There's a lot I'd like to pick out from what you wrote but I'll start here. Does there have to be a greater message to Luke's story? Yes. Yes, yes yes. It's supposed to be the 8th movie in a series, not a standalone film (which is how it felt to me). It' conveniently forgets that Luke has ALREADY had those themes of temptation explored - and passed. It basically nullifies the entire Star Wars trilogy by virtue of its existence canonically, and completely misunderstands the character to begin with. It needed a Deus Ex Machina to make any sense (what the feck even was that sacrifice at the end? At no point was that 'plan' ever explained, it relied on -Rey- lifting a bunch of rocks, and becoming the demigod character every sequel fan was so happy Luke was not).
I won't go in to the Canto Blight sequence and the heavily implied racism that involved downplaying Finns role so they could sell it to the Chinese, along with his size being shortened on the Chinese poster.
The movie was an absolute mess. It was Spaceballs 2 not Star Wars 8. It was a beautifully polished turd. I'm not surprised George Lucas was offended by the existence of the film. The Phantom Menace was twice as good.
The universe that Star Wars presents is a fairy tale. It's shown that "good" and "evil" are real, tangible things. I don't think Rian understands what a Fairy Tale is, and it's a shame because he is a clever director (if a bit campy with his writing). If he'd really had some balls though, he would have had Rey turn to the dark side.
No, the actual reason Disney wanted the past to die is to sell more toys. Because it's clear that George Lucas still maintains a percentage of the merchandise, so they don't WANT kids buying their Lukes, their Leia's and their Chewy's. So the past HAD to die.
I mean, fair enough. You seem to be bringing up this "It's Spaceballs 2" line quite a lot, so I guess you made your mind up about the movie a while ago, and that's fine. I love Star Wars a lot as a saga but, like, it's a piece of entertainment that's created without any of my input, so I don't really see it as anything more than something to enjoy. I love it but I don't take anything personally. It's why Luke's role in The Last Jedi was just a nice little change for me - it was just a hypothetical scenario that they ran with and created some interesting scenes out of. It didn't need to have real-world implications and it didn't really need to represent anything greater, it was just a particular path they went down with the story and that was that.
Just for the record, I was kinda disappointed by The Last Jedi on a first watch. I thought it was pretty good but I didn't enjoy it as much as some movies in the saga. But then I watched it again about 6 months after release and everything clicked a lot better for me. Bits and pieces of it are pretty clumsy and the stuff with Luke & Rey is miles stronger than the scenes on Canto Bight, for instance, but as an experience, as a story, and as a journey to another universe, it was immersive, fun, and it even had a bit of an internal discussion about its place in the world as the penultimate instalment of a massive saga. Imperfect and rough around the edges, sure, but I think that describes basically every Star Wars movie.
As you said yourself, they're fairytales set in space that are geared towards families, so they're gonna be these big, dumb, lore-heavy, lumbering things that aim to please as many people as possible and sell merchandise. It's no different to the MCU, Harry Potter, the Middle Earth movies, the Fast & Furious movies, etc. If you judge fictional stories by their
logical inconsistencies and
plot holes then you're never really going to enjoy yourself. That's not really criticism or critique, it's just going over a script with a red pen. You could break any story in half by picking at it. "
Why did the super powerful Empire leave a vulnerable hole in the Death Star? And why is the hole not mentioned until the third act of the movie? Erm, deus ex machina! Erm, plot hole!" You see what I mean? It's joyless.
Just sticking with your argument that they only wanted the past to die so they could sell new toys - this is literally what Star Wars has always been. Boba Fett was literally only put into Empire Strikes Back to sell action figures - he turns up on screen for all of 30 seconds and his only memorable line of dialogue is to scream as he's thrown into a monster pit in the next movie. Star Wars has always been about selling action figures. If you think Disney are the first people to turn Star Wars into a product then where the feck have you been? And to look at another major franchise, Captain America grabbing Thor's hammer in Endgame has already been turned into a Funko Pop and a dozen other action figures, so I guess the writers only did that to sell toys too?
Everything is a product. Everything is part of a machine. This isn't a new thing that only Disney have done.