Personally I grew up as a casual SW fan at best. I saw the original trilogy maybe once or twice. I always hated Luke (whiny brat) and I never much liked Han, either, though he was definitely better than Luke. The only part of those movies I really like is Vader, R2, Chewie, Yoda and the concept of a lightsaber/Jedi. And the only reason I cared about Star Wars as a franchise at all was because of the books I read - none of which were about Luke or Han or any of those characters. In fact, the books I read that were about those characters were almost always boring as hell.
Skipping past the prequels (Loved Ray Park, Neeson, Macgregor, and Portman - only in the first one- not a lot else worth mentioning), TFA was too OT nostalgic for me to fully get into it, but it did introduce a new pair of pro/antagonists that I found really fascinating in Rey and Kylo and that's why I checked out TLJ despite the nostalgia. It was pretty much instantly my favorite SW film, in large part because of Luke. This version of the character finally has real pathos, real emotion, real conflict - stuff he never really had in the old movies, at least not believably, imo. And Mark Hamill has grown into a massively better actor today than he was thirty years ago. He's become the near perfect embodiment of a true Jedi master - way more than Alec Guinness' paper-thin Obi-wan or Neeson's friendly, but perhaps naive Qui-Gon and, imo, even moreso than prickly, (good at pretending to be) wise old Yoda.
