Once again, Disney took absolutely zero risks

Rating: 5/10 (27 December 2017)

When The Force Awakens came out, my main complaint was that it did nothing new or interesting with the story or its characters. It played it safe, borrowing aspects of all the OT films, some of them scene-for-scene, and music-track-for-music-track, and merging them into one with some new faces to carry the all-too-familiar story. TFA was nothing more than a nostalgia sequel meant to regain some of the fanbase's trust and loyalty that was lost during the PT.
Ultimately, I understand that strategy, as Disney had just taken over Star Wars and many were uncertain about what that meant for the films. Consequently, Disney would need to tread lightly and build up that trust with the fans that Star Wars will still be Star Wars. However, doing so meant keeping the story and its characters simple, following a very basic hero's journey format and definitely DEFINITELY NOT pulling any sort of inspiration from the recently (at the time) de-canonized EU books, some of what, had some really great stories.
Alright so, fast forward a bit and TFA is a raging success, of course, though it could have been much better. With some money in the bank and trust regained, Disney now had some room to stretch out a little and make things interesting with The Last Jedi. With the nostalgia sequel out of the way, they had an opportunity to take some risks, but...they did not. Instead, they stuck to the same old tired formula, pulling aspects from the OT and inserting them into TLJ.
Let me give you a taste of this scene-for-scene copy-paste tactic that Disney has utilized:

Rey enters a dark cave and has a Force experience confronting a truth of some kind (Looks like: Empire Strikes Back, Luke entering a dark cave and confronting Vader, which is revealed to be himself under the mask)
A battle with Imperial Walkers 10 miles out (for some reason) slowly approaching a rebel base across white salt flats with rebels firing from trenches and attacking with inferior ships (Looks like: Empire Strikes Back, Battle of Hoth, Imperial Walkers, white snow landscape, rebels in trenches...)
Kylo Ren captures Rey, puts her in handcuffs, stands behind her as they take an elevator to Snoke, Rey attempts to convince Kylo there is good in him (Looks like: Return of the Jedi, Luke in handcuffs, with Vader behind him, in an elevator going to a ship, which is going to the Emperor, Luke tries to convince Vader there is good in him)
Rey is lectured and intimidated by Snoke, Snoke opens a window to show Rey that her friends are being blown from the sky, she gets mad and force pulls the lightsaber from Snoke's armrest (Looks like: Return of the Jedi, the Emperor lectures Luke, shows him his friends being blown from the sky through a window, Luke gets mad and Force pulls the lightsaber from the Emperor's armrest)
Luke (a Force image of Luke...) and Kylo fight, but it's just Luke playing defense and stalling for his friends to escape, Kylo slices through Force-Image Luke (Looks Like: A New Hope, Obi-Wan vs Vader with Obi-Wan simply stalling for Luke and friends to escape, Vader slices through Obi-Wan)
and more...

Just like with TFA, it's as if JJ and Rian watched the OT, and made notes to themselves like, "Need a scene similar to cantina scene," "Need a dark cave scene," "Need an elevator scene," etc...seriously guys? Can't come up with anything new on your own? And maybe it's not their fault, maybe it's Kathleen Kennedy, or some other Disney executive pulling the strings saying not to think outside of the box here. I don't know, but what I do know, is that it's BORING. I didn't need to see TFA more than once, and I definitely don't need to see TLJ again either. With TFA, at minimum, I was entertained by it, but that's most likely because it was the first re-entry to the Star Wars universe in a long time, and like most, I was excited about it. Now that we're firmly back in it though, that same little nostalgia parlor trick doesn't work so well, and, I honestly can't say that I was even really entertained by TLJ. If I'm being truly honest, I actually don't feel like this film progressed the story much at all - in fact, if it's possible to go backwards, that's what I feel TLJ did.
TFA, despite its flaws, was a good introduction to our new young cast of characters. With their introduction came a lot of questions though, like:

Who is Rey? Who are her parents? Why is she so powerful?
What caused Kylo to go bad? What's the issue with him and the Force?
What's Luke been doing all this time? Why?
Who is Snoke? How did he come to power?

