I feel like the ST collectively (so far) feels jarring. TLJ is extremely well written and put together, and successfully executed its apparent goal of subverting what came before (including, no, especially) TFA. However, it does feel like a smartass taking a turn at telling the story (y’know, when people tell a story one sentence at a time).
I feel disappointed that I didn’t get the legendary Luke, and the movie actively wants me to feel that way, so I can’t fault it for that. I was someone who, when they announced they’d be doing 7, 8, and 9, ventured into the post-ROTJ EU to take in the broad strokes of the continuing adventures of the legendary Luke Skywalker. (This trailed off when they announced the EU was no longer canon at all, not that I was expecting them to be beholden to it. I figured they’d probably ignore the EU and contradict whatever they happen to contradict, leaving the EU to deal with it.) Luke is a different character here and the film deliberately thwarts everything that I went into this moving looking forward to. And… it did so in a series of 9 movies with only one left.
If your small town has an apple pie baking contest, and someone submits the best peach cobbler in the world… what do you do? I don’t know, this movie more than any previous one is hard to swallow, by design, which is good and bad which is good. I’ll have to chime in later after a week or more once I can sit with this.
Luke’s plot line is literally about how he was hyped up to be the Luke of legend and TFA and yet isn’t. Both Rey and Luke acknowledge this, but then Rey says they need a legend, to ignite that spark of hope.
So at the end, when Luke shows up on Crait, he’s not the Luke that failed that we saw on Ahch-to, he is the Luke of legend (with the sword of legend), and his standing up to the whole of the First Order and Kylo Ren and emerging without a scratch is what inspires hope of rebellion the galaxy over, as we see in the final scene.