No, Lucas is on record many times saying he originally scripted a story that is what ended up being the entire original trilogy. But it was too long to make as a movie, so he trimmed the story down to three sections that would be the original trilogy. And that he always envisioned this story would be not just a six-part saga, but a nine-part saga. Such that during the guts of the original trilogy being made, he had already written the prequel trilogy as a story to turn into movies.
How else do you think this whole massive and detailed EU got to where it did so quickly? Because pretty much everything in the whole EU was already in Lucas' mind as all the movies were being made, and he started commissioning people to write books for it all. And more to your point -- that he indeed had a huge vision already in his head, a purpose and connection, and wasn't making up stuff as he went along.
This is what that Dave Stewart video analysis/criticism is so right. That there's no reason to the new star wars, whereas the first 6 films did have an underlying purpose/reason, the story going somewhere tangible, all the characters acting within that reason. Because, as he put it.....the whole six film saga was put to bed by ROTJ, there was a backstory explaining/showing WHY there was a confilict in the OT, and it got resolved. But the new ST has essentially disregarded all that resolution, and instead of taking it to the story's natural progression, the galaxy's progression, it just rehashed the same exact iconography and themes (evil empire of stormtroopers vs ragtag rebels). That's where there is a rot to the core of the new ST. The story did not movie forward and pose NEW types of problems, new types of themes. Another example is Luke specifically....he conquered his fears, he already had his moment on the brink of the dark side, but threw away the lightsaber, and did the Ghandi thing, removed the hubris and replaced it with compassion and love for all, and was able to redeem his father and see the end of the Sith. But in the ST, again, it's Disney just rehashing that same failure again when it needed to progress. Another example, on your hubris point --- the old Jedi order has already been shown to have failed due to their hubris in the PT, when Yoda commented how a Sith master has all this time been sitting right on top of them, manipulating them, an evil empire created under their noses all along without any of these grand masters (yoda, windu, etc) even suspecting anything. And he even mentioned how hubris was to blame. And they learned their lesson because Order 66 was executed and the Jedi wiped out due to that hubris.
Again, everyday people who didn't go to film or writing school, they KNOW what's a good story or bad. You don't need a degree in something to know when a story feels off, is on the nose, or hits all the marks. You tell everytime you read a book, or watch a tv show or movie. People KNOW. And I wont say "most" but a clear divide exists, a massive amount of people have all over and over and over in their reviews/etc have fingered the STORY/script as where the film is flawed, and indeed, full of too much hubris. Which is funny because it's karma hitting back at Disney, such that they will learn (hopefully) when writing future SW stories to not piss on things.
That is sooooooooooooo obvious a PR statement. I see these comments all the time in the NFL, when a player says a sexist thing in press-conference, or says something bad on twitter and then later claims someone hacked their account. They're all forced to apologize in exactly the same scripted apology, even tho there's truly no contrition there, they carry on how they did, or they keep saying the same thing that got them in trouble weeks later.