Iconoclastic - in a good way!

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2017)

I too am struggling to understand all the negative reviews. There was so much to like about this film, and for me it's the strongest of the series since the 1977 original. There are plenty of spoilers below, so if you've not yet seen it - just ignore the negative reviews and go!
To start with, I liked the way that the idea of the 'hero' was used. There is an initial meeting between Finn and Rose, where she recounts how everyone knows of his amazing exploits... but she's not so in awe that it stops her zapping him; and then there's way that Luke is held up as a saviour figure, such that if people only knew he was getting involved in the conflict that would re-energise the forces, but this theme was balanced by Luke's own sense of his failure, and Yoda (I think) saying that being a flawed hero was the most important bit; and then the scene at the end where the boys are playing out the scene where Luke faces down the forces, i.e. he becomes an even stronger motivating figure for the next generation... and I'm sure their stick figure of Luke looked remarkably like Christ on the cross.
And I liked the use of the amoral counterpoint in the form of the code-breaker , and his revealing that one of the rich people in the casino had built weapons for both sides; and Kylo Ren's view that the whole conflict should just be left to finish off the rebellion so that a new start could be made, ie forgetting the past, as if the two sides were as bad as each other. And Rey's uncertainness of where she fits in terms of her personal history. This sequence of ideas introduced much more ambiguity to the normal good-vs-evil Star Wars narrative.
And then the whole treatment of the Jedi religion - with the burning of the holy books, the revelation that Luke never read them anyway as they were pretty dull; and Yoda's view that that Rey embodied all their principles already... and that strikes me a parallel to the Reformation, where the veneration of the traditions and texts of the Church were overturned by Luther, to be replaced by a much more personal relationship between the believer and the higher-power. And we know that arguably didn't end well... It'll be interesting to see how this idea gets played out in the next film.
Ok, there were some very questionable parts: could the First Order ships really go no faster to hunt down the rebellion ships? Poe was a complete liability, but seemed to suffer no consequences of his reckless actions. Though I did like the idea that Finn and Rose's adventure in pursuit of the code-breaker ended in complete failure, and in fact worse: if the code-breaker had not given away the rebellion's escape plans, perhaps the rebel forces would all have got to the new planet safely, avoiding the need for the sacrifice of the commander in ramming the First Order ship... It's unusual to have a demonstration of such complete failure and damage as the result of heroic activity in an action film.