What a complete mess.

Rating: 1/10 (2 January 2018)

From the little details to the plot as a whole this movie was bad.
My biggest complaints involve Luke, Snoke, and the Finn side-plot. The first we see of Luke he takes the lightsaber from Rey (the anticipation of which was the only thing that made me come back to watch the next Star Wars movie) and throw it over his shoulder. This is such a huge turn away from the character we knew and an insult to the fans who eagerly anticipated the conclusion of that cliffhanger. We later see that Luke attempted to murder his nephew as a child. Not a believable thing for the character of Luke to do.. He is the guy who wouldn't kill his father even when Obi-Wan and Yoda wanted him too!
Next is Snoke. This character made no sense in The Force Awakens, but I was willing to hear an explanation of him in this film. There was none. He died in a pretty cool scene, but now we are left with an inexplicable overpowered Emperor Palpatine knockoff who doesn't fit into the existing Star Wars universe at all.
Finn was an unnecessary character in The Force Awakens who was clearly just comic relief and to diversify the cast. In this movie it was worse. The side quest his character and Rose (random frumpy chick) go on was utterly pointless and not even entertaining. It also included the most explicit political commentary in Star Wars to date, which is ridiculous and does not bode well for the franchise. (Yes, Star Wars has always had political themes and politics has been involved in the plot, but it has been very abstract and fictitious in a simple good versus evil way.) And when Finn was about to sacrifice himself and we were all cheering because we thought that was the end of his character, he is suddenly stoped from sacrificing himself by someone else's (potential) self-sacrifice. That is such nonsense.
Now for the less important criticisms..
The movie begins with a fairly comical scene involving Poe, which went too far and just became awkward in my opinion. Later in the scene bombs fell out of a ship in outer space.. I know it is sci-fi, but come on, we all know there is no gravity in space. That is one of the defining characteristics.
The "code cracker" character was ridiculous. The stutter was so idiotic and he just happened to be taking a nap in their prison cell, what?
The anti-climactic end of admiral Ackbar was a disgrace. Not to mention the silly admiral who replaced him and caused the whole pointless Finn side quest.
The way Leia saved herself from death in outer space was silly, and pointless because the actual actress is no longer alive to act in Episode 9.
I'm done listing things actually, I have too many more things to say. But generally this movie is bad for Star Wars as a franchise and though I have been a huge fan my whole life I probably will not go to see episode 9.