Han in ANH is a blowhard smuggler who doesn’t display any extraordinary skills or competence beyond some impressive cajones.
It’s ESB, his second appearance, that actually establishes him to be a skilled pilot, exceptionally clever and cunning criminal, and charming rogue.
And Johnson actually was going to have Finn appear awake in the next film in his earliest drafts, as a co-gunner with Paige, so clearly the problem in Johnson’ mind wasn’t anything logistical, but apathy, since he explicitly just didn’t want to write the fall-out between Finn and Rose.
It also doesn’t help Johnson that someone like Greg Rucka had looked at TFA and felt like he could easily extrapolate “Finn is an officer candidate” but Johnson was like “Black man is Janitor! Hahahahaha!”
The fact Johnson also looked at a school shooter Neo-Nazi who tried to mind rape Rey and said “Ain’t he pretty, though?” just follows on the fact it was a failure of perspective and imagination on his part.
LFL is Lucasfilm. And if we’re talking hypotheticals of someone not reading the previous films’s script, the dude who thought Rey would fall for Kylo is a lot bigger suspect than the dude who had to recover from TLJ shitting on his movie.
Reylo is trash that didn’t help Rey at all. Fewer women actually came to TROS premier than had for TFA and TLJ, because Reylo, as Johnson introduced it, doesn’t actually help her at all. It’s a pathetic, shallow bit of niche writing that just was never going to have the appeal of treating Rey as an actual h8man being and main character, instead of being a prize for Kylo to lip-wobble out and “win” somehow. Not that it had to be, mind you; more that LFL simply didn’t care about anything but Kylo Ren.
And I’m not denying the hypothesis that Reylo probably got a bigger number of female fans than male fans. But it’s a sad, pathetic argument to try saying it was some asset that made her more successful than before: TFA made $700 Million more when she was platonically paired with Finn and portrayed as having a spine and humanity, and what appeal Reylo had follows the same limited appeal that, say, makes the 50 Shades character less popular than Bell Swan less popular than Katniss Everdeen less popular than Captain Marvel.
Rey was more popular and successful before Reylo because Reylo was a liability to her.
What hurts Rey more?
1. Being a powerful action heroine, like Captain Marvel or Wonder Woman?
2. Being an unfunny, inexplicable, and spineless version of Harley Quinn to Kylo’s Emo-Joker?
(Hint: it’s #2)
TROS *is* better for Finn than TLJ, though yeah, I do think that someone at LFL interfered in his story for the sake of Kylo. Kennedy would be a “suspect” for that, but I don’t think she’s alone in her biases, and I think it’s more likely someone thought they were operating for her interests in ordering his story be chopped up in editing. She likely was directly behind the impetus to replace Kylo as the main villain with anyone not named Kylo, and thus Palpatine, but I tend to think she wants to be far away from the final product if she can help it.
The Solo issues are funky.
1. Kasdan agreed to help with TFA if they would produce his Han Solo script, and apparently he even pushed for Lord and Miller.
2. Kasdan then wound up becoming the one who demanded Lord and Miller leave the production after finding out how much free styling they did on his script.
3. Kennedy thus had a much bigger reshoot issue than she did with Rogue One, as more of the film had been made in a “useless” manner, while with RO, they could still use the general framework and many scenes form Edwards production, and had more flexibility in the script.