Originally Posted by
godisawesome
I think you've pinpointed the subjective arguments people are going to be judging this film on as fanboys; mainstream audiences may be different, but these are the sticking points for debate among those of us who have devoted quite a few more hours to speculation and book reading.
The first part I bolded is going to be an issue for some people, including myself. The Skywalker family now currently sits as more of a curse on the Galaxy than a blessing; out of 3 generations, two of them became the chief enforcers or even leaders of despotic, mass murdering regimes, and the good generation simply paused the damage for 30 years. Since there's no counterpoint to Kylo from the Skywalker family, he may have permanently tilted the legacy towards billions of victims instead of billions of rescuees. Rey is still meant to be his opposite number; they even repeated and amplified the Force-tug-o-war over Anakin's lightsaber to the extent that they split it in half and seemed to show their power was almost exactly equal. And I'll argue the scene in the dark side cave for Rey was an excellent visual representation of the idea that her fixation on her parents was a flaw, and as you and others have argued, communicating that anyone can be a Jedi is a strong idea. But that idea still feels underdeveloped here, in part because they explicitly brought up how Kylo's bloodline does seem to have made him exceptionally powerful (thus begging for some kind of speculation on Rey's own exceptionality), and in part because Rey's fixation on her parents was still the driving internal conflict for her throughout this film.
It feels like there was too much emphasis placed on Rey's parentage and on Kylo's bloodline strength to totally sell the anybody-can-be-a-hero theme, especially in comparison to how it might have gone if her parentage was wrapped up in TFA instead.
Finn's storyline and fight with Phasma feels like the conceptual opposite of his story in TFA; he had a less compelling character arc and had a smaller impact on the central conflict, but he got a perfunctory physical victory that he lacked in TFA. Finn may have lost most of his physical fights in TFA, but his story-arc focused on how an ordinary stormtrooper wound up being the fulcrum of the First Order's defeat through a series of succeedingly more brave and moral choices. In TLJ, he's largely static as a character, and while he does kill Phasma, she's still a bit character who wastes Gwendoline Christie's skills, and the net gain from Finn and Rose's plot is the Resistance's escape plan is found out and they're cornered.
Finn may have the physical victory, but in comparison to TFA, he's stuck in a meandering dead end plot that causes more harm than good.
And you're right about the formulaic argument, but I'd argue some fo the issue I have with TLJ is parts that are as formulaic as TFA. Snoke and his courtroom are effectively just retreads of the Emperor's courtroom in ROTJ, until the end of the scene, which is good, but still means we have this Palpatine rip-off with few unique characteristics in terms of his on-screen history and portrayal. We also have an overarching military conflict that repeats the "survival is victory" theme from ESB, but now it's strung out and has some shaky logic: the Resistance can get out of the FO's effective weapon's range and reach an old planet from the rebellion, but can't share that with it's staff? And the FO has no support ships capable fo providing cover for fighters outside of slow Star Destroyers? At the same time, Luke's story being so morose and somber and kind of pitiable is a definite change in formula, but is still kind of depressing for out old hero until the end, and even then we kind of miss out on a more visceral experience we could have had with him being there.
Its a bit different in some places and similar in others. It's just a matter of whether or not you think its the right degree of each.