The Cardinal Sins of Rian Johnson

Rating: 4/10 (15 December 2017)

This movie committed a huge number of cardinal sins.
Deus ex Machina - Leia literally Jesus-ing herself back to life and flying like Superman through the vacuum of space.
Nonsensical character motivations - Purple-hair lady not freaking telling her crew what their own escape plan is, letting them think she's leading them on a death march. Yeah, of course you're going to have mutinies, idiot.
Pathetic character development - After all that buildup of Snoke, all the shadows and secrets behind his identity, all the hints that went into him...it all amounted to nothing. Literally nothing.
Hackneyed moral hamfisting - "We won't win by destroying the things we hate, we win by protecting the things we love." Yeah, because you definitely didn't win against the Empire the first 2 times by destroying the freaking Death Stars.
Overuse of CGI - The entire section with Finn and Rose on the casino planet is a giant crash course in what not to do with CGI in a Star Wars movie. Seriously, the CGI in Attack of the Clones was nowhere near as egregious as this. And speaking of that casino planet...
Nonsensical story structure - The entire casino planet scene is absolutely pointless. If the characters simply sit on their hands and do nothing, it is an objectively better outcome for them than if they try to be proactive. No story writer should ever put their characters in that position.
Cluttered cast of characters - This movie introduces an entire new cast of characters that it expects us to care about & get invested in without putting in the work to make us get invested in the first place. Why should I care about purple hair lady? Or Rose? Or Benicio del Toro? I've known them for 5 minutes, and they're all mostly flat, one dimensional characters at best.
Unfocused story - This was just all over the place. The climax seemed to start halfway through the movie, then it stopped briefly, then started up again, then the movie just sort of...ended.
Implausible premise - This is probably the most egregious in my book. You're telling that the First Order, who built a galaxy-crossing-system-destroying superweapon, built the most massive fleet the Galaxy has ever seen, and has conquered multiple star systems, has to spend 18 hours giving slow, arduous chase to a group of 3 transports? Really? They should have had another Destroyer just jump into hyperspace coming the opposite way, drop out right in front of the Rebel ship, and light it up. Would've taken 45 minutes, max. This would be like the police going on a high-speed chase, and instead of calling for backup or setting up a roadblock or alerting other units, they just said "Eh, he'll probably run out of gas before we do. Let's just keep driving, see what happens. Keep flashing the sirens to let him know we're still here."
The only saving graces of this movie were:
The battle scenes, especially the hyperdrive missile
The acting chops of Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver
The star power of Mark Hamill
Other than that, it's a colossal, unfocused, cluttered mess.