I think that the fact that the original characters aren't just sitting around enjoying their Happily Ever After isn't problematic in the slightest.  The fact that that Happily Ever After eventually fell apart--that's how stories work.  I also don't buy that article saying that TFA regresses the character development of the original trilogy, and I also think it flippantly minimizes the trauma those characters went through between movies.  "My son turned to the dark side, murdered a bunch of (presumably) innocent people, and is currently the right hand and apprentice of a vile and evil monster" isn't exactly "things were rough at home".  To say that the Organa-Solos should have "made more of an effort to raise their son right" is also flippantly dismissive--for one thing, we don't know how they raised their son, and for another thing, positing that Han (a good man, but also a sarcastic rogue and criminal with a habit of bailing out when times are tough) and Leia (a hothead with serious daddy issues* whose entire world got literally blown up) would be perfect parents is pretty silly and unrealistic.  These are very human characters, with human flaws, and to assume that these flaws just... went away at the end fo ROTJ is dumb, and does a disservice to the characters.

So, you're a father with very little knowledge of The Force, and you're a mother who is in touch with--but isn't particularly skilled with--The Force, and you've got a son who is the grandson of an extremely powerful Sith who before that was a skilled but damaged Jedi.  A son who is just full of The Force.  The Force, whose existance is shrouded in mystery; basically anyone with any knowledge of how The Force works is dead**, with one major exception--the boy's uncle, the last Jedi Knight, the first of the new order.

"How does Luke not see this coming?" the article asks.  I don't know, maybe Luke--Luke, who has likely had no more than literal days of training***--maybe Luke is in over his head.  Maybe Luke has no idea what the fuck he's doing.  Maybe Luke is basically The Chosen One and, as such, really doesn't know how a "normal" Jedi would be developed.  And--again--I don't see that as character sabotage, I don't see that as undoing any of Luke's OT development, so much as expanding on it in a way that is both realistic and tragic.

And oh my gosh, this bullshit line about "hitting the reset button" regarding the struggle between the Rebellion and the Empire.  AGGGGGH this kind of crap makes me so frustrated.  So the second Death Star gets blown up, and the Emperor is dead, and a good chunk of the higher-ups in the Fleet went with him.... but... I mean.... the Empire is fucking huge.  It isn't called the Galactic Empire for nothing.  Killing the Emperor isn't going to stop it.  There's a reason there are dozens of books of varying degrees of quality that are set after ROTJ that mostly involve the New Republic duking it out with the remnants of the Empire.


*(I can be flippantly dismissive too, I know, I know)
**(There was going to be more here, but I reined in my opinions about the prequel-era Jedi a bit--suffice to say, they're wrong about The Force, and they're wrong about the Sith, and their blind to their wrongness, and their blindness gets 99% of them murdered and leaves the Republic in shambles.  Gosh, what an excellent example to follow in the future...)
***(So here's the thing:  Luke's with Obi Wan from Tatooine to Alderaan and gets some training en route.  And then he's on Dagobah with Yoda... for roughly the amount of time it takes Han and Leia to travel from Hoth to Bespin, which is [Hoth Asteroid Field Escape], [Time in the Worm's Belly], [Stuck to a Star Destroyer], and [Flying from the Asteroid Belt to Bespin].  Maybe slot in a night or two actually in Bespin, but that's a stretch.  Even allowing for Hyperspacial Time-Dilation Hijinks--which Empire gives no actual indication of and practically actively denies--that's.... really not a very long time.  And then he leaves.  And then he comes back and Yoda dies right there.  And that's the entirety of Luke's official Jedi training:  a few days with a couple of old dudes, one of whom spends most of their time together actively twisting the truth around to fit his own narrative.  Yeah, I'm sure Luke'll end up as a peerrrrfffffffect Jedi master now.  *sarcastic thumbs up*)

Finn still could wind up being Force-sensitive and a Jedi. He's clearly not as "ready" yet as Rey, but there's plenty of hints that he has some Force potential as well, and not just because he held his own for a while with a lightsaber (that scene with him and Rey finishing each others' thoughts, for example).

It alternated between being a shittier version of A New Hope and a shittier version of Legacy of the Force.  We see Starkiller base destroy... some planet that I initially thought was Coruscant, but apparently was a new one we've never seen or heard of before, and that none of the characters have any connection to.  So who cares?

