To me Rogue One is unquestionably the best Star Wars flick in over 30 years. In other words I'm really surprised to see 40% vote for TFA.

Rogue One is a far better prequel to the original trilogy than I-III...the action was tense, and the treatment of the rebel alliance was on par with Episode IV. In contrast TFA felt contrived... the handling of the Force was contradictory to the original trilogy, the villain was anemic, and the entire story felt like a Disney reboot centering around a Death Star, again. Not that it was bad, but a reboot is no addition to the saga like Rogue One.

I agree with all of that... Tarkin integration was pretty good, but I felt like the movie was interrupted with a commercial for an upcoming Rogue One video game simply because of the closeups. With some of the video game commercials it also takes a couple moments to register it is CGI, but it is unmistakable and ultimately distracting as I start focusing on the unnatural eye and mouth movement rather than the dialogue. It's fine in the movie, but the director needs to do a better job working around its issues.

That happened in 1983 when ROTJ came out. It was renamed from "Revenge of the Jedi" to make it kid friendly, and gave extended screen time to a tribe of teddy bears. Most viewers beyond 10 years old were disappointed in the direction, and it didn't have the same rabid repeat viewings as the prior two.

Reality is that Rogue One and The Force Awakens are, in fact, fan fiction, not written or directed by George Lucas. Unfortunately Lucas did not do a great job outlining the universe and its characters like George RR Martin or JRR Tolkien tended to use to frame their books. It's why the Star Wars movies are inconsistent, and why some of the fan fiction is arguably better than Lucas' own vision.