaw: The Force Awakens’ “Mystery Box” Building Blocks

Maz gives Luke's lightsaber to Rey

J.J. Abrams’ much-maligned “mystery box” method of storytelling hammered a few nails into the sequel trilogy’s coffin before it even got off the ground in The Force Awakens. The movie is full of tantalizing teases — “A good story, for another time...” — that would never get paid off. Abrams was just expected to direct the first film in the new trilogy before leaving the rest in the hands of other filmmakers. He wasn’t supposed to return for Episode IX, but things went kind of off the rails by then.

The initial job offer was perfect for Abrams’ storytelling style. Just like when he introduced polar bears on the tropical island setting of Lost in the pilot episode before jumping ship in the middle of season 1, leaving his co-creators to explain it, Abrams emptied his “mystery box” all over The Force Awakens to give building blocks to his successor Rian Johnson.

Alas, those building blocks were very restricting — like the mystery of Luke Skywalker bowing down to evil and becoming a hermit — and Abrams had no plan for where they would go, which became abundantly clear when he returned to complete the trilogy and did nothing with any of his own setups.

Like: Exciting Action

X-wing dogfight in Star Wars The Force Awakens

The actual storytelling might leave a lot to be desired, but the action sequences in the Star Wars sequel trilogy are pretty riveting. The dogfights are particularly eye-popping, with a virtual camera swooping around the vacuum of space in a dazzling flurry of cosmic warfare.

By using practical methods wherever possible and smoothing over the visuals with state-of-the-art CGI, the makers of the sequel trilogy found a nice middle ground between the original trilogy’s gorgeous but time-consuming miniatures and the prequels’ overuse of primitive computer-generated effects.

Flaw: Completely Unplanned Storyline

Finn wields a lightsaber and fights FN-2199 on Takodana in The Force Awakens

When George Lucas made the original Star Wars trilogy, he set out to tell the story of how bright-eyed farm boy Luke Skywalker defeated the Galactic Empire. When he made the prequel trilogy, he set out to tell the story of how prodigious young Jedi Anakin Skywalker was corrupted and became Darth Vader. Lucas ironed out the details along the way, but he always had the basic storyline mapped out. The same cannot be said of the sequel trilogy.

RELATED: Star Wars: 5 Ways Finn Was Wasted By The Sequel Trilogy (& 5 Poe Was)

For the sequel trilogy, J.J. Abrams loosely remade the 1977 original while asking a bunch of questions he didn’t know the answers to, then Rian Johnson controversially threw out the playbook and deconstructed the Star Wars mythos. Then, Colin Trevorrow planned to put all those disparate pieces together for a cohesive and satisfying finale, but Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy fired him and replaced him with Abrams, who completed the trilogy by ignoring Johnson’s contributions (as well as most of his own) and pandering to a select portion of the fanbase.

Like: Production Design

Kylo Ren using the Force and holding his lightsaber in The Force Awakens

The sequel trilogy might not always feel like Star Wars, like when grizzled old Luke Skywalker is milking an alien or when Darth Rey is gnashing her sharp teeth, but it always looks like Star Wars, because the production design is spectacular.

The team designed their sets down to the last detail, with all-new creatures featuring in the background of every scene and the Star Wars world getting a little bit bigger with each passing set piece.

Flaw: Inconsistent Character Arcs

Rey has a Force vision in The Last Jedi

If the Marvel Cinematic Universe has proven anything, it’s that movies made “by committee” can still be great. Kevin Feige’s guiding vision and an immensely talented creative team all on the same page can give a character like Tony Stark a coherent 11-year character arc with an emotionally charged payoff. This didn’t happen with the character arcs in the Star Wars sequel trilogy because they barely qualify as character arcs.

They assembled a cast of hugely gifted actors, then gave them muddled, inconsistent, ever-altering material to work with. Rey accepts that she’s a nobody, then suddenly gets hung up on having a last name. Finn bounces from love interest to love interest — it’s never even clear exactly what he did when he worked for the First Order.

Like: The Cast

Rey, Finn, and Poe in The Rise of Skywalker

Although the character work in the sequels was inconsistent, the Lucasfilm casting team handpicked some of the greatest actors working today, from already-established stars like Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Gwendoline Christie, Lupita Nyong’o, Laura Dern, Benicio del Toro, Richard E. Grant, and Andy Serkis to relative newcomers like Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Kelly Marie Tran.

And of course, it was always a delight to see any of the returning actors: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Ian McDiarmid, Frank Oz, and the late Kenny Baker and Peter Mayhew.

Flaw: Self-Retcons

Luke Skywalker in The Rise of Skywalker

Ultimately, the sequel trilogy fails to hold up in the same way that the prequel and original trilogies do, because they’re full of self-retcons.

RELATED: Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker ⁠— 10 Plot Points From The Last Jedi That J.J. Abrams Ignored

Rian Johnson retconned a lot of J.J. Abrams’ ideas and replaced them with his own, like Snoke being easy to defeat and Rey being a nobody, then Abrams retconned a lot of Johnson’s ideas and replaced them with his own, like Rey being a Palpatine and “Broom Boy” never making another appearance. As a result, the whole trilogy is a heaping mess of conflicting ideas.

Like: Babu Frik

Babu Frik working on droids in The Rise of Skywalker

Even critics who eviscerated The Rise of Skywalker have to admit that they liked Babu Frik. Like any great Star Wars character, Babu Frik is a pronounced weirdo who steals every scene he’s in. With cuteness to rival The Mandalorian’s “Baby Yoda,” Babu Frik is brought to life by masterful puppetry and Shirley Henderson’s magnificent multilingual voice performance.

J.J. Abrams apparently added Babu Frik into The Rise of Skywalker’s final battle because when he screened an early cut of the movie for Steven Spielberg, Spielberg was concerned Babu had been killed when his planet was destroyed. Thus, Abrams inserted a shot to let fans know he was okay.

Flaw: Squandering The Legacy Characters

Leia Organa survives space in The Last Jedi

The most egregious thing about the sequel trilogy is that it completely squandered Luke, Leia, and Han. Kathleen Kennedy reassembled one of the most iconic trios in cinema history — Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford back in their Star Wars roles — and then completely squandered them.

The holy trinity of the Star Wars universe never even shared a single scene together in the new trilogy. Luke Skywalker, mythical hero of many a childhood, was reduced to an unseen MacGuffin in The Force Awakens, then characterized as a bitter jerk in The Last Jedi.

NEXT: Star Wars: 10 Ways The Sequel Trilogy Squandered Luke, Leia & Han