Ignore the Haters! Worth a watch!

Rating: 9/10 (16 December 2017)

To be frank, when I walked out of the movie theater, I felt none of the negative emotions that so many of these other reviewers seem to have. I thought it was well-written, intriguing, and had excellent character development, with many interesting twists and turns and a new character that I liked.
Imagine my surprise to go onto IMDb and see that the reviews were swarmed with hordes of reviewers complaining about how it "didn't feel like a Star Wars movie"!
This frustrates me immensely. When TFA came out, these very same fans complained about how it was too much like the first few movies. Now, they complain that it's too different. I think that it was good to try new things, to show new abilities, and how the balance between light and dark can be re-examined and changed. It was intriguing and well-thought out.
In addition, the graphics were gorgeous! There were only a few instances in which I felt the CGI was disorienting. For the most part, they had a technically excellent film with lots of gorgeous shots and decisions with sound editing.
One complaint I can understand (and why this movie doesn't receive a ten out of ten from me) is what they did with Luke Skywalker's character. He acts completely differently from the Skywalker we know and love in the first trilogy, and while I think a disillusioned Skywalker could be interesting, he seemed to revert back to that whiny useless state he was in before all of his interesting character development. While he redeemed himself in the end, I didn't like his characterization.
Aside from that, I would HIGHLY recommend this film looking for something a little different and risk taking in a Star Wars film.