Why would what "people" say pertain to my argument? I don't say that.
That was just to illustrate why people talk about lack of characterization.
By your own admission then, this isn't character assassination, you just are curious to visually see rather than merely take the word of Luke that things have been going bad with Ben for a long time before he entered the hut.
Which while I am intensely curious about that, isn't something I actually need to see any more than I needed to see the prequels to take Obiwan's word that Vader was a Jedi Knight who fell into the dark side.
No, I am not 'just curious', if I gave you that impression, I'm sorry. What I am saying is that this character arc doesn't work because of the lack of work put into it. Any character arc would work. Grey Jedi Luke would work. Dark Side Luke would work. Lofty arbiter balance Luke would work. You would just have to put it in the movie. And it's not there.
This is the problem with the ST, they don't take time to build up anything, everything just happens because of lazy directing and writing. Everything is conveniently close to each other (you can see the 'parabolic laser' from starkiller from Takodana...), everyone knows everything, everyone achieves everything without effort; Poe is the best pilot, Ray knows how to fight, fly, fix, speak wookie and droid, shoot, mind trick and swim; Finn knows every starship and starbase plan by memory. There is no backstory to anything, no texture to anything, the last episode takes place literally in the void of space. Everything seems smaller, from the Resistance and FO to the entire Galaxy. A Republic of hundreds of thousands species is reduced to 4 planets. Instead of going in a new and exciting direction, each new episode resets the status quo (every character, save Poe, even goes through the same 'arc' they had in TFA) and it'll happen again with Ep IX, because they've written themselves into a corner, and the stakes have never been lower.
I can go on like this for a long while. And I am not bitching about being faithful to some canon or about technical plotholes (there's many, but they don't really bother me in these types of movies). I'm having issue with the plotting, the meandering story, the rehashed character stuff, the broken character arcs, implausible characterization (Luke, Hux) or weak characterization, lack of stakes, lack of real progression of the story (its a rethread, only Kylo is now the big boss), lack of thought put into the structure, resulting in a 4-act story in a 3-act movie and subversivness for subversiveness sake.
Everyone can like or dislike this movie however they please, but saying there are no problems with it is disingenuous.
I agree with some of this. Though I was fine with Canto Bight as it served purpose for other characters, I needed more than that tiny glimpse of what Luke saw.
What was life like for Ben Solo back then? Who are the Knights of Ren? A 10 minute scene, hell maybe 5 even was all I wanted from that.
I would have liked to know who the knights were or who Snoke was, but that is not essential. What is essential is learning about the Luke and Kylo dynamic and why the things are the way they are. In the movie Rey asks him why he hated his father and he says he didn't, but the past must die. Without explaining how he got to that point of thought makes him look like a lunatic; and he becomes a loony toon villain in the end.