OK, plowed through some 22 pages, not more time right now.
Oh my. this thread has more salt then that last mining moon/planet(oid) (whatever was its name, Krait?).
Wall of text.
tl,dr: I liked it, it is definitely better than TFA.
I was going with very low expectations into it. TFA was at best mediocre, a railroaded piece of second hand copy, complete with eyelashes of doom.
My full wall of text comment on it here:
https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/196157-the-force-awakens-your-reaction-spoilers/?page=32#comment-1958039
TLJ: Seen with the eyes of
a child: awesome.
a teen: awesome, despite physics problems.
an adult: mediocre-good, has a number of problems (see below).
I also only watched the first TLF trailer, then avoided everything else. Partly not to be spoiled, partly annoyed by the R1 trailers and reclip, I am not trusting Disney trailers anymore.
I was going out quite satisfied, I liked the film. Clearly not a masterpice, but none of the Star Wars films is that. Objectively seen the OT is also quite trashy. For me TLJ is mediocre if compared to normal films, compared to Star Wars in itself, a good film.
Maybe I am actually will watching a second time in cinema, which I absolutely did not want to do with TFA. Do not even talk about the I-III (I liked the overarching intrigues, the rest was a pain).
Due to time constraints we could not go together, my better half went with the oldest child the other day. She liked the film a lot better than TFA as well. Child was very fond of BB-8 (not that unexpected, SW are children films after all).
So my thoughts:
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THE GOOD
The film kept me immersed. Only at one point I was thrown out of suspension, was when Luke was appearing on the salt moon. It was like, "NOOOO, not cheap railroading again" until I thought, wait maybe he really is not there physically?
The visuals.
The details. Just one example, the rain drops on Kylo.
TFA was cheap railroading all the film. TLJ is a lot less forced encounters.
Resistance plans failing.
Rey parents (at least for the moment) being total nobodies! Yes! At last, not again a Skywalker steering the fates of trillions of sentients.
Snoke not being a giant, just having a Lord Farquaard complex 
Kylo's sucession of Snoke. The Supreme leader is dead, long live the supreme leader.
Still constant biggering and bullying between Kylo and Hux. Both simultaneously putting their failure onto Rey. I think both Kylo and Snoke underestimate(d) Hux. And an interesting