As a movie it's OK, as a Star Wars movie it's dissapointing

Rating: 6/10 (18 December 2017)

I don't write many reviews but this one bothered me so deeply I felt I needed to. First the rating, yes I gave it a 6, why? Because the movie looks good and the acting is great. I don't want my disappointment to take away from the great acting which the movie had. The story was just terrible, it not only made this movie fall flat but the decisions that were made cut deep against generations of build up. The impacts and poor decisions of this movie didn't just impact this movie but so many of the story arcs that have made Star Wars great.
Let's start with just the story. We have unlimited potential story lines but the writers pick a slow speed space chase that just doesn't work. Any strategic chess game of how to escape is overshadowed by a ridiculously useless side quest. Rather than do 1 of the hundreds other ideas that have been suggested that would have quickly gotten them out of this problem the movie just plugs along to dissapointment.
Oh, there is a farmer Luke who has gone full on hipster and all but tells Rey to "Get off his lawn". What happened to Luke. This was the guy who took out a death star, saved the galaxy, and brought back Vader to the good side! Something terrible must have happened to make him this way, right? Not really, he had a moment where he thought Kylo has some evil in him, maybe I should kill this kid in his sleep. That's right, the guy who literally saw the good in the most evil guy in the galaxy thinks maybe I should kill this kid. It's not just unlike Luke, its insulting to Star Wars fans. Which leads Kylo to go dark and do all the amazing dark things that the movie then explores like who is Snoke, how he became so powerful, who the knights of Ren are, and ... Oh that's right the movie doesn't do any of this. The Force Awakens set up so many good story arcs which were not only dropped but we're deliberately written across to make sure no-one could revisit in the future.
Oh, and who are Reys parents??? Congratulations to those of you who guessed they are dead traders or something. I really hope they fix this in the future. I'll just add this to the long long list of things I hated about this story.
The one aspect of this complete mess was an interesting connection between Rey and Kylo which was heading in a great and interesting direction but like a spoiled child this gets dumped off too. This may have been the one story arc of this movie that could have saved something but rather than keeping going with light vs. Dark and the internal conflict it chooses to have a great moment just fail to deliver. I truly hope that JJ can salvage something from movie but for the first time I'm not looking forward to the next movie. I just don't care and would have been happier with a sequel to the star wars Christmas special.