jesus this movie was bad
-1. As feared and mentioned throughout the thread, Finn gets completely sidelined to Wacky Black Sidekick status. in TFA we had a good balance of Finn/Rey playing a composite Luke/Leia/Han leads, with Poe Dameron basically being the resistance writ large (look I like oscar issac but he wasnt seen as one of the " leads" and that wast a bad thing, especially considering when they promote him to the third lead, his character arc in TLJ isn't even that great). But this nikka literally accomplishes NOTHING in the TLJ nor does he make a character leap forward like Rey. His entire arc with Rose felt like a Netflix Original Series B-Plot.
In fact i do agree with the notion that Disney made the cowardly decision to scuttle any parts of him becoming a "dashing" lead or kindling a relationship with Rey. Possibly outta racism ("CANT HAVE THE BLACKS WITH OUR PURE WHITE WOMAN IN DISNEY FILMS") but moreso out of this agenda to push non-traditional character roles and motivations ("a strong female lead who is the most powerful of the cast and isn't defined by her relationships with men" is IMO word for word the executive decree when conceiving Rey......Disney really learned from the success of Frozen and Moana and has made it no secret that they want the "little girls who buy action toys and like superheroes" crowd just as much as they want boys).
I was one of the apologists for or was at least willing to wait and see how they did Finn for TLJ. No more. So much of my and others excitement for the new trilogy was over the seeming motivations to have a fully capable Black protagonist in the SW universe. And Disney completely pulled the rug from under us.
-2.Abandoning all the plot lines from TFA, just to push some point that this isn't your dads Star Wars-Pretty self explanatory here. Luke created clues to find him in TFA implying he wants to save the galaxy at some point....LOL naw fukk that he just wanted to die in the middle of nowhere. Snoke? Naw fukk that nikka, Ben is the real villain and is irredeemable from jump.
-3 The inconsequential nature of this movie-Compared to the previous trilogies middle movies, the plot feels like it isn't advanced at all. Rey is more trained as a Jedi, but given that she accomplished this in 2(?) days, did she really need Luke in the first place? Ben is confirmed as a piece of shyt/central villain, but we kinda knew that in TFA. The Resistance is now smaller than ever, but they took hella L's in TFA....LIke this movie doesn't introduce any elements that weren't established or couldnt have been done in TFA. Contrast this with huge plot points in AoTC and Empire...(the start of the clone wars, Padme and Anakin begin their relationship, Anakin begins his turn to darkness, Luke takes a huge L and finds out Vader is his Daddy, Han is frozen in Carbonite,). Luke dying is the only thing of consequence and really it was widely unnecessary in IMO.
these are my points of contention off the top of my head but much of what you guys are saying I agree with. Rian Johnson really had an easy job with this movie and I cant believe he fukked it up so bad. Its like the complaints about TFA being a Xerox Copy of the OG trilogy really had them shook.