Disney is doing a Terrible job with the Marvel License.

[Danbo Jambo]

Did you ever think that the explanation of how things went to shit might pop up in the other two thirds of the story? You're judging the new trilogy by what is pretty much act one.
That would be like saying watching the first twenty to thirty minutes of The Avengers and complaining that they didn't fight enough people, or properly explain what the Tesseract was.

Possibly and I hope so. I really hope the second film managers to explain some of it, because as it is the whole thing just feels off-centre and way more of a rehash than a continuation.

I mean TFA was a joke of a rehash IMO, but the next 2 films could still be good if they give more backstory to what happened post ROTJ, and don't just try and copy a God-awful predictable father-son-daughter reveal/setup.

Did you ever think that the explanation of how things went to shit might pop up in the other two thirds of the story? You're judging the new trilogy by what is pretty much act one.
That would be like saying watching the first twenty to thirty minutes of The Avengers and complaining that they didn't fight enough people, or properly explain what the Tesseract was.

I'm judging though because after 30 years or so of waiting for what happens next, you'd expect to be told, not to assume all that whilst another story is told.

it was immensely jarring to go so quickly from a state of joy in ROTJ to being right back to square 1 straight from the off. And it didn't feel like some huge, clever, thought through plot. It just felt as if they lazily rehashed the other films and didn't really care about the plot itself.

"How the fuck is Leia leading a "resistance", when there's the end of the last movie left the rebellion as the prime power in the galaxy?"

Uh...did it?

Now I don't really like Star Wars and I have no emotional attachment to the movies but didn't it just end with them blowing up the second Death Star and killing the Emperor?
The Empire still had a council of chancellors and and army and...you know, an EMPIRE. Destroying a super-weapon and killing a head of state doesn't destroy an empire. If ISIS destroys a stealth bomber and assassinated Donald Trump tomorrow America wouldn't fall apart and cease to exist and make ISIS the defacto ruler.

We're not working on Civilization rules.

I think the celebrations at the end of ROTJ, especially the enhanced editions, make it clear that the Empire was fairly thrawrted all round.

But you make a good point, so let's for the sake of arguement you're right. Even then there's still loads that has happened and leaving the end of the last film feeling so positive, to the start of the new film back to a negative again was just jarring. There needed to be some more substance given to what had happened, not leaving us all to wait for another movie for that possibly to have happened.

Essentially TFA said "this is how things are now, little reason given why, accept it". That's just bad storytelling, and a very unsatisfying way to start things off for me.