Original, but not necessarily great

Rating: 6/10 (15 December 2017)

This film works on some levels -- there are great action sequences, new worlds and ships, as well as some pretty impressive performances (especially Adam Driver as Kylo Ren). However, the script is muddled and the treatment of classic characters is somewhat poor.
Pros:

Great opening shot + action sequence
The Luke/Rey scenes were pretty interesting
The Crait battle was visually stunning
In fact, the entire movie looked great
Kylo Ren is made into a compelling character
Yoda's reintroduction was surprising and welcome, though his destruction of the tree was rather mystifying

Cons:

Overlong and bloated. The middle section of this movie is genuinely boring. You can definitely feel the 2h30m runtime
The basic story itself was riddled with plotholes, like why didn't the First Order cut off the fleeing Resistance cruiser instead of tailing it?
Also, plot points went nowhere. That entire Finn/Rose arc was frankly boring, and finished at a dead end
Plot points raised in the Force Awakens are pretty much forgotten. Phasma is introduced for two seconds, and swiftly killed off. Snoke is set up to be more powerful than Vader and Palp combined, yet somehow can't see far enough into the future to see himself being killed
That space Leia scene was cringeworthy and nonsensical
Luke's force projection crap was just stupid, and his death was anticlimactic
Admiral Ackbar, a pretty classic character, is unceremoniously killed off and literally forgotten
Han's death casts absolutely no shadow on this film and barely anybody references it
Benecio del Toro's character was sort of interesting, but his betrayal was easy to see coming
The Canto Bight scenes were actually pretty cool and had potential, but of course that was squandered in favour of some vague, shoehorned message about corporate greed (pretty rich, coming from Disney)
The humour in this movie wasn't too bad, but it was at pretty inappropriate times, and ruined potentially powerful moments by throwing in a cheap one-liner.

Those are all I can really think of. To be honest, it was pretty enjoyable, but it was such a muddled story that it kind of detracted.