To paraphrase, this film did not go the way I thought it would.

Rating: 5/10 (15 December 2017)

To paraphrase Luke Skywalker from the Last Jedi, this film did not go the way I thought it would. The Last Jedi had its high moments, and boy were they great and entertaining. It had its lows, too. But it was a few of those lows that were a real deal breaker for me. I'll be honest here, I don't do movie reviews. But after watching this film, I had to get this off my chest.
I'm no hardcore Star Wars fan. I love my Star Wars, but I don't live and breathe it like many. I appreciate Rian Johnson taking a different direction with the trilogy and taking chances to make this film stand out and not a rehash; and he did a phenomenal job on numerous aspects of the film that left me intrigued and wanting to know more.
To be the 2nd installation of this series, however, The Last Jedi left several questions from The Force Awakens vaguely answered, or not answered at all, and even had storyline line decisions that left me astonished, dumbfounded, and asking myself "are you serious?" all at the same time. A few of the new characters and planets introduced were not fleshed out and felt like nothing more than a plot device to push the story along and probably should have been left on the cutting room floor as it unnecessarily prolonged the film.
Mark Hamill said early on that he had his issues with the script and Rian Johnson's treatment of his character Luke. There was so much potential after two years. This may get into minor spoiler territory for those of you that haven't seen the film yet, so I encourage you to skip this, but after Luke being a hermit for several years, I was really hoping to see Luke go beastmode as Vader did in Rogue One, but instead we get a bitter old man who wants nothing to do with thats going on with the Resistance and the First Order.
The movie satisfied my SW hunger, but I wasn't pleased with it either; rather it was lukewarm (no pun intended), so-to-speak. I will probably watch this film again if it pops up in my local hometown theater in a few weeks to see if maybe it will grow on me more, but we'll see. I can only hope that JJ Abrams can salvage whats left in Episode 9 and fix the issues that left me disappointed in The Last Jedi.