I can sincerely say that I'd watch the hell out of a Coruscant Rom-Com.
As far as the visual style... I think it depends on the setting. Sleek and polished works for an Imperial military facility, or Naboo, or what have you. It doesn't work for an Outer Rim dirt ball. The galaxy's a big place, and there's room for a lot of different looks. What I do think is missing in a lot of the ST is a sense of scale. And I don't mean just in the sense of "the Resistance is down to one ship". I mean the galaxy felt small. Stuff like the Starkiller Base weapon being visible from whatever system Han and Rey and Finn are in, even if they have an explanation for it. But its more than that. Its hard to put my finger on it, but something about the way a lot of it is shot just didn't evoke a sense of scale or grandeur for me. Hosnia blowing up, a whole system being destroyed, felt... small. Or at least that's how I remember it. There were the odd moments that captured that sense of scale, like those opening shots of Rey exploring and flying past the giant wrecks of old Imperial ships in the desert. Those remain visually some of my favorite moments in the trilogy. But not enough.
Of the Disney films, Rogue One did it best, I think. The shots of the planets from space felt big. The destruction wrought by the Death Star felt big.
But again, for me, the key underlying flaw was not one of visual style, but a lack of a coherent story. They had no idea where they wanted to go with this, or if they did, they didn't have the guts to follow through. Personally... before the films came out, I would have liked to see a story that followed on from what I would expect to happen after RotJ. A new Jedi Order, Han and Leia's children. A divided galaxy, not a big WWII in space style conflict, but something more akin to the War on Terror- a fragmented galaxy with the New Republic and Jedi struggling to cope with a lot of small-scale conflicts (maybe funded by some sinister power in the background).
Now... I'd have liked to see Rey's story, but have it be about Rey being "Nobody", seeking meaning in attaching herself to various other mentors (Han, Kylo, Luke), being disappointed by them, and ultimately having to create her own identity and family- have that be the focus, not just some lame "I'm calling myself Skywalker now for fanservice" tacked on at the end. That's a story that I think would have been meaningful.
I think Star Wars works best when it takes a classic, simple story of good vs evil on an epic scale, and then gives it a twist, while still retaining its underlying idealism. The OT did this best, by having the villain revealed as the hero's father, calling into question the hero's assumptions and ultimately shifting his goal, and the focus of the story, from "kill the bad guy" to "redeem the bad guy" (and also creating a fairly clever subversion of the Oedipus myth). The Prequels took the good vs evil story and gave it a cynical modern twist- the whole war is a charade, because the bad guy is already controlling both sides. And told a story about democracy's fall. It by necessity was more cynical and pessimistic than the OT, in some ways part of the "both sides" narrative about modern politics that I have so grown to loath- but it still ended on a note of hope. Obi-wan and Yoda take the twins into hiding, and we know how that story ends. Both trilogies also spoke to the concerns of the era in which they were filmed, in different ways: the OT has been cited as offering idealism or escapism to a post-Vietnam/Watergate America, while the Prequels echoed the growing political cynicism of the 90s/00s.
I think TLJ and Rogue One are the films that, in the new era, came closest to doing that. Rogue One was a darker take on the good vs evil story, with the heroes mostly dying in the end- but it did not wallow in cynicism or defeatism either, allowing their sacrifice to ultimately be meaningful. All their efforts coming down to a few nameless red shirts in a hallway, facing off against a literal monster they couldn't hope to beat, but managing to prevail at the cost of their own lives, was a brilliant decision, and in my opinion one of the most powerful moments in the saga.
TLJ tried to tell a story which put twists on the classic narratives (Rey is Nobody, the rogue hotshot pilot challenging authority isn't right, the sympathetic villain will not be redeemed by the heroine's love, the arch villain dies in the second act), and also to speak to the current disillusionment and cynicism, by showing a flawed Luke, a cynic like DJ who thinks both sides are just as bad- and ultimately attempting to refute them, to show that even if the old institutions have failed, their underlying ideals haven't. But it was less focussed than the OT's twist, and because it was part of an incoherent trilogy, its ideas were not fully followed up on, and indeed undercut by the final film.
So I respect TLJ and Rogue One the most as films, and as Star Wars films, in terms of their own merits. But none of the films work terribly well as part of a cohesive series, because there is no cohesive series. There is no clear overall theme or direction to the narrative.
This is an unfortunately common feature of Hollywood genre films today- less a coherent story than a series of "cool moments", written by committee, and awkwardly stitched together.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver
"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.
I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
