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The problem is that we are going at the movie from the perspective of people who know the series inside and out. This is fine for movies that are made off of series, like say a One Piece movie or a Detective Conan movie. Those movies are made assuming the audience already has prior knowledge.
But the Movie 1st was billed as an AU, a redoing of how everything began, thus it needs to stand on its own. When a movie like this leaves out critical info, then it shoehorns itself into a difficult spot; it's not exactly for new people, because it assumes the audience knows the series well. And for the series regulars, it needs to offer something new (which it kinda does with fight scenes and fate backstory).
As far as the "Nanoha being less imaginative" thing goes, Nanya's point makes sense. In the series, it was Nanoha's imagination that came up with the initial staff and barrier jacket, and later the buster mode. Here, it seems like those modes are built in, so yes, Nanoha wasn't using her imagination as much (same for spells, which Nanoha of the series came up with mostly on her own).
And if so, why wasn't Yuuno using RH in staff mode? Given that Nanoha sealed the jewel seeds in staff mode much more easily than Yuuno did in the small jewel mode, it begs the question of why he didn't. True, maybe he wasn't compatible with it as much, maybe he couldn't use it that way, maybe Earth's magic field wasn't quite suited to him, etc. But these are all things that should be explained, otherwise they leave the newer viewers scratching their head and going "Huh?"
These are all valid criticisms of the movie; we need to step back out of our experience and approach the movie from the perspective of someone new to it.
Personally, I thought it would have been better to see Yuuno using the staff at first (possibly looking a bit different), and then having a short conversation between Nanoha and Yuuno later, with him admitting that he wasn't that compatible with RH, but it was a device he found in a dig and thus the only one available to him at the time. He couldn't wait to get another, because he needed to go after the seeds.
It's just part of the overall issue with this movie that it doesn't cover things it needs to, and does cover things it doesn't need to. Fate's backstory, while nice, isn't needed. The series did fine explaining Fate. But I think we all know why we did get lots of Fate backstory.
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