For people doubting the studio meddling, of course there was. The studio threw out Trevorrow out of fear and brought in JJ because he made them money on the first film…ignoring the fact that he’s never been able to finish a story.
I said exactly that a couple posts up. JJ Abrams WAS the studio interference.
They almost certainly meddled in the script that JJ and Terrio made to make it more ‘safe’.
They almost certainly didn’t, and what little we do know from multiple sources re: the behind-the-scenes of this film’s making reinforces that. They gave Abrams and Terrio free reign to go for the big crowdpleasing ending and Abrams/Terrio botched it. I don’t think “interference” beyond Trevorrow’s firing was an issue at all (honestly, there wasn’t much time for Lucasfilm to do anything but simply accept whatever the hell Abrams & Terrio turned in), and there’s not really any reason to believe it was. Again - they don’t want excuses, so there’s no point to offering them up gratis.
It looks, sounds, and feels like a bad JJ Abrams movie. What’s in it for anyone to let him off the hook by trying to say it only ended up that way because the studio “interfered?” He wasn’t handicapped by upper management. They didn’t hamstring him. He made a jumbled, borderline unintelligible movie because that’s always a possibility with him. “They” didn’t make the cuts that rendered the film that way. Abrams and his editors did that themselves. All on their own. And they’re not the first creative team in movies to have done that, either.