It tried something interesting in terms of its narrative and thematic subjects, at least compared to TFA, but it ultimately fell flat as a movie and retained many of the flaws that TFA had, for whatever reason. It ultimately comes down to the writing and the way in which the trilogy was conceived (or rather, was not properly conceived). I have a feeling that there was no true creative vision for these movies, and therefore the trilogy feels disjointed and directionless, and the characters feel more lifeless than even the poorly-acted original characters, because these new ones were ultimately ill-conceived and there are almost no meaningful interactions or story beats to inform the audience about who they are as people, where they come from, what they care about, what motivates them, etc.
Really the stupid plot holes and inaccuracies are dumb, but the real death knell for a space opera is when the characters are flat and lifeless imo, because then you have no reason to care about the narrative.