I finally saw it tonight.
Overall I THINK I really enjoyed it, but I need to think about it some more. A lot of things didn't work for me, and since those things were more obvious to me, I'm going to start with those:
- First and foremost, Canto Blight. Everything about that felt lifted from the prequels to me, never mind that the entire mission didn't advance the plot in any way whatsoever other than to put Finn on a path to fight with Phasma, who also is basically a big fancy throwaway, played by an actress that could have been ANYONE since you never saw her face.
- BB-8 doing TOO DAMN MUCH... I draw the line at firing up an AT-ST out of left field.
- Luke having a temper tantrum and filling up his milk jug / catching a fish - super weird and unnecessary.
- Leia being blown out into space and not dying. Finn giving himself up to wreck that cannon and not dying... Luke NOT giving himself up, but... dying?
- And I'm mixed about how they off'd Snoke. On one hand, didn't see that coming until a few seconds before, so that's great, on the other hand - who the **** was he, we learned pretty much nothing about him whatsoever.
- Also, I get the darkest-before-dawn thing, and I get that the resistance is small... but the idea that those twenty or so people who have basically been failing all over the galaxy are 'the spark' and needed saving, when no one was coming to help them strikes me as silly.
- Domhnall Gleeson, who I think is a phenomenal actor, is pretty awful in these. He's too over-the-top, and just too young to be believable as the leader of this enormous army... maybe that's why they keep losing to little tiny band of rebels...
- They made such a big deal out of the Knights of Ren in the first one, maybe they're saving them for the third, but I expected we'd learn something about them too.
- Lastly, I'm flat out pissed that Admiral Ackbar was kept around only to be blown out of a hole in the bridge so unceremoniously and then you only confirm that that had happened with one passing line of dialogue.
Overall I enjoyed most of it, thought it was action packed, LOVED seeing Luke again... but where does this thing go? Rey v. Ben I suppose... but that one felt like the end of a trilogy, not the bridge.