Why are the critics praising this turkey?

Rating: 3/10 (17 December 2017)

The plot is disjointed and the characters are ill-defined. Very little about the Snoke character is explained. Why does Rey have such great powers? Exactly why is Kylo Ren so mentally disturbed. Why did Luke become a hermit for forty years?
It is almost as if the writers didn't care about character motivation and assumed that the audience didn't either. It is all just an excuse for sword fights and explosions. The actors do the best they can but the material is very weak. The writers and director borrow heavily from the previous episodes. Even the music is reused. Luke's character is supposed to be similar to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Snoke is a reworking of the Emperor and of course there is a heavy reliance on nostalgia for the old characters, Luke and Leia. Besides the sci-fi stuff, what made the original episodes so successful were the characters, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Hans Solo, and Luke Skywaker. Kylo Ren could be a great character except we don't really know much about why he chose the dark side. We know almost nothing about the Snoke character. Princess Leia and Luke seem to be just going through the motions without much feeling. The new characters, Rey, Finn, Poe, etc... are not given much motivation beyond the standard good guys save the galaxy from bad guys line.
The whole movie is trite, stilted, and loaded with cliches. So why is it that so many normally intelligent critics are lavishing such praise on this turkey? Are they afraid of panning a major blockbuster or are their heads being turned by all of the attention that they are being given by Disney? What retaliation could Disney inflict if a critic panned a major production? What critic would want to be on the receiving end of that?