A nice blend of action and comedy. The acting was good and the characters developed nicely, particularly Poe's character. I hated the Vice Admiral at first and was all excited how Poe mutinied then when her plan was revealed and she made her sacrifice I was rooting for her. I did a complete 180 on that, and the way that and many other things were handled, with a twist, is why I enjoy this movie so much.
Opening space battle - awesome
Rey and Kylo interaction was awesome - and that it looks like Kylo Ren won't do a predictable "return to the light side" move is awesome. I really thought Ren would hook up with Kylo and then when she didn't it was great. The battle with the Praetorian Guards was freaking awesome. I do wish they explained more about them. I thought they were the knights or Ren most of the movie.
I greatly enjoy Adam Driver's portrayal of Kylo. He is an emo kid with anger issues, he has too much power for someone so young. Much better than Christian Hayden's performance as Anakin.
No issues with how Snoke wasn't developed or how he died. Kylo did a sneaky, clever way to kill him. Great! Plenty of Star Wars backstory isn't revealed in movies and left for other media to explain. So nothing new here.
The casino scene was out of place and could have been dropped. I mean, great visuals and a great setting but leaving the rebel fleet, going to the casino and coming back was pretty damned dumb.
The rebel fleet fleeing the FO was a big plot hole too. I figure the FO builds huge powerful, but slow ships so this was a weakness of theirs. The rebels could just outfly them. It happens in war, that is why armies take quick moving flanking units. The First Order didn't do this for some reason.
No issues with Lea flying through space. We have no indication if she was trained to use her powers or not before this. So now we know she did have some training and must be powerful.
Yoda was flipping awesome. I had to change my underwear after that scene.
Mark Hammil gave a stellar performance. He is such a great actor it's a shame he hasn't done more movies in his career. Force projection Luke was very clever. His X-Wing was in the salt ocean and probably couldn't fly anymore so he found a solution. When the First Order opened fire I knew he wasn't dead - when he strutted out and brushed some dust off his shoulder I lost it. I always prefer a clever hero than a powerful one - although Luke is both. Ultimately, Luke is not the hero of this story, this is not the story of the old characters so his character did just what needed to be done. We can't expect Luke to sweep in and kill Kylo, Snoke and everyone else. That is for Rey, Finn and Poe - which this movie sets up to be the new generation of heroes. As awesome as Luke was, we really needed less of him and more of the new people.
Grumpy old man Luke is fine. He didn't know the FO was destroying the republic. He just knows he failed at being a Jedi Master so he went off to die. We have no idea what went on before the movies, maybe some bad stuff happened and he no longer wanted to be the hero. Obviously, some failure happened with the new Republic that let the first order rise up and led to the REsistance - maybe Luke was just sick of it and decided to be a Jedi and not get involved in the rest. When his new Jedi order falls apart he says "forget it" and goes to be a hermit.
Anyway, his death was fine. He can always come back as a force ghost.
