lots of supposed "fans" have no bloody clue what Star Wars is, plain and simple.

Rating: 9/10 (3 January 2018)

Let me just establish first that i grew up in the revival period of Star Wars, i watched the original VHS tapes, i vividly remember the special editions coming out, i remember there being no star wars games, then suddenly Rogue Squadron and Shadows of Empire being a large part of my childhood, i grew up knowing what the sith are, who Jorus C'Boath was, that Leia had twins with Han and that Luke starts a new order, the majority of my books are either physics texts or Star Wars/Lucas reference books. even in school, many lessons were taught with star wars references, from philosophy to english.
i own virtually every different full edit of Star Wars, original theatre, original special edition, bluray saga (cause the first home releases were significantly shortened to fit tapes of the day, i dont have those) even including the radio drama which portrayed all the deleted scenes from the original trilogy.

and this was entirely what i was hoping to see from episode 8, it was damned near perfect.

i wont delve much into plot details, but i do need to talk about what other people are complaining about and why that's an exceptionally silly complaint for Star Wars film.
1. star wars is about the heroic cycle, both individually and in society; this is why episode 1, 4, & 7 are all essentially identical, this is literally intended for the bloody message of the Star Wars saga, that problems repeat.
2. Star Wars is completely an opera, which is to say not only is sound design the most important component here, but every line of dialogue is written to be part of the music, lines that repeated in each movie are repeated for the same reason the star wars main theme is used AND that the plot is supposed to be fantastical relying on coincidence and luck to save the day (which isn't bd writing when a major point of the series is how coincidence and luck are the driving force behind everything)
3. Rey's supposed parentage only aligns with the past trilogies & core messages of Star Wars in that change is always made by collection of nobodies at the end of the day, heroes are nobodies until suddenly they are heroes for doing something that they couldn't have imagined not doing.
Luke himself is nobody, there's Luke the Legend whom literally is nobody real, and Luke the person that chooses to be nobody because he's seen himself destroy the balance his father created.
4. a lot of people are complaining bout how it embraced the jedi order too much, didn't focus on "grey jedi" being the real path...only the movie explicitly was explaining that jedi isn't anything, it's not a tradition, it's a way that will always exist and ideally the jedi need to accept the balance instead of only embracing the "light side", Yoda's scene (which tied off his Clone Wars storyline) is explicitly explaining this.
5. disney is trying to recreate the feeling in star wars where we have no clue where things re going or what will happen next, one drawback of the prequels was knowing that certain characters must survive and others must do X, even though i love the prequels to, this is certainly something that took away from the suspense....while the new trilogy is throwing a wrench at the way people expected things to happen & catching people off guard like paternal revelations.
6. Luke's path in this new trilogy is like every master he's known before himself, and importantly emphasizes that change needs the help from older generations that have given up on trying to change things, Luke readily accepted his shame and decided to leave the galaxy be since he's only made things worse, this aligns with Kenobi, Yoda, Vader, and crucially doesnt align with Qui-Gon (who has been established as a truly wise grandmaster as he teaches Ben & Yoda the truth) as he knew even his death would serve purpose in the force with both good and bad consequences.

that's all i can think of now, and to underline my passion here, my "a" is pretty busted and almost every single "a" in this page needed to be manually added, that's how strongly i feel this needed to be said, cause SOOOOOO many people have completely not paid attention T.T