In TLJ, we would expect to get some answers to some of those questions, and we do get SOME...but, they are...terribly, TERRIBLY unsatisfying, and feel like they were given absolutely no thought at all, like Rian got done filming and realized "Oh crap, we didn't tie up the loose end about Rey's parents! Damn, and everyone already went home..." and just as Adam Driver is about to leave, Rian pulls him over to film a bit where he reveals to Rey that her parents are junk traders who sold her for drinking money. Seriously? Yeah, that happened. He says it so matter-of-factly too, but the music and Rey's tears and stressed out look convey a totally different feeling for the scene that is just really confusing to witness.
What about Luke? What's going on with him? Well, he was so bummed by his failure with Kylo that he went to the island to just live out life and die. He didn't go there to discover some old Jedi secret. He didn't go there to train or better himself. He went there, to die. He cut himself off from the Force completely and didn't even know that Han had died. This is NOT the Luke that anyone wanted or expected...
We all knew Luke was older, we all knew he wasn't going to be doing some Duel of the Fates style saber fighting but thought we'd get to see him kick at least A LITTLE bit of butt with some potentially well-honed Force skills. Nope. Not even a little bit. At the end, Luke projects himself as a Force image and 'fights' Kylo, but the act apparently saps all of Luke's energy and he just...dies... Luke pretty much doesn't contribute anything to the story or any other character's progression.
The trailer teases some big confrontation or battle between Rey and Luke, but it's a brief scuffle. It teases training sessions that are really just Rey doing her own thing and Luke not participating or doing really any instructing. It's all Rey... This is like, the one area where Disney stupidly didn't copy the OT, because if they did, Luke would have taken on the role of Obi-Wan and actually contributed something, but, he didn't... Even Yoda in Empire Strikes Back, having become a bit of a looney toon, still trained Luke and imparted some basic wisdom - in TLJ, Luke does not. He's worthless, and gets possibly the worst send-off possible.
How about the other big trailer tease? The one about Rey and Kylo? Okay, the team up DOES happen, but the direction of the tease is not what we expected. The trailer makes it seem like Rey will join Kylo and maybe go dark side with him (which would have been a great plot twist, seeing our main hero go bad as the people she looks up to - people like Han, people like Luke - have rejected her), but what actually happens is he simply uses her to kill Snoke (yes, Snoke dies, the supposed MAIN BADDIE of the series, dies, without a fight, I might add). In fact, the fight that does happen in this scene is Rey + Kylo vs a bunch of nameless guards that no one knows anything about, and thus, no one cares about either. It's a filler fight against some lemmings to kill time and nothing more.
Kylo then does what no one would expect...copies another scene from the OT! He does his best impression of Vader's "Join me and we can rule the galaxy together" scene, but with Rey. She refuses and escapes.
This is whole thing with Rey and Kylo is where I really hoped Disney would take the biggest risks. For a long time now, I have been an avid supporter of the theory that Rey will go bad, and Kylo will become good, the source of Rey's power is because she is either a descendant from Palpatine/Sidious, and/or, a creation of his (via the Force) in the same way that Anakin came to be. What other way is there to explain her power? Now, she could be Luke's daughter or Obi-Wan's granddaughter or something like that too, but if she goes bad, it makes more sense for her to be related to someone bad...and connecting these films back to Sidious and the prequels in this way could be really interesting. Nope!
Snoke dies. Kylo takes over, and he's apparently the main baddie now. I don't know about you, but Kylo can't carry this series as the villain, he just can't. Snoke was good. He was the mysterious man behind the curtain who we hoped to get some answers about but not even Disney knows how to write his backstory so they just kill him instead. It would have been so much more satisfying to see Kylo and Rey fight Snoke together, fail (but escape), leaving Snoke as the main bad guy for the 3rd film. Now...it almost feels like there is no bad guy for the 3rd film, because Kylo just wasn't being set up for it. What fight are we really looking forward to now?
This is why I feel like this movie didn't progress the story at all, and why I actually feel like it went backwards...

TFA did a lot of setting up for Luke to play a big role - he didn't, and died.
TFA did a lot of setting up for Snoke to be the main baddie - he didn't, and died.

This is a mess I'm not quite sure anyone can clean up and I am scared for the 3rd film. Good luck JJ.