A Mishmash of Empire Strikes Back with Return of the Jedi

Rating: 5/10 (17 December 2017)

I didn't like this movie. I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it.
This was, in many ways, like two of the previous (good) movies: The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi. ESB in the sense that the resistance is nearly destroyed but still manages to survive somehow. ROTJ in the sense that Kylo Ren ends up killing Snoke. But, ultimately, this really isn't either one of those movies.
What this part of the story ends up being is Rey spending close to 80 percent of her scenes trying to convince Luke Skywalker to either join the resistance, or train her, or both, but he's become a self-loathing caretaker of some ancient Jedi texts even though, for him, the way of the Jedi is dead.
This movie also gets bogged down in what turns out to be a completely pointless subplot in which Finn and another character, Rose Tico, figure out how the First Order is able to track them through hyperspace, and they hatch a plan (without consulting any superior) to disable that ability. Why it becomes pointless is because the superior officers of the rebels have already figured it out and were undertaking their own plan. But because of Finn, Poe, and Rose and them getting mixed up with a smuggler named DJ (who ends up selling them out), hundreds of rebel fighters were lost.
And to top it all off, Rey's origin is as much a mystery as it was before. Except, by the end, Skywalker is dead.
This movie could have been so much more.