Story and character? Doesn't matter - just spin a profit. Good job, Disney, destroying this franchise for it's true fans.

Rating: 2/10 (18 December 2017)

My head is still reeling with disgust with what I've just witnessed from TLJ. Just a heads up, I'm going to SPOIL the hell out of it with this review, so stop reading now if you haven't seen it. But in my opinion, don't see it, if you loved the original trilogy (or even the second trilogy and last two movies).
This film was clearly made to "flip the bird" at the old enthusiasts and usher in the "new breed" of SW fans that don't know any better. That's the best way I can describe it.
First of all, plot holes abound in TLJ. The filmmakers didn't seem to care, apparently.
Where to begin... Let's start with Kylo Ren having Darth Vaders mask and ashes. Where we last leave Luke in RoTJ, he burns his father on a funeral pyre on Endor. Some 20 years later, Kylo Ren retrieves it and is worshipping this burned mask and has the ashes. How? It never rains on Endor? Was Luke bragging endlessly to his fledgling "Jedi's in training" extensively about where and when he burned his father's body? But we'll get to Luke in a bit.
Ray enters this hole that's strong with the dark side, according to Luke, and after she exits, we learn nothing more than the fact that Rey found the coolest house of mirrors ever.
For the writers: Screenwriting 101, never introduce an extraordinary event unless it was somehow foreshadowed earlier.
Princess Leia's command post, upon her ship, at one point, is exploded by a laser blast from an enemy ship. The explosion is destructive enough to hurl her body into vacuumous space (in one piece, mind you). If this wasn't bad enough, she's still alive, with no air and a body rapidly becoming an ice brick, however, a character who never practiced much with the force or showed any signs of being strong with it, is able to survive this by pulling (flying) herself back to safety. Then is able to continue on with a mere gauze wrapping, after what seems to be a few hours later... come on! It not only was a stupid concept, it looked stupid. Poor directing and writing. Who pitched this idea and who agreed to it?
Next, Rey has been droning on about her parents for two movies. I thought I had this one figured out, she is clearly Kylo Ren's brother. Han and Leia are her parents. Wrong! According to Ren, her parents were mere peasants. This may still get resolved, but if he's right, then he and her have no business having these intergalactic Jedi Facetime calls with one another. This wasn't introduced as something that non-relatives could do in any of the movies. But the jury is still out on wether he was telling her the truth or not about her parents. So, I give the writers a rare pass on this one... for now.
Using all those storyline similarities from TESB and RoTJ is cheating, no matter how you look at it. The writers know that we want to see stuff we're familiar with, but it got absurdly too close to the other movies. Rey, for instance handcuffed and brought to Snoke with Ren present, while Snoke shows her the destruction of her resistance fighters is pulled right from RoTJ, only without the dramatic build and triumphant score. I didn't seem to care. Then Snoke is killed by Ren, because Ren has the power to turn on a light saber that's sitting on the arm of Snokes chair, while Snoke thinks he's sensing the other lightsaber will be ignited to kill Rey. Dumb.
Let's talk about Rose ramming her ship into Finn before he can suicide himself into the New Order's laser gun. Could've killed them both, easily, thus defeating the point of what he was trying to do with the suicide mission. But, okay... whatever, maybe she's not bright.
Let's get to Luke, because I'm dying to get it off my chest. WTF??? I've lived my whole life with this character... this hero! The motivation for 7 older movies led straight to Luke and his importance in the galaxy. He grew from whiny farm boy to a fearless zen hero. I'm sooooo sorry, Mark Hamill, for what they turned Luke into. I'm not even sure myself. Crotchety old man? Supposedly, he denounced and blocked the force years ago, in fear that Ren would find him. Fear is not a characteristic of a regular Jedi, not to mention a master. He would not be afraid of his nephew, nor would he consider murdering him. This is so far off-base that I cannot justify or forgive it.
He barely seemed to care when Rey said that his sister needed help or Han was dead. He just wanted to carry this burden of failing his nephew around with him. He refused to train Rey, and even when he actually did decide to help her, he was only going to teach her three lessons. None of them involved him having her doing any cool physical things, like flips, or technique. Apparently she's so good, she already knew this stuff. But he did proclaim that the Jedi's were done, so that is in alignment with his lack of support.
Then Yoda, finally, slaps some sense in him (God knows where he's been for 30 years), clearly he could've offered guidance to Luke when Ren left to serve Snoke. Oh, by the way, Yoda now has the gift of initiating fires from beyond the grave. That could've come in handy when Luke was battling the Emperor, I'm sure.
Let's not forget the books... Luke wants to burn these unknown books, that have never been referenced, but it's okay, Yoda stops him... only to burn them himself. ??? Who writes this stuff?
But here's the whopper! Luke now has this strange force power of being able to become a hologram somewhere else in the universe and visible to all. He has his last moments with Leia, who cannot sense that he's really not there. He's able to give her Han's physical dice from the Falcon, that, mind you, we've never seen before. She cares so much about these dice that she loses them moments later and Ren picks them up, just before they vanish into thin air. All this was done so that Ren realizes that Luke wasn't really there. It doesn't matter anyway, because Lukes trickery in doing this was coward. He never put himself at real risk by showing up to face Ren, well that's not entirely true, because the act of becoming a hologram ends up killing Luke. That's right. This new trick, costs you your life for some reason. Once again, writers, screenwriting 101, don't introduce new tricks without foreshadowing, otherwise it's Deus Ex Machina. Hologram Jedi's could've reeked havoc in other movies if they knew how to do that. Why does it kill you? You would think this spiritual meditation would be good for a Jedi's soul.
So the resistance is saved because they couldn't move rocks without Rey's force powers or Luke to cause a diversion. Luke dies an anti-climactic, confusing death, without having to leave his meditation rock, which leads me to think, why not let him die more valiantly? After all Luke has done for the rebels and now the resistance, Rey and Leia seem unfazed by his death.
I need to stop now before I really tell you how I feel.
All in all, the film had potential to be able to bridge the gap between old and new storylines. Disney was unable (and unwilling, it seems) to try, however. They seem to feel that they'll make their money on the fans who don't know or care about the past movies. If that's how you want to play it, then fine. Enjoy your pointless, uneventful, mediocre new franchise. My faith however, is lost on you. Thanks for destroying an icon in American cinema. I hope the box office gross is worth it.