The Last Jedi is good in concept, but horrible in execution. “Wokeness” did have it’s role to play, primarily with Holdo. The issue being, not so much that she is a woman, but this weird “Never question authority” thing they went for when the protagonists are a literal rebellion.
“Wokeness” I don’t think is the mere existence of minority groups in a story (At least, not for most people). Rather, it is the presence of a lecturing narrative. Holdo, intentionally or not, felt like a lecture to the audience. And I think this is demonstrated in Star Wars pretty well, the audience backlash of Holdo standing out from a franchise with several Women in command or assertive positions. Padme Amidala, Jyn Erso, literally any female Jedi.
But frankly, Holdo wasn’t the only issue TLJ had. It was an attempt at a deconstructionist take but they really just didn’t put the work in. For a Deconstructionist story to work… especially with something already so established and beloved, the dismantled tropes need to be replaced with some kind of deeper meaning. When in The Last Jedi, those tropes were simply dismantled and replaced with nothing.
And that is really my biggest issue with the Sequel trilogy as a whole. The work simply wasn’t put into it. All the attention went into special effects and visuals, and marvel-esq quirky dialogue that is, at this point, over-done to the point of being stale and insincere. A low-brow form of dialogue. Like the Gallagher of dialogue.
The Force Awakens was just one big fan-film, full of references with familiar characters and a familiar plot. I didn’t mind it for the first film as it felt much like a love-letter of fan service to the audience by a new story teller.
Then came the Last Jedi, a story too ambitious to half-Posterior, and yet was so flippantly executed.
Only for The Rise of Skywalker to be a complete 180 damage control movie, completely abandoning everything the previous two film had established and instead relied on a “In case of emergency, break glass” strategy with “Somehow, Palpatine has returned” , which, in my view, is the most heinous thing the Sequel trilogy could have done.
Of the three, The Last Jedi is the best, in my opinion. Only because I can respect the ambition of what it was trying to do… Even if it was a complete failure. Embarrassing for such a large studio and such a large franchise.