“[‘The Force Awakens’] was a bridge and a kind of reminder; the audience needed to be reminded what ‘Star Wars’ is, but it needed to be established with something familiar, with a sense of where we are going to new lands, which is very much what 8 and 9 do."
No...that's not what 8 did. I realize that 7 looks a lot like 4, and obviously they did that on purpose. In this he seems to be saying that 8 and 9 will be different, but 8 just felt so much like 5 again. Part way into the movie I already knew what was going to happen. It's the Empire Strikes Back again. That's my issue with it.
