Or just have Rian Johnson do a "Star Wars Story" movie where he could come up with some characters and do his own thing. Seems to be what he wanted to do.

JJ Abrams was the best guy to do a movie where they're bringing back the original characters again. As soon as you bring back some old characters it's never going to be completely fresh and original because you have those existing characters there. But that's fine, they didn't need to be great ground breaking movies. Having three solid movies with the original cast passing the torch to a new generation with a bunch of fun action scenes is all it needed to be.

I think they did things exactly backwards. The Episodes should've played it a little more safe (you got the beloved original characters so you don't want to screw it up) while the "Star Wars Story" movies should've taken big risks. Instead they made TLJ be a weird departure from action adventure (which didn't accomplish anything) while the Star Wars Story movies were a couple of prequels that couldn't deviate much from things we already knew. Should've taken some risks on the Star Wars story movies because missing the mark on those ones wouldn't have hurt the franchise. I didn't care for Rogue One, but it didn't ruin anything because I can just ignore it. Can't ignore TLJ with it being right in the middle of a Trilogy featuring characters I like.