Kylo Ren didn't impress me at all.   Nothing more or less than a drastically watered-down Darth Caedus.  With the wrong fucking name.  Ben Solo?  If J.J. Abrams wanted to include a miniscule nod to the books he was using as CribNotes, couldn't he do a two-second google search to get the name right?  

And even taking my butthurt EU fan whinging out of it, Kylo is still an incompetent weenie.  Not intimidating at all.  Which makes it all the worse when they have him kill... well, you know. 

I wasn't happy about that bit either, but whatever.  He's still alive and well in the Legends canon, whenever they decide to pick that back up.

And what was with John Williams in this movie?  I didn't really pick up on any major new themes, like Duel of the Fates, Across the Stars, or Battle of the Heroes.  The whole thing seemed kinda phoned-in.  Maybe I just need to grab the album and listen to the music by itself.

Han goes through an arc and becomes a heroic leader and becomes selfless.  But the war also ended, and Han moved onto his new role as a father.  I'm not sure he did such a bad job - it looks to me like Kylo has a natural affinity to the dark side and all the chaos related to that, and it is very hard for him.  He's a kid facing a tough situation, and neither parent can really relate to him, nor can has uncle.  With Kylo Ren going bad I can see how that would tear a marriage apart... and then what's Han supposed to do?  No empire, no rebel alliance, no kid, no wife.  What's left?  Smuggling.

As for Luke, he struggled with the darkside but only in the traditional sense.  It was about anger and coping with pain and temptation.  Kylo Ren seems to be more swept up in it on a natural level, similar to Rey's affinity to find calm and interact with the lightside easily, and he doesn't really like it but it's who he is.  Part of him wants out, but he's not really attuned to the light... he just likes the idea of it.

I also don't buy the idea that Luke was a shitty mentor because he wasn't properly trained as a Jedi.  Obiwan was and that only got him a 50-50 success rate as a Master. 

Also, the Jedi Order was really fucked up.  It was.  Children are taken from their parents and not allowed to talk to them anymore.  That's bad.  They are trained to use lightsabers from a young age (aka child soldiering).  That's bad.  They have to follow an ultra-conservative doctrine that even forbids their own breeding.  That's bad.   All that shit is cannon and it's not cool, and I don't think Luke would be a better teacher if he were more immersed in that.  Everyone is giving Luke a hard time as a teacher because he had a failed student (which seems to happen a lot in Star Wars... that Dooku guy seemed bad but everyone thinks Yoda's a great teacher), all while we ignore the influence of Snoke.  Kylo learned from him... we don't know much, but we know it was significant.

It's kind of the point that he is this baby-faced weenie with his helmet off.  When he's got the helmet on he's this intimidating guy who's a badass and evokes imagery of Darth Vader.  When he takes it off you realize he's this kid who is maybe in over his head, tormented and lonely, and alienated from his family.  He's not scary at all... he's pitiful.  And he knows it.  So he wears his mask to hide it.

I thought it was refreshing how he was compensating for his insecurity, and a few people around him know it.  Him and Hux seem to have a mutual "I know you're a wuss under that facade" thing that goes both ways.

and that's why I really love the potential of his character's arc.

I really didn't like anything involving the Starkiller Base and think the film would have been much stronger had it been cut. I'm still not exactly sure what was supposed to be happening in that 'blowing up the Republic' scene. I guess not-Coruscant was the Republic capital and those random people we saw for two seconds were its leaders? And it was in the same solar system as the planet the heroes were hanging out on at the time?

The final sequence would've worked just fine as a rescue mission without throwing in the Trench run 2.0 that barely even got any screentime. Would have saved us from that embarrasing "It's like the Death Star but ten times bigger!" briefing scene, too.

Not sure if it was the capital world or not, but the senate was apparently convened there, and is now no more.  An echo of Palpatine disposing of the senate off-screen in ANH.

The fraction of the star map everyone was after. Did they not say at the Rebel base, that the stars did not match any known systems? We both thought that was what was said. However at the end R2-D2 starts back up and provides the rest of the map, the star map is actually just a star map. Did no one actually put forth the effort to study the star charts?!

I thought that the stars on the map were going to be indicative of some other form of landmark or something a force-sensitive would be able to see.