i think it's less that disney didn't know about story cohesion, and more about having a deadline. the last jedi isn't necessarily a bad film if you view it in a vacuum. it's just that it takes whatever story path that force awakens laid out and took a sharp left with it. the story it was trying to tell isn't even necessarily the wrong message, especially for the middle part of a trilogy. the whole point of the story is that "things are not as they seem."
there was a really interesting deleted scene on ach-to where rey and luke are training and the village down the hill starts making a bunch of noise and chaos. there's smoke, a bunch of yelling and rey is all panicked, like "something's wrong! i need to save them!" and luke just stands there, completely uncaring. like he's totally grumpy old man who can't be bothered to lift a finger.
so rey runs down, bursts into one of the buildings, lightsaber drawn... turns out they're having some anniversary party. no one's in trouble, there's no danger, and rey just basically ruined it by breaking down their door. then you see luke standing there laughing at her and calling her out for trying to be the galaxy's savior when no one needed, or asked her to. just because it LOOKED like there was a problem, doesn't mean there is. and rey trying to fix what isn't broken, actually created a problem that wasn't there before.
there was some interesting ideas in the film and i definitely thing they deserve to be explored... the idea that both the first order AND the republic are making money off war and that's what created places like canto bight. you can have jedi and sith fighting each other all day long, but no matter who wins, it's not going to change anything because people don't care about that. they still just want to make money and will do whatever it takes.
that being said, i think the story that the force awakens and rise of skywalker was trying to tell was fundamentally a different story than the last jedi and that's what didn't work. on paper, rian saying that he wanted to muddy the waters and stop the hero worship probably fit initially with the main story, but once things got rolling it just turned into a completely separate beast. but at that point, what kind of PR nightmare would happen if they delayed the movie another year? i mean that's what happened with solo and look how that turned out, now imagine that same response for the main trilogy. the execs want that movie out to tie in with merchandising, so just make the film and release it.
ALL THAT BEING SAID...
disney has some weird hard-on for using different directors for the same project and i think that's causing more harm than good. if rian johnson got a whole trilogy i think we'd have a different opinion (might not be a GOOD opinion, but just different) and if JJ was given the middle movie as well, rise of skywalker wouldn't have been so messy... i don't think...
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