Okay, I’m not looking to start an fight... but I am looking to see how this argument holds up.
TFA remains easily the highest grossing, least divisive, and generally most successful film in the ST. TLJ might have a slight critical edge in some circles, but it’s divisive reputation is by now infamous, and it never approached TFA’s box office haul in spite of the critics giving it good press. A good chunk of TFA’s success is easily placed on it being a pop culture event as the return of Star Wars... but the film also had freakishly good legs, and extremely positive word of mouth at the time of this release, among not just hard core fans but mainstream audiences as well.
Now, the narrative in the wake of TROS is that while the Sequel Trilogy was financially successful, it wound up being somewhat less than it should - the ST is already being seen as a peer to the PT in terms of a breakdown in quality compared to the Original Trilogy... though for radically different reasons.
And I’d say one of the signs of that fall in quality is that Finn, the original male lead in TFA, was transitioned out of the role in TLJ and got replaced by Kylo entirely by TROS... but so badly that Finn’s one film as the undisputed male lead has a much greater character arc than Kylo got in all three films, and that Boyega got to show more genuine range and charisma in that one film than a Driver had in all three, despite both men being great actors, and Driver being more experienced and more heralded in general as an up-and-coming star. Finn also remains the only real male character to have a good “reciprocal” relationship with Rey - the characters build each other up more than tear each other down, and he’s the only male lead she shared the screen with to not either steal the climax from her (Luke in TLJ) or “sabotage” the climax with inconsistencies and stupidity to get their own arc done (Ben in TROS).
Honestly, that shouldn’t be the case - either Finn should have been followed up on an kept as the male lead to exploit the good in his TFA story, or Kylo/ en should have received writing to maximize the potential f his premise, instead of coasting on the expectations of it. Finn’s advantage is his unique character concept and strongly sympathetic story allowing for new types of conflicts to be brought up - he goes from a nameless and faceless henchman to a “Big Deal” in the Resistance in TFA - while Kylo has the advantages of iconography as a Star Wars villain (they always get the best looks) and being a Skywalker grandkid - a narrative point that was already a proven success before the Disney buyout of LFL, and which he wound up having a monopoly on.
I say that part of TLJ and TROS’s problem is they both underestimate and dismiss the power of Finn’s character arc and relationship with Rey from TFA, and the potential he has in his concept.
Finn basically went through a highly dynamic arc in TFA that was also extremely functional for a male lead - his POV is easy to follow, his emotional stakes grow to match the audience’s emotional stakes, and his dramatic moments are a success throughout, while again he’s Rey’s best screen partner for her role as the main protagonist.
But then Finn got shuffled off into a meaningless side-plot in TLJ, paired up with a character who seems to have blatantly been made mostly to be a not-Rey love interest, while TLJ began trying to o rebuild Rey’s main relationship around Kylo... and quickly created a shallow and uneven dynamic. Rey cares far too much about Kylo considering what he did to her in TFA, while Kylo’s story never supplies an adequate reasoning for Rey’s increased interest, which is why their interactions are more parasitic than anything else - Kylo, a less rounded character than even Rey, absorbs and sucks away her attention and focus in the story and leaves her and the overall story weaker in his wake.
TROS then effectively continues this pattern, though clearly Abrams is aware fo the issues a tad bit more than Johnson... but also maybe helpless to stop them (see: LFL having him bring Palpatine back because Ben’s redemption was a greater priority to them than the central conflict of the ST, and likely pushing for Reylo.) Finn still gets a tertiary storyline that’s underdeveloped and undercooked, Rey still ends up too focused on Kylo/Ben, and Kylo/Ben remains more a collection of trivia facts than a person... but now we have Abrams submitting the Dyad as an excuse for Rey caring about Kylo (since it wouldn’t make sense without some) and briefly revealing “Force Schizophrenia” as the cause for Kylo’s darkness.
So basically, Finn ends up with two movies with forgettable and ancillary plotlines, while Kylo’s story slowly took center stage among the male actors, and arguabky at Rey’s expense as well as Finn’s... and yet, Finn’s one story in TFA was BETTER in all ways, and still outweighs Kylo’s in quality. And I think that’s one (of several) reasons why TFA was more successful, even if people aren’t impressed by Finn’s story, or find him too cheery and positive - Kylo/Ben is a weak male lead regardless, its just that his real lack of depth and dynamism is thrown into sharp relieve by Finn.