I still think it’s more than fair to say many opinions on TFA soured over time

Ok, but that’s not really what’s being argued. Opinions didn’t really sour that much between 2015 and 2017, and certainly not to the point where mass outbreaks of “pent up rage” affected the box-office of TLJ to a measurable degree. Even to the extent that some opinions on the film did sour in the two years (more like 1 1/2 considering its popularity) it certainly didn’t sour to the point where anyone could claim its “tolerated” popularity was only kept afloat due to the power of hope that sequels would “fix” it.

This suggested POV seems to be reflecting a small and extremely online subsect of the film’s (exponentially) larger audience.

Also: earlier in the thread, someone suggested Arndt’s character work is what contributed to TFA’s success, but I don’t believe anything about Arndt’s script save for the general structure survived the process. IIRC, the whole reason Kasdan was there was to effectively page-one rewrite everything with Abrams.