i think they did a good job figuring out what worked in ep6 and rogue one, and putting those things center stage. namely:
- space battles
- climactic "good vs evil" showdowns
- character building around luke, leia, rey
- MUSIC
- big spaceships and spacetanks
as a star wars film i think it delivered, once a year getting to watch all these iconic images and scenes i grew up watching slug it out is definetly something i want to be a part of.
all the "movie" stuff didn't really work for me, and i'm ok with that. breaking out of the prison, helping the kids, the whole sparking the rebellion (hunger games ??), i rolled my eyes pretty hard at these scenes. as a regular movie it was maybe average, but idk how anyone would expect a regular movie coming into this