VII: derivative garbage, literally just some disney exec saying "let's make some generic hero's journey shit to print money. we'll have a girl and a black dude to fool surface-level observers into thinking it's not a soulless rehash of the original"

VIII: actually took risks (which ended up backfiring) and had an interesting idea or two. tbh i'm still shocked it was even made. however it wasn't set up properly by the prequel and ended up being a muddled mess with a bunch of pointless subplots. if it wasn't star wars it might be remembered as a flawed cult favorite of scifi movie buffs, akin to THX 1138 or something

IX: see VII, except the exec also said "make sure you blatantly retcon everything about VIII that the youtube incels whined about"

it's really hard to say whether the prequels or sequels are better overall. but that's like trying to decide whether dog shit or human shit is better