A flawed movie which has its moments

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2018)

First of all, I must thank all the people leaving 1 or 2 star reviews here. You set my expectations so low, I actually enjoyed The Last Jedi.
TLJ is a deeply flawed film in its basic premise (Luke's character and his rationale), but it is not as bad as most people are making it out to be. IMO its a marked improvement on The Force Awakens, at least it takes some risks and gives us something new, which this franchise so badly needed. The CGI is beautiful and not overdone, the fight sequences are great to watch, and it is not as predictable as its predecessor (TFA was just a poor rehash of ANH).
Here is my take on all the criticisms being leveled at this movie:
1. Luke's rationale: On this one, I agree with all the criticisms. Luke's character was poorly written, his reasoning for leaving everything and not helping the resistance did not make sense at all. His (lack of) reaction to re Hans death did not make sense - surely that should have had more impact that a few words from Yoda. Basically they turned Luke into a grumpy, emotionless shell of a man he used to be, and the reasons for that transformation did not make sense. Almost feels like the writers did not study Luke's character from the original trilogy. Since this is the basic premise on which this story is built, it all falls a bit flat. This is the reason why I have given the movie a 6 rating instead of the 8 or 9 it otherwise would have deserved.
2. Different Force interpretations: Luke projecting himself, Leia's space walk, Spoke moving people from great distance, and Rey doing great things without training.... Most of these are small loopholes. The first two I have no problems with, they are actually new cool things you could do with the force. The concept of how you can use the force has always been quite fluid. The fact that Luke dies from doing what he did made it ok - that explains why Jedi don't do this often. I have issues about the Spoke bit, because it raises so many questions of why the Jedi/Sith need to physically travel at all. The bit about Rey, that is a blunder that was the legacy of TFA, this movie is just picking it up from there.
3. Rey's backstory: I have to give the writer credit here, this was actually refreshing. They took a very big risk here, but the fact that Rey was not related to anyone (Luke, Ben, etc) is awesome. Not all great Jedi need to be born to Jedi. The writers did miss an opportunity not to develop some connection between Rey's abandonment as a child and the resistance that TFA hinted at, but apart from that I have no issues with this. The fans are over-reacting because their fan-theories did not work out. But if we criticized TFA for not taking any risks or giving us anything different, we must praise TLJ for taking such risks.
4. Snoke's death: Again, I have no issues with how Snoke dies. Like the above point, this is a refreshing change - it would have been sad if they had stuck with rehashing of the original trilogy with Rey as Luke, Snoke as the Emperor and Kylo as Vader. After TFA, that was what I was dreading. Instead, we had Snoke showing overconfidence about his complete read of Kylo's mind and dying because of it. I can only commend the writers for taking such a risk with the conventional storyline.
The other criticisms are nitpicking. Yes, the Rose character was poorly developed, as was DJ, and that sub-plot did not add much to the storyline - but not all subplots have to. Yes, the bomber droping bombs in space did not make much sense - if it was a magnetic pull thing, the bomber should not need to travel on top of the destroyer. But those are small things, more than made up for by some great visuals.
Overall, a much better effort that TFA. I can only hope they build on this and continue to take some risks - that is the only way Stars Wars will create a new audience and start a new legacy.