His "serious" injury doesn't seem to have had any impact on anything he did during the fight. So no...I wouldn't call that a serious injury. The little blood that was dripping from it? Come one. I've had nose bleeds that bled more. If you wanna sell me that you are hurt, you gotta do more than this periodic thumping on the wound. You gotta sell it whenever you move anything that has to do with the area injured.
So that's on the actor and the director.
Second thing I wanna point out is Ren (unlike Vader) was putting everything in his swings. And Finn was blocking them. That's crap.
This is not "cat and mouse" Kylo Ren is putting far too much effort into his swings for this to look "cat and mouse" or for him to be "injured".
This is cat and mouse...Vader is using barely any effort here, and Luke goes flying.
So now what? Just any janitor can pick up a lightsaber and fight with it? You know what would happen if you, an untrained person picked up a lightsaber? You'd be more likley to clip yourself with it, cutting off one of your own appendeges. I mean it's the all mighty coveted light saber for christ sakes. Not just any old sanitation duty storm trooper should be able to pick one up and even look half decent. It's the signature weapon of the heros of this fucking series. So congrats, you demystified the light saber AND jedi training to boot.
Rey's fight was even more bull shit. Here we have our main evil guy, that costume designed a nice scary costume for, and effects designed a new fandangle scary looking light saber with a firey effect, and he get's his shit kicked in in the first film. That's not how this works. So what? They are gonna train him even MORE now? Maybe give him a robotic dick and I'm suddenly suppose to get excited as I watch him inevitably get his ass kicked again? This follows the logic as to how many times can you kill spock and then bring him back to life before the act itself loses all meaning? The answer is once. You can only get away with this shit once until the imagery is used up. So JJ just used up his card of the audience watching both Rey become victorious and finish her arc, and the bad guy getting his shit kicked in.
My bad, I was confused at what you meant by Sidious so I'll straighten out what I mean. Sidious was not the main bad guy in the first three, even though he ranked higher than Vader it was most certainly Vader that had more screen time and story that the audience was connected too and feared and was interested in. Sidious was some unknown dude in a chair. And he wasn't even in the first film.
In this movie, don't play off that the evil hologram, Snoke is the main evil guy. As the movie gave him zero screen time, zero presence and no back story. That's not how this works. Why the FUCK should the audience be invested in a character who's only in the film for less than 5 minutes and has very little dialogue? So once again we spend 2 hours getting to know a main villian, and instead of him getting cut in half and thrown down a shaft like Darth Maul, he turns out to be a big pussy.
So I don't even know if that's a win for the audience, but what I DO know is that the trilogy will have to spend yet ANOTHER 2 hours building up yet ANOTHER bad guy for us, the audience, to get to know and hate. And you can't do that in 5 minutes with a hologram...that's not great story telling. Luke is more the main protagonist, than Snoke is the main antagonist.
Now I'd just like to further reiterate that our main protagonist, Rey got HERSELF out of all danger and situations within this film. Giving the audience zero sense of danger or growth in character progression. Fly the Millennium falcon better than Solo? Sure! Give her five minutes. Learn the force? Sure. Give her 5 seconds. honestly where is the character arc here? She's the same chick at the end of the film that she was at the start. No person taught her anything, no guidance...she just said "force? give me a sec, let me close my eyes". So with this as the base of our main hero...a person who can get herself out of any jam, knows everything, and seems to learn everything else in minutes if not seconds...why the hell should anyone be concerned about her safety? Give her any problem and she will just close her eyes and create the solution.
That's just lazy writing getting your hero out of a jam by going against canon. Kinda like when Lucas put Obiwan and Quigon in a jam at the start of ep1 by giving them force super speed, and then completely abandoning that power for the rest of the films. I'm less curious about Rey's character so much as I am interesting in seeing how the writers try to paint themselves out of this corner without fucking up the canon further.