It's a quick scene that is a pretty obvious nod towards him dying in A New Hope. The prequel trilogy largely does not stand up already. Episodes 1/2 not holding up has already been established. I don't think TFA will be looked down upon as much for having a super death star as much as you think. The ST backlash as a whole only really got strong once RoS disappointed everyone.
I rewatched both TPM and AotC quite recently, and I think both of them are better Star Wars than both of JJ's, I'm serious.
And I hated Attack of the Clones for the longest time.
People like to hate on the "acting" and characters of the PT, but I'd argue that all of the mains are better and more interesting than all of the ST characters. And that the acting/dialogue is deliberately stilted/hammy by intent, like melodramatic plays.
With respect to the ST lead mains:
Rey is essentially Luke 2.0, but more boring somehow. Primarily due to the loss in the familial dynamic that Luke Skywalker had with Vader (& no I am absolutely not figuring in the shoehorned Palpatine reveal). She had familial angst too, but IMHO, it is way more poorly executed than both Skywalker characters familial troubles. Primarily because in 1, she has no family, 2 her family doesn't matter, and 3 tries to pull a fast one and fails miserably, laughably.
Finn as a lifetime conditioned Stormtrooper turned sudden crisis of conscience comedic relief is totally unbelievable, and frankly quite insulting actually. Not to mention his completed """""arc""""" in TRoS.
And Poe is just a good pilot who gets frustrated at times, and that's pretty much it. He is no Han Solo, that's for damn sure. But hey, Oscar Isaac is a great actor (they all are), but Poe is completely uninteresting.
Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is only kind of interesting, and it's mostly the dynamic of his legacy, heritage, upbringing, and stuff in TLJ. But even then, TLJ essentially dumps all over the arc, legacy, and feats of Luke Skywalker as a character; essentially rendering him and the OT, a failure.
Han Solo & Leia remain virtually unchanged ironically, except for the status of their relationship, which also failed and was undone to specifically facilitate these new films' core drama.
And that's a lot of the problem, the core of the emotion and drama from these films comes from the undoing of the classic films and the characters. It feels artificial, because it is.
It's not just the Starkiller Base that alone is the source of TFA's failure, it is merely one aspect.
And as I mentioned in another post, Star Wars (and I am talking the six, actual Star Wars films here, nothing tertiary/outside of them) was always a constellation of George Lucas's primary interests in life, distilled into these films, just how all art is made. Yet people love to hold these facts over him as if it's some sort of failure/weakness, which couldn't be further from the truth.
The new films are a constellation of Original Trilogy Star Wars iconography and high-level story beats and they come across as total facsimile/fan-fiction/almost-parody in their execution, despite superficially being well produced/put together (not factoring TRoS as it is indefensible, straight garbage).
