But the force projection is a good way of showing that Luke grew past some of the flaws of the original Jedi order. He managed to find a nonviolent way to save the resistance, which I think is pretty awesome. I never really liked that the Jedi were supposed to be a force striving for peace when a lot of their main attempts at solving problems just boiled down to fighting.

The whole storyline also adds weight to Lukes scenes at the end of Jedi. It showed just how close he actually was to falling to the dark side and how similar he was to his father. He may have realized that fighting and possibly killing his nephew would have pushed him there (just like anakin trying to save the ones he loved). So seeing his own weakness, he had to find another way.

The Finn storyline was completely terrible though.