Rant time.
1- The prequels showed us a mass of Jedi Masters. Masters.
They were in power, had incredible numbers and a home base on the most populous (popular?) planet in the core. Anyone force sensitive was brought here and trained immediately. As a result, no doubt the lightsaber fights *should* be more fantastic. Vader was a 1/2 robot and Luke didn't know what he was doing, so big, aggressive swings makes sense...but it would have been boring to watch that when the movies came out. Flippin' and jumpin' and twirling was exciting. Looked operatic almost, just really graceful.
TLJ showed none of this imho. Telling me that Kylo and Ren are the light/dark side superpowers...ok? HOW. I personally didn't see them do anything i've never seen before aside from TFA when Kylo stopped the laser blast. That..that was badass. I've seen jumping and pushing and lightning, and i guess i wanted more. It feels like they are trying to set them up as crazy strong but i don't feel like they deliver in any way. Yeah they fought the Praetorian Guard and that was cool and all
2- R1, while a stand alone, had much more gravitas to the plot, and introduced the audience to expendable rebel characters. Things are more serious if you think that anyone could die so there was real tension. After watching SW for years I expect pilots to die, and heroes to live. I felt none of this with TLJ. No one was in danger, everyone lived and killed all the bad guys with no harm. Super cannon killed no one, and the AT-AT's didn't shoot Finn or Rose. Meh.
Also, neither Kylo or Rey used any kind of force powers during their big fight. People might argue that Rey was untrained. Ok, so she's excused. What about Kylo? He's been trained, not only by Luke but by Snoke as well. After seeing Vader in R1 I was really excepting much more badassery from Disney. Crush, lift, push...anything really would have been beautiful to see. Lemme see steroid version of what i've seen. Please.
Lastly, since the Supreme Leader had just been killed...send the rest of the guards as fodder. Let the good times roll.
3- *Sigh* Ok I won't mention the casino scene again for numerous reasons, all of which have already been mentioned here already so I won't bother repeating it. Let's go to Hux and Phasma.
In TFA, Hux was a young, crazy space nazi. And I ate it up.
He had passion, exerted confidence and stature..I could believe that he was in charge. Despite that Imperial officers have traditionally been older, English actors, he had charisma. He never personally failed, he simply issued orders. So..he was a prodigy? The son of Tarkin maybe? Hopefully i'll find out the mystery of this dude.
TLJ? Who the F$CK is this guy?! I admittedly laughed the first time i saw it, mainly because of how ridiculous the entire scene was. This guy is in charge of the First Order? Why? Someone has to point out to him that Poe is f*cking with him? Only the Dreadnaught captain (? commander maybe?) had the slightest clue of what was going on. So why is Hux in charge? We know nothing about him at all, hence I can't relate to him at all. Every other senior Imperial officer in the movies die quite quickly so we don't need to know much about them. Shows up, screws up, and gets force choked dead. Simple. So Hux feels like a hollow villain because he's done nothing but scream at the camera and fail at...everything. I think a corporal could do a better job.
*Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton and Stannis Baratheon would have made *excellent* officers, and Disney really dropped the ball in my opinion but not casting them. You think rebel scum would have survived for longer than 20 minutes if any of these guys had a Star Destroyer and a battalion of Tie Fighters?
Phasma. Hoooboy.
I wanted to like Phasma, I really did. Brienne was playing her, and I thought for sure that we were into some bad ass shit. She's the commander, right? Chrome armor and all. She looks formidable.
While her role in TFA was minimal, and I feel her character was done a huge disservice at the expense of making a trash compactor joke. All she did was tell her troopers to shoot, and get captured, spill all the beans and get tossed.
TLJ. Man, I was waiting for this. Phasma was going to lead a bunch of death troopers into battle, killing a shitload of rebels single-handedly, proving that she was an OG killer that liked to stomp rebels. Akimbo blasters, her personal bodyguard tearing shit up. Show me her leading troops into some crazy shit and prove what a great leader of her men she is. Or...they picked the tallest trooper to be the boss. What a complete and utter waste. If they bring her back it will be a complete sham to an already lackluster villain.
In the end I felt like Disney didn't have a strong direction in the films. It feels very "shoot from the hip" and that doesn't lend well to a legendary series such as this.