Legacies, Characters, Acting, and Interest Lost by Rian Johnson and a Horrible Script

Rating: 7/10 (16 December 2017)

I was excited for this Star Wars. I drove to my local theater through plenty of snow and traffic with some friends to see a movie I'd greatly anticipated.
Walking in, I felt good, watching the first ten minutes, a high-paced action scene akin to great space battles before it, with great piloting by Poe, timely comedy and sacrifice scenes to boot that brought a new element of sympathy to the random characters we see die that we rarely spare much of a thought about. Had the whole movie been similar to this or even at least have the action scenes follow this mold, I would give this an 8 out of 10. Unfortunately, the final 140 minutes were a narrative mess without any direction or meaning.
Let's start this with some things I really enjoyed about this movie. The acting was fantastic, and you could tell everyone playing their characters really channeled their best efforts into this project. The score was fantastic once again, and so was the cinematography and special effects. The action scenes are well-choreographed, for the most part, and they didn't shove callbacks to the original trilogy as much as they did TFA.
However, once you get past the talented and passionate actors, effects workers, and John Williams, you find a movie truly lacking in the elements that made Star Wars such a great trilogy in the first place.
I'm glad to see many reviewers also believe that the comedy in this film was sub-par. You never saw the on-the-nose forced humor from this in Empire, A New Hope, or even Jedi. Yoda burns the ancient Jedi scriptures as a joke, and then Luke, despite literally 30 seconds previous he was about to burn it himself, gets mad and tries to save the books. He also throws his lightsaber away when Rey hands it to him, which was cheap. There are just plenty of quips and one liners that aren't needed, to summarize.
So many characters from The Force Awakens, the original Trilogy or even introduced in this movie are wasted by a script that doesn't know what it wants to do. Finn does nothing in this movie, besides almost run away, have a casino subplot that made no effect on the plot, and fight Captain Phasma for 1 minute. (Phasma was once again criminally wasted, and then killed off.) Maz could have been used in place of Guillermo Del Toro's shabbily introduced and shoved out character, but she was relegated to one scene where she fights off something we have no idea about. Yoda comes in for five seconds and does nothing except crack a few one liners and do what Luke was about to do. Snoke, who was intriguing, mysterious and incredibly powerful to the point where he senses his apprentice's intent? Just some nobody who gets killed off in a manner impossible not to see coming. R2-D2 served no purpose in the movie other than say hi to Luke, Chewbacca was basically some dude who flied the Falcon and couldn't speak, and while Leia actually was treated well in this, her god-like come back to life scene was astoundingly confusing. Poe was used to a serviceable amount, and had at least some character development. Laura Dern's admiral character was perplexing in many ways. She could have told her crew about her plan, rather than not say anything before she loaded the transports which rightly provoked a mutiny. She also waits until most of the ships have been shot down before reaching her plan to go to light speed and destroy the ship. Rose, played by Kelly Marie Tran, was interesting. Her character as a nobody in the Resistance who has seen friends and family die only to see her supposed invincible heroes disrespect that was something that could have been worked with and I hope that unlike many characters from TFA that we see her again at some point in a significant manner. General Hux also could have been used more than he was and was given little to do other than get intimidated by Snoke and Kylo.
The entire subplot with Rose, Finn and the Codebreaker only dragged the movie far longer than it needed to be and could have been shortened greatly with little effect on the movie, or even cut out entirely, since the tracking of the ship no longer was deemed necessary. Also, The Force Awakens leaves off on the Starkiller Base being destroyed, and then resumes in TLJ with the Rebellion being on their last leg, almost completely destroyed with no explanation for how.
Obviously I have to talk about the major deaths in this movie. Rather than kill off Leia respectfully, as she will not be in episode 9, or even in the scene where her cabin gets shot out and she climbs back into the ship somehow, they kill Snoke before anything is revealed about his origins, character or how he got to power. Luke's death, while interesting and needed to close out the plot TLJ was trying to tell with the end of the Jedi, epitomized the wasting of Mark Hamill's talent and love for this franchise. We never know why he gave up so suddenly, or why he wouldn't even contact anyone important from the original gang. Instead, he becomes an unhelpful and resenting hermit completely unlike Ben Kenobi.
Rey and Kylo Ren have the closest thing to character development in the script. Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley were once again fun to watch and kept you on your toes, with their narrative of projecting to each other, to their fight scenes. However, Kylo goes from refusing to kill Leia, killing Snoke and helping Rey to immediately fighting her and making power grabs for the First Order. Once Luke's lightsaber explodes, we never see Rey again until she's in the Falcon again with Chewbacca, even though we never see her running away to get in the ship, or boarding it. She also does barely nothing in the final scene, where she definitely could and should have.
Overall, this movie could have been one of the best movies this franchise has seen, yet instead it only barely holds itself up above the prequels. This is the worst Star Wars movie since Revenge of the Sith.