Star Wars is now a superhero movie - nothing more. Marvel, Capcom, Star Wars.

Rating: 1/10 (2 January 2018)

What sells? Action, explosions, slapstick comedy, over the top effects - super hero movies. Complex character development, consistent story lines, lack of loop holes, etc are no longer to be expected from the Star Wars Franchise.
The most important aspect of ANY good movie is to cause emotion within the audience. Make you cry, make you laugh, make you feel anxiety, make you feel adrenaline and excitement, make you afraid.
To start off a few things that I feel make for a good story (most of these were lacking in this film)
1. A protagonist with a background story that makes you want them to succeed. Makes you care.
2. A conflict that is clearly established. Why are the main characters at odds? Why are they in their position of conflict?
3. The "bad guy" needs to be strong, intimidating, and inspire fear and anxiety from the audience.
4. Side stories that add to the overall flow and main plot.
5. Supporting cast that add to the main storylines - these cast must have personality to add to the story.
6. The storyline has to make sense with previously established films and dogma.
7. Avoid obvious plot holes.
It has all been said before but let me chime in on what I didn't like:
1. Rey was supposed to mean something because we were going to learn about who she is, why she has all this power, what her role in the conflict is. We get nothing. She's just a nobody that is an anomaly with amazing abilities for no reason. yee haw. Not interesting.
2. We dont know enough about the main bad guy to understand him. Who is snoke? why is he hell-bent on destroying the rebellion? How did he come to be? Why doesn't he ever do anything but sit on his throne? Yawn.
3. Kylo is just not scary. He is not intimidating. He is weak (loses to an untrained Rey in force awakens) I never felt any anxiety from what he could do - he always seemed like a moody teenager that you don't take seriously.
4. The side stories were a distraction and you can just throw them out.
5. Supporting cast feels more like a need for diversity than content. Why is Finn useless running around all movie following a nobody mechanic's (Rose) lead? Then he is a badass for a second to kill a shiny stormtrooper (stupid scene where he says a line before just bashing the person).
6. Oh look its an evil rolley polley droid to match our good one - and look its all in black with a red eye! How creative! lol.
Oh look princess Leia has the force - where the hell did that come from? Coulda used that a few movies back!
Hey Finn and Rose crashed out right in front of the entire evil army in the middle of a barren landscape - they have time for a moment and a kiss then he drags her back to the bunker - ALL OF THIS WHILE THE ARMY SITS THERE AND WATCHES AND DOES NOTHING. there is no cover, no way they weren't noticed. bleh.
Why exactly can the first ship be the only one tracking them? sounds like weak writing.
Why exactly cant they see smaller ships leaving? "They aren't looking for smaller ships cause they are looking for big ships" So you cant do both? With today's technology we can track thousands of planes - it must be hard to do that in the future.
At the end the characters feel about the same as when you started. Meh. Who cares? they dont develop as a group or individually in a way that makes you feel like it has meaning. All of a sudden Rey can use her powers because she talked to luke for one day and he said to reach out and feel it (another bad scene with a stupid joke)
Also, one other thing that really bothers me is how male characters are portrayed. Every male character has some serious flaws: emotionally broken(Kylo), rash and unstable (Poe), apathetic and sulky (Luke), stupid and weak (Hux) or useless and incompetent (Finn).