I think a huge problem is that the characters do stupid things that realistically they wouldn’t do. Particularly in the Canto Bight arc.
“Yup, them’s the shuttle parkers.” Seriously? The heroes are on a top-secret covert mission where remaining under cover is absolutely critical, and the first thing they do is ignore the instructions of the casino valet and rush off, leaving a cloud of suspicion? Are these our heroes or incompetent bunglers?
“Did you find the codebreaker?” “We found a codebreaker!” Because they’re all interchangeable, and it doesn’t matter if the heroes specifically failed to get the one guy Maz Kanata told them to, right? It’s not like the survival of the Resistance depends on it or anything.
Obviously this ties into the humor issue. I’d say a major flaw in the film is how with Poe, Finn & Rose it frequently goes for humor over characterization, to the point of undermining the entire idea that these characters are military operatives on what they think is a vitally important secret mission.
It’s supposed to represent our characters thinking anything can go and we’ll save the day at the end with our last ditch plan. But I don’t get why’d they think that, it’s not as if the war just started and they’ve never lost or felt grief (Finn especially was never anti-war just the day before).
This leads to my big problem: putting theme above story.
I think RJ is interested in talking to us audience and using the characters from TFA for it. Rather than exploring their arcs. Rey goes from accepting her family isn’t coming back from wanting to no who her parents are, simply because the fans were all wanting to know. Finn goes from running away and only fighting to protect Rey to being overly pro-Resistance to the point someone teaches him not to die for the cause… because the fans would probably be pro-fighting, and RJ wants to challenge our expectations.
I will give credit to where it’s due: the Luke stuff is great. I just can’t stand how they handled the new cast.