In the specific case of Star Wars, that’s exactly how you make something decent within the Star Wars framework: pick a few elements, including characters, plots

In the specific case of Star Wars, that’s exactly how you make something decent within the Star Wars framework: pick a few elements, including characters, plots, shots, scenes, lines, whatever, from a broad set of genre media, mash them together, and apply Star Wars lipstick. The first film basically defined the genre pastiche film, and it’s still the straightest path to making something Ok within Star Wars. Most failures (and there are so many) are creatives failing to appreciate this, or not leaning into it hard enough. Mandalorean has one episode that’s about 50% The Wages of Fear and I bet the other main element of accidentally finding some officer you’d really like to get revenge on but while in the middle of committing another crime is also from something else, but I’m not sure what. The AT-ST episode is basically a Conan the Barbarian story plus any of a few westerns (the training-the-town-folk thing—even the woman who’s an uncannily good shot for no reason ever explained is lifted from westerns). That show got how to do Star Wars. More broadly, yes, more original (at least, not based on an existing visual-media franchise) sci fi movies would be cool to see.