Disappointed with character Development ***SPOILERS***

Rating: 5/10 (16 December 2017)

Like many, I went into this film full of hope with a completely open mind, and wanted to like it! It started well, a bit of forced humour in places, but still enjoyable. The middle of the film seemed quite pointless in parts like the Canto Bait scenes, but I loved Snoke's throne room scenes and he came across as a really good villain, really driving Kylo and Rey against eachother and manipulating them nicely. When Rey is brought before him I could not wait to see how everything was going to play out. But then he died very easily, and rather pathetically in the end, and then so did Phasma, and then Luke seemed to go out on an anti-climax as well after a great build up in the ending sequence.
It's quite clear that Disney/Johnson did not have a place for these characters in the future, which is completely fair, but I'm not sure they got the ending they deserved after all of the hype surrounding their inclusion in the film. I'm all for changing the franchise and giving things a new lease of life, but it wasn't the number of new twists that were disappointing, it was more the manner of them, and how little they actually contributed to the story.
It was the ONLY Star Wars film where I left feeling disappointed at the potential places they could have taken the film, even though I have come out of every other Star Wars film on a high....even after the Prequels (Yes, I did say the prequels)! This film left me scratching my head. I wanted to like it so badly, but I just wasn't sure I liked where it was going, or how everything had been handled.
They had just killed off a lot of the good characters that they had built up in TFA, and now under Johnson's direction, he deemed them surplus to requirements. It just felt like they were trying to fit too much into this film, whilst trying to make a complete fresh start in Episode 9. Let us not forget that we knew little about the Emperor or Boba Fett when they were both killed off in the original trilogy, but I thought with Rian Johnson's new take on the franchise, that he might have explored these characters a little further.
I thought that Rey had little character development too in this film, other than attempting to chase Luke around the island, then only to find out that her parents were complete nobodies. This is fine, but it felt like that was an easy way out of trying to appease fans who had compiled numerous theories about
who her parents might have been over the past 2 years.
I understand that Disney may be wanting to attract a larger audience to the franchise, but it felt like the opinions of die hard fans were casually tossed aside in this next installment, and I can understand why many of them will not be happy with the end product. On looking back, I wouldn't say the plot was unique at all, more of a mashing between the ROTJ and Empire, with fillers thrown in to buy screen time. However, saying that, on the whole it is an entertaining film.
I definitely want to see the film again when it comes out on blu ray, as you cannot always get the full impact of the film on a first watch.
It is NOT the worst film ever, but nor is it anywhere near the best, in my opinion. Some great scenes in this, but I personally had hoped for a better storyline and character development, which is why I am giving it a 5. I'm hoping that on a second viewing that my mind will have been changed and the score will be much higher, but for now I'm still pondering as to why things happened the way they did in The Last Jedi.