Ive tried to avoid the particulars of this rey/luke new/old sw debates due to the emotional nature of it and because im more happy talking about good female leads, but let me offer my perspective. As always, this is one mans view only, your results may vary.
My issue with ALL of the movies following rotj (which i wasn't a huge fan of anyway) is that lucas lost the thread of his own story. In short, you cant tell me a story, get me invested in the narative and then call me uncultured when YOU switch the narrative and i dont like it. YOU (lucas) changed the basics of the story. Dont hate me for liking what you originally wrote and not the crap you changed upto.
The sw saga started (as ive explained dozens of times on this jw forum) as a space adaptation of meiji era japan. The end of the era of the samurai. It was a fantastic martial arts epic. It was never “magic”. The force is 100% an adaptation of “ki” or “chi”. Lucas has over and over admitted the influance of akira and his love of Japanese film.
The original two stick closely to this thread and the theme of overthrowing an evil empire with the help of the last of the samurai.. sorry, jedi.
The second three were supposed to tell the story of how a great samurai, sorry jedi, fell from grace and helped overthrow the rightful government and became a despot. It failed. On all counts.
The new stories have no thread related back to the original at all. They want fans to remember the “magic” of the originals but pay no respect to the basic premise = samurai and martial arts.
Leia surviving space has NOTHING to do with space marial arts. Its was pandering to those of us that remembered her from the originals. Dont be mad that i understand her living in the vacuum of space and somehow using the force to pull her self back inside is TERRIBLE story writing.
Kylo is a TERRIBLE villian. His opening scene in tfa was fantastic. He almost immediately turned into a simpering piece of garbage. I want him to die, not because hes a villian, but because hes terribly written and not very well portrayed.
Rey sucks, not because she a woman, but because she sucks. Anikin sucked, not because the kid was a terrible actor or because christain hadenson was awful, but because they deviated from his established story and expected us to forget and be ok with it.
Stop blaming the victims (we the fans) for the crimes of the current movies.