So curious then, what would you have wanted Episode 8 to be? or what changes?
I didn't have any specific things I "absolutely had to see" in the film. I think Ep.7 and the first half of this film set up things to be interesting, but it intentionally avoids any significant risks.
The Kylo and Rey conversations set up their relationship fairly well, and I could have believed any major change they did with them. Rey could've turned Kylo, Kylo could've turned Rey, they could've become kind of an odd couple duo without really changing their allegiance, they could've run off together to elope and disappear from the story, whatever. Instead, they don't change whatsoever. This is ultimately why Snoke's death sucks. Whatever you think about the theories about Snoke, THIS MOVIE sets up Snoke as an interesting badass, by itself, and then squashes that. He's less interesting than Kylo as the pure force of evil, but he's a good source of conflict. Snoke is now dead, and Kylo is now Snoke, so you've killed off one character while making another less interesting. Kylo using Rey's parentage to turn her to the dark side would've made sense too (whether it was a lie or not), but sadly they're setting them up to be the eternal good-versus-evil struggle so they can make infinity more movies.
The only death in the movie that has any meaning whatsoever was Rose's sister, since that is her motivation for her actions. Ackbar dies and it's a throwaway line. Phasma dies and no one cares (she's the new Boba Fett). Luke dies but Rey and Leia are totally ok with it, plus it doesn't matter anyway because Force Ghosts (that can now affect the universe normally as per Yoda). Leia DOESN'T die which would've been a dramatic moment for many characters (Kylo, Luke, Poe, all of the Resistance). Finn DOESN'T die which would've also been dramatic and been "the spark" for the Resistance. In every case, this movie chooses the least interesting option. This is what I meant by this being a Troll film. This movie does not take ENOUGH risks (I'm being completely consistent with my problems with Ep. 7), but dangles the possibilities in front of us just to piss us off.
The humor as a whole is terrible. The Poe/Hux conversation at the beginning belittles Hux in a way that makes us not fear the First Order whatsoever. "Chrome Dome" and "Yeah, Rebel Scum" do the same to Phasma. Humor has its place in Star Wars, but not to kill the tension in battle scenes. They had no clue how to separate the serious bits from the humor. The milking scene was awkward, Finn in the bacta suit was meh, though I did chuckle at Luke teasing Rey with the branch.
The premise of the film is a huge problem. I was already in "WTF" mode when the FIRST LINE of the text crawl says "THE FIRST ORDER RULES THE GALAXY". What? This movie takes place 5 seconds after TFA. The First Order just lost their main base, and only blew up a few planets, so how do they RULE THE GALAXY? I don't want to go too much into the Canto Bight stuff because pretty much everyone hates that part. The "Now it's worth it" line was the cringiest in the film. The bigger problem is the whole space chase/Poe-Holdo thing. If Holdo tells Poe her plan (keep in mind that the Resistance trusted him with finding the map to Luke BY HIMSELF), then 3/4ths of the movie doesn't need to exist, and she refuses to do so even after he mutinies. They literally could've taken her out of the film and it would've made more sense. There would've been a power vacuum while Leia was incapacitated which Poe would've tried to fill, and then Leia returns to "teach Poe his lesson" when Poe makes the more-rash-than-necessary decision. Then you have Leia staying behind on the ship to zip it through the fleet (as mentioned, this scene looked cool but it has weird implications for the rest of the series), which further cements the lesson Poe learns and forces him to grow into the leader the Resistance needs. The whole "Holdo and Leia were totally in cahoots with a great plan, the audience should feel bad for doubting her, Poe should learn to obey his superiors without question" setup is garbage. The First Order is again shown to be bumbling idiotic Disney villains by not trying ANYTHING to stop the Resistance. They don't launch hundreds of TIEs (even after Kylo takes out their hangar), don't send any other ships to cut them off, nothing. They also decide not to fire on Finn/Rose while they have their little moment (though they really should both be dead, especially with open canopies on those things). They also conveniently forgot how to deal with snub fighters (that they've been fighting for 30+ years), when they had homing missiles to shoot down the stolen TIE in the last film. Nothing involving a Resistance/First Order battle in the next film with have any tension whatsoever.
I'm not completely against what they did with Luke in this film. It does crush me that Mark Hamill hates what they did so much. We don't get to see what changed him from the "pure, never willing to give up on my family" farmboy who refused to kill Vader in the hopes of turning him to the bitter old man willing to kill his nephew at the first sign of evil, which is a pretty big change. I would've liked to see Luke actually teach Rey something. Rey being this perfect light side force user is simply to promote Disney's message of "Anyone can be a Jedi if they BELIEEEEEVE". She doesn't struggle with anything (except her parentage, which is squashed in this film). Luke teaching her some true humility like the "That is why you fail" line from Yoda would've helped her character a lot. Good thing she learned how to move rocks so she can show up at the end to save the day by moving some rocks! I do like that Luke decided not to solve everything at the end through violence though.
Ultimately, this film kills off forces of conflict in Snoke, Phasma and Luke, and makes everyone else less interesting by taking away or resolving unsatisfactorily conflicts they had. Why should anyone care about Ep. 9? Or Ep. 7 for that matter? This movie provides nothing on its own, marginalizes its predecessor, and hamstrings its successor. If you found the one person on Earth who hated Star Wars the most and forced them to make this film, I'm not sure they could've done any worse.
