I'm not actually against this decision at all, I kind of liked the idea that he wasn't ready to live up to his potential. A hero in a trilogy needs their journey from farm boy to knight, and I was really ready for focus on the villain actually growing in ability. It would be hard not to like an antagonist with well written drive that we needed to see on screen, and we nearly got this too.

I didn't particularly like the force awakens in cinema but that's mostly because it didn't do anything new, except have a villain who both started as a villain and had a lot of potential to grow without redemption, which would have actually been kinda new for starwars where basically every character arc with growth is a good character corrupted or a bad one redeemed.