I was watching some youtube analysis about Disney's acquisition of Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm.
Pixar and Marvel both retained some creative control over their projects. Disney paid over 8b for Pixar and it was understandable given how many recent successes they had, and how many projects they had in the pipeline and their entire creative and production teams.
Disney paid about half that for Marvel (but it was in very early days of the MCU) and they too inherited a very well fleshed out pipeline.
Lucas has the ILM and Skywalker Ranch which worked on many projects but the development and creative team for new films was non existent. Disney's appraisers put Lucasfilm at 3.x billion.
Lucas wanted the same deal as Pixar. Disney board said no. But because Disney's then boss was a friend of Lucas, they raised it up to about the same as Marvel, so they kinda overpaid for Lucasfilm - and it satisfied Lucas' ego.
It meant Disney needed a quick turnaround for the acquisition to pay for itself. So a quick rush to get the new trilogy out and a clause that said they had to do it Disney's way (I guess one way of making sure George didn't put a hammer in the works).
In hindsight, it seemed odd they didn't have all 3 movies mapped out from day one. But the original trilogy (without the benefit of Lucas' own retcon), from the perspectives of those who worked on the original trilogy, was also made up as they went along. Making Star Wars (not Episode 4 or A New Hope as it was subsequently rebadged), Lucas had no way of knowing if it would even succeed.
I think the difficulty was that in an effort to make the investment in Lucasfilm pay off, they rushed through production. I still think Force Awakens is the right way forward. It rebooted the Star Wars franchise for a new generation who had never seen Star Wars before and reintroduced us to that universe. In a similar way to how Creed worked to re-boot Rambo.
I guess when Rian Johnson veered off the path, someone at Disney/Lucasfilm should have bitten the bullet and killed that project and gone back to the drawing board. But they had already committed to a 2 year cycle and there was no going back.
Honestly, I would have loved to see Mandalorian in the cinemas while we waited for things to get back on track for the Skywalker saga.
But given what JJ had to work with, there was never any way he was going to please everybody, and I personally enjoyed watching the movie.
Before Force Awakens, I thought of rewatching the first 2 trilogies
and I did. sorta.
I watched Ep 4-6, but watched this weird edit called the Topher Grace edit of the prequel trilogy (yes that 70s show guy). He did a private screening but someone pieced together his edits from those who saw it and made it available as a bootleg
Before Rise of Skywalker, I attempted to rewatch the previous two. I made it through Force Awakens. But couldn't make it past Last Jedi.
But I have already seen Rise of Skywalker twice and it was more enjoyable the second time.
That said, I doubt I could beat the number of times I rewatched Abrams Star Trek 2009