Starts well but goes horribly wrong

Rating: 2/10 (14 December 2017)

I was fooled by the professional reviewers again. While I do think this was better than The Force Awakens and Rogue One, I'm still hugely disappointed by it.
For roughly an hour and a half I was enjoying this. It wasn't perfect but it was a big improvement on the previous. The acting and dialogue were generally much, much better than before. Daisy Ridley is much more likeable this time because her character isn't just a Mary Sue. It was great to see Luke Skywalker again, because for me he's what Star Wars is about. But he's very different in this film. Aside from a few jokes he's pretty miserable.
The special effects and the space battles were really well done. And the build up to Rey finding out who her parents are was good. But the revelation itself was a huge letdown.
The film then built towards a great final act. But that's where it suddenly became predictable and really really boring. The way Snoke was disposed of was so obvious, it's amazing that only he didn't see it coming. What a waste of a potentially good villain.
But then rather bizarrely just when you felt like the film was about to finish they carried on for another 45 minutes. It was like watching A New Hope, only right after they destroy the Death Star they fly to Hoth and tag on the first 45 minutes of Empire.
So after initially enjoying it, I couldn't wait for it to end. As second films in a trilogy go, this was more like Attack of the Clowns than Empire Strikes Back.
And Finn didn't seem to have a purpose in this film. They just kept giving him little sub plots to keep him in the story. And what happened to his sidekick at the end was woeful.
Very disappointed.