Throwing it out there as an interesting discussion starter
"If you where given the Force Awakens plot from JJ, and had free reign, given his plot lines in TFA, where would you have gone with it"
I've typed the above without pondering it myself, so will edit with my views later
I would have followed up on the questions and plot points left open in TFA. I would not have ****** away Snoke, Rey's parents, or Kylo's obsession/connection with his grandfather Vader. I would have made Kylo more menacing, not as petulant as in TFA. I would not have ****** away Luke's character. I would not have bothered with Rose, and I would have used John Boyega for something with a point. In short, I would have continued the story, instead of just throwing it away and taking a left turn on the plot just because I could. It was totally disrespectful to Kasdan and Abrams to throw it all away.
There was some interesting discussion around the poorly received Thunderbirds film a few years back. The consensus was that Frakes had fundamentally misunderstood the source material, and had failed to give the fans what they wanted. The audience wanted to see International Rescue actually rescue people. Big rescues, lots of mad Thunderbird machines doing their thing, and the Tracey family running it all. Turning it into a poor spy kids film where we never saw any of the machinery completely missed the point.
I feel the same about TLJ. Johnson has fundamentally misunderstood the source material and what the audience wants to see. He's so eager to leave his own mark on everything, to apply his own SJW agendas, that he's lost sight of the story already started in TFA (or doesn't care). He let his own ego get in the way of continuing to tell the story already started, and Johnson was enabled by Kathleen Kennedy who seems to have her own feminist agenda that she's willing to crash into the Star Wars franchise, whether it fits or not. Johnson should never have been allowed to make up his own script, the Kasdan script should have been followed.