From the article "The plot picks up where director J.J. Abrams left off in 2015's The Force Awakens." But then what happens is they essentially went 'oh, all those interesting questions about Rey, Snoke, Luke, etc, nah, burn it all to the ground. We don't care about anything previously done.'
I have to agree with Mark Hamill's original opinion on Luke in this movie, where he essentially told the director he hated everything he did with the character. The movie could be somewhat fixed with a 5% rewrite, made much better with 25%, or even better with 75% rewrite.