I like TFA for the most part, especially before knowing how #8/9 would go. But now knowing how everything panned out makes the whole thing a disaster.
TLJ screwed it all up. If the Luke story/payoff was actually executed properly, it would have turned around the entire trilogy.
We waited all of TFA for Luke then TLJ takes a dump all over it. That's my main gripe. Another main issue with TFA was Han dying. I'm more forgiving here if it was contract related and Ford didn't want to do more than 1 movie... BUT, if he was actually willing to be in more, then it really aggravates me. Killing off the Original 3 seemed so forced & very lazy writing. At least Marvel found ways to "retire" characters without needing to kill them all. At the time of TFA I didn't know Luke & Leia were also on the chopping block, so just killing Han did seem acceptable at the time.
I thought ROS was a fun movie but obviously was screwed over by TLJ hardcore and JJ did what he could to salvage the mess. For what he had to work with, I'm actually impressed with what he did. The entire movie would have been different if not for TLJ.
In conclusion, TFA was a good start to rebooting the franchise, but then 8/9 should have been entirely different movies.