Star Wars at its weirdest

Rating: 8/10 (15 December 2017)

Star Wars has never been more bizarre, and I love it
There is a lot of hate against the movie, and It is clearly a divisive film, but not a bad one. The good far outweigh the bad.
Of the luke/rey/kylo scenes, I only wish that Snoke was somewhat explained more. He really seemed like he was evil incarnate, and as awesome as it was to watch Kylo do what all Sith do and kill his master, I would have liked some sort of explanation (from luke maybe) as to where Snoke came from, how he seduced Ben, and that sort of thing.
In general, the film suffered from WAY TOO MUCH GOING ON ALL THE TIME. Almost all of it was good stuff, but it really felt like if one of us were to make a film, and pour all of the things we always wanted to see in a SW film into one. Its the most Lucas esque SW film not made by Lucas, in that it definitly needed someone to come in at the script level and say "this is great, but it needs to be scaled back".
The cat&mouse fight between the Resistance and the First Order was one of the coolest, tensest things we have seen in a Star Wars movie. For the first time in a tentpole action movie, I really felt like no one was safe. It was great. I would have removed the (admittedly cool) scenes at the casino and had Finn/rose/poe have something to do onboard, rather than that insurrection Poe led.
Star Wars took a risk, and not every bit of it paid off. It could have been streamlined, or simplified for the masses, but the ambition of this film pulls through to make a truly special Star Wars experience.