Where to begin,
The Last Jedi basically sets itself up to destroy the foundations that TFA setup. Who is Rey's parents? Nobodies. Rey's journey to bring Luke his Lightsaber? Just toss it in the ocean for a laugh. Snoke? Who? Oh lets just kill him off quickly, no need for any backstory or anything interesting. Yoda? A laughing stock.
The movie basically takes the interesting threads that TFA laid forth and it seems Rian simply wanted to shit all over that and make EVERYTHING a joke, and not even a good joke at that.
Luke:
Luke isn't the type of character to literally bury his head in the sand, he created the problem with Kylo and he knew what was going to happen, so what does he do? Well according to TLJ he simply buries his head in the sand, lets Kylo go around the universe killing innocent people, waging war, he lets them kill Leia's people, on top of this he actively wants to destroy the Jedi order and rid it from the universe. Does this is ANY way seem like something Luke from the OT would do? Or would he man up, go after Kylo after that happened and try to figure out a way to stop him, just like he did after he lost his hand to Vader and then comes back in ROTJ kicking Jabba's ass to save Han and then proceed to rescue the rebellion from the Empire? It was completely against the type of character that Luke was shown to be in the OT.
Then there's the whole Yoda bit. Like that's not Yoda. When Luke first meets Yoda and Yoda is being super annoying to him he was TESTING Luke, seeing his true character.. When Luke finally finds out that he's the person he came to find Yoda does NOT act like that anymore the rest of the movie nor does he act like that in the prequels, at all. He isn't some annoying "funny alien" but Rian seemed to not understand that aspect from the ESB.
Then lastly that final "fight" with Luke. Like, if he was going to die, why not go in person? Actually see Leia and everything in person, he could still have done the whole "ghost" thing to throw off the first order, but he could have actually physically fought against them too, which would have just been great to see at least once.
Then you have Rose and Finn:
When we are introduced to Rose she is literally stopping deserters from leaving because her sister was the one who sacrificed herself at the start during the space battle. Rose did not want her sisters sacrifice to be for nothing and this was her way to do that. She cared deeply for the rebellion and wanted her sisters sacrifice to have meaning and see it through.
Enter Finn, she doesn't know him but within a few hours of being with him she's fallen head over heels for him in love, a very one-sided love too. A love that is so strong that she is completely and utterly willing to not only throw her sisters sacrifice down the drain but the ENTIRE rebellion, over a guy she literally JUST met and has known for a few hours.
Finn on the other hand was a huge waste in the movie. The entire trip to the casino planet felt utterly pointless. Finn was wasted for the purpose of creating a bit of comic relief, nothing vital to the main storyline of the movie at all. The point when he had something to do that impacted this was his moment of sacrifice, to stop the first order and save the Rebels, but oh yeah, Rose stops that because she "loves" him and then he somehow magically loves her back? Like where is the build up or anything to this storyline? I've seen better "love stories" written in half-hour cartoons.
Kylo and Rey:
This to me was the strongest aspect of the story. The potential for Kylo and Rey to work together, to end up forging something new, something different, to break from the tradition of the "Empire vs Rebel" shtick that Star Wars has focused on for nine straight movies. Snoke out the way, the first Order can be dissolved, Rey can help teach Kylo and bend his anger away from the dark side and they can take the story in a new direction for the next movie. They push it far, they tease this, they make you think "oh something might happen" only for them to go "nah, forget that all" and they end up basically making Kylo a generic "villain" instead of an interesting complex character that they could have.
Leia:
The infamous space scene. We know Leia is force sensitive like Luke. The issue isn't that she has powers nor that she can use them, it was the absurdity of how that scene was shot and portrayed. Having her be blown into space, then come back to her being unconscious after a short time, she suddenly "wakes up" (in the vacuum of space mind you) and then does that dramatic pull to the ship. It was just so out of left field, my entire theater literally burst out into laughter (and I'm pretty sure that was not the intended affect they were going for).
The scene would have made faaaaar more sense had they simply showed her getting sucked out into space and then holding her breath and having her "pull" herself back all within that one scene (so within just a few seconds), rather then having her be unconscious and then wakeup (however long it was after).
The whole movie just felt sloppy, like they should have had someone to work out the overall story arc for the trilogy and characters instead of just passing the second movie in a trilogy to another guy, that just screams disaster to me.
