To me, Escape felt a lot like a fan fiction story. A pretty good one, sure, but it still hatched onto the themes that you mention (which used to be more or less background gags in previous installments without much relevance to the actual story) the way fans usually do when writing their own stories. So you got bombarded with callbacks to previous games, characters you already knew, jokes you already heard, and stories that didn't really feel like natural progression of the lore but more like "what if?" scenarios. Ozzie, Herman, your old crew, LeChuck's role in the whole conspiracy, Giant Monkey Head, Planet Threepwood... compare that to Curse, which genuinely moved the series forward into a new and fresh adventure. It also called back to previous games - it even started with Wally right in the first scene who didn't really need to be there - but it always felt like an addition to the game's story, or a glue that makes a Monkey Island game a Monkey Island game, rather than something it relies on to be funny or interesting (after all, we meet Murray right after meeting Wally in Curse, and I don't think any character introduced in Escape is even close to how strong Murray is as a character).

Escape would be a great spin-off - it's still a genuinely fun and engaging adventure game if you can look past its shortcomings. However, as an entry in the main series, it feels a bit wrong, and definitely the weakest. It's not "a pirate tale with good share of silliness" anymore, but rather "a silly tale with good share of pirates". I bet that most of the stuff in the new game that will end up contradicting older games' canon will be stuff that goes at odds with Escape in particular, mostly thanks to its plot twists for the sake of plot twists and taking previous games' gags way too seriously :P

I don't disagree.

I actually played through and finished EMI. I think its tonnes of fun and arguable better than CMI.

But I won't say the tank controls didn't ruin an otherwise great game