Watched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi back-to-back tonight, with just The Rise of Skywalker left to get through and honestly my thoughts are still, after all this time, the parts that I thought were good, I thought were really good.
The parts that I thought were bad, were really really really bad.
Finn in TLJ being mischaracterized as a coward wanting to run away from the Resistance with absolutely none of the motivation he had for wanting to run away from the First Order [and also the Resistance for a brief moment] in TFA.
Playing Finn and Rose's meeting as pretty much a comedy adventure. You see, it's (supposed to be?) funny because Rose is a petite girl who just tazed Finn, a big strong man. Or something. I don't know, I saw what happened, I just don't get the punchline.
Poe being mischaracterized as an aggressive meathead with no understanding of battle plan beyond "jump in an X-wing and blow something up"
Rose written as expressing more empathy and desire to liberate the alien...horses? greyhounds? from the cruelty of the casino racetrack than she did with the child stablehands. Which, I mean...Yes, okay, there's some reflection here that animals in the real world do not get to choose what happens to them. But neither do young children. And Finn had no real reaction to them either?
FINN SHOULD HAVE BEEN OUR OTHER JEDI IN TRAINING ALONGSIDE REY ARRGHHHH
I can't express how much I DON'T want to see Kylo Ren shirtless while he attempts to strengthen his Force Bond with Rey. Let me see Finn and Rey establish a Force Bond instead and I will be much happier for it.
This one is so trivial compared to all the rest of the things I'm criticizing, but the excessive amount of artificial lens flare in Rian Johnson's TLJ after JJ Abrams SPECIFICALLY did not use it almost at all in TFA because he caught shit for over-using it in the Star Trek reboot was quite distracting. I caught myself calling out "lens flare!" during so many TLJ scenes.