Honestly, I think people have hyped the original trilogy to such a degree that there is no way to live up to it no matter what anyone does.
That is an excellent point, Grumpy! And over the years I, myself, have been guilty of the very same thing.....putting the original trilogy on an unrealistically high pedestal. But as I've gotten older, and looked at things in a much more objective light, I've been able to find many faults with those first three movies too.....they're far from perfect! Not to say they weren't good movies, but Return of the Jedi, for example, has plot holes in it too, as big as anything in Rise of Skywalker.
You're right about them being extended tech demos. The tech was new, stuff never seen before in sci-fi movies, or older stuff done in ways never done before! So it was fresh and new for us kids in the late 70s and early 80s. It's harder for new sci-fi stuff to impress the CGI-jaded audiences of today. It's like, "Really? You think that's cool? I see video games with better graphics!" That's the attitude of today's moviegoers.