You know what I think an issue with the flick is that's throwing people off?  There's no... empty space.  Which is REALLY weird for a shared universe movie.

Let me tell you what I mean:  This movie takes place right after the last movie ended.  Right after.  Kind of.  Mostly.  There's no adventures between then and now, no extra backstory, nothing for us to research.  There are no other adventures going on, no side stories we could explore in another flick.  No Resistance guys they need to meet.  At the end, there's nowhere else to go.  The auxiliary characters who might show up in another movie (Phasma, DJ, what have you?) ... all die.  All the original trilogy troika are gone now, the characters who could replace them die... and the "sequel hook" won't happen for a long time.  The kids?  Telling us we gotta wait 10+ years or so... which it feels like we just did.

Combine that with the feeling that TFA almost felt like a prequel, introing the characters, like a pilot episode.  I think we were expecting a big raucous Star Wars movie this time around, "okay, you know the world, let's have some fun" and it felt like we jumped from that to the deadly serious part.