Thanks for asking.
My fondness grew for TFA after several sincere efforts. Ironically, the faults I initially found with TFA play a large component in why I like TLJ sofa king much.
Namely two things. Number one there was no explanation for what was happening onscreen, and number two its narrative didn't fall into a cause-and-effect structure the way I would have liked -- thus, overall I got the sense that TFA's events occur arbitrarily. Notably, Poe vanishing after crash-landing on Jakku with Finn only to re-appear later with little dramatic purpose, other than to remind us of the Rebellion and that he flies a cool plane.
The missing motivations for characters and even events were deftly explained to me in TLJ, so while I found these elements consternating in TFA for their lack of narrative logic, TLJ filled in the missing spaces better than I could have expected. Further, their actions were commensurate with both their characters and their current positions within the narrative, which is to say: the characters are written well and they do things that make sense at THAT point in the sequence. I always knew where we were headed in TLJ, and its genius was expertly setting me up to know this and further to surprise me with a gentle swerve* when we reached destination (*referred to as The Gap). This process is what inherently creates a vivid story: priming expectation and executing a reasonable surprise to that expectation . TFA built no expectations, thus we gleaned no real direction -- so we had to remember, oh yeah, everything that's happening is supposed to get us to Luke. But because Luke is minimally used in TFA, his pay-offs are all hair-thin.
In TLJ the payoffs are big time, but more importantly they are adroitly primed to do so.
I am honestly baffled you can say these criticisms about TFA and not TLJ.
There was no explanation to what was happening on screen in TFA!?! What was confusing? Whose motives were not explained?
*Leia, Poe, and the resistance wanted to find Luke to help them against Snoke.
*Finn wanted to escape the life of being a stormtrooper, had a thing for Rey, and was trying to find himself
*Rey wants to find her parents, but realizes she has a power, and a destiny that lies beyond life in a desert
*Han wanted to save his son
*The First Order wanted to take over the galaxy
*Snoke wanted to kill Luke to completely wipe out the Jedi order
*Ren wants to kill Luke for revenge and to please his master, and to live up to the grandfather he idolizes
How was any of this confusing, or not explained? How is any of this arbitrary?
How did TLJ write BETTER motivations for the characters?
*What does Ren want in TLJ?
*Why, and how does Rey go from trying to kill Ren in the first to trying to save him in TLJ?
*The rebels and first order are just playing a very simple, and stupid cat and mouse game
*Why is Luke, hero of lore, willing to give up on his family and the galaxy when he has the power to save them?
Lol how did TFA build no expectations?
*You had Ren still alive at the end..so can he redeem himself and become stronger? Will he ever live up to the Vader name?
*Who is Rey, and how is she that strong, that fast?
*Who is Snoke and how bad ass is he?
*With the Republic destroyed, what does it mean for the galaxy?
*What will Finn, a former Stormtrooper, what will his role be going forward as a rebel? Will he shed more light on the life and patterns of stormtroopers?
*Why did that yellow alien lady have Luke's saber?
*What the hell has Luke been doing on this secret Jedi island? What will be his role in the rebellion?
*How will Leia and the resistance fight the first order? Will the galaxy rally since those planets were destroyed?
*How much more about the Force, jedi, sith, etc are we going to learn?
WHAT DO YOU POSSIBLY MEAN THAT TFA LEFT NO EXPECTATIONS! ?!? There were innumerable directions that TLJ could have went thanks to the way TFA ended
AND what did TLJ leave us with?
What are we supposed to look forward to in the last movie of this series?
At the end of TLJ, Snoke is dead, Luke is dead, Leia can't be alive (or at least can't be part of the movie ), Phasma is dead, Hux is Ren's bitch, the knights of Ren are dead, there is no Jedi left to teach Rey of the Force, Kylo--the guy that Rey already defeated is the only bad guy left, Who the fuck cares about Rose?, the galaxy never came to the rebels aid, Finn could have had an interesting story arc about the stormtroopers--and now he will be boyfriend of Rose.
What am i missing here?
As i said in my previous post, i don't see how you can watch TFA, then watch TLJ, and say that TLJ makes sense. TLJ straight up contradicts, or flat out ignores plot points made in TFA. The 2 movies make little sense when you place them side by side
