The problem with the many divisive or straight up disappointing franchise films today: not the fodder for nit-pickery like Emo-Ren, or the dark tone of DC movies. The problem is that, at their core, they wear the uniform of the mythological and legendary while simultaneously despising them as childish fantasy.Rian Johnson's own summation of The Last Jedi: The legendary figures of your childhood are not what you thought they were.
Similarly cursed characters/franchises:
Nolan's Dark Knight Rises, Snyder's Superman
Wonder Woman's commercial and critical success has nothing to do with the "tone" (it's actually got a pretty dark pallet). The secret in Wonder Woman is really that she's actually heroic.
Tolkien and Lewis on the nature and origin of mythology
Lewis' dedication in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Tolkien's essay: On Fairy Stories
What is lost:
Good and evil are no longer clear categories. True, in reality it is sometimes hard to discern between right and wrong. That's not what The Last Jedi presses. It works to obscure good and evil as clear cut categories.
DJ vs. Finn is obvious example in an attempt to draw some moral equivalency between the First Order and the Resistance because they buy their guns from the same arms dealers. But, as Alistair Stevens points out on his terrific podcast, Story and Star Wars, trying to say the rag-tag resistance is the moral equivalent of a military force that establishes order by destroying entire galaxies is just plain stupid.
Age and maturity as something to look forward to. The Last Jedi ultimately lacks an imagination for what a mature Luke Skywalker might be like. In order to make him "interesting" he's essentially transformed into a gray-haired millennial. To put it another way: he's got a bad case of the arrested developments.
An expectation for the supernatural. The practical implications are that our hope for true supernatural rescue, guidance, and glory are undermined. (See stats about how many evangelicals believe in the bodily resurrection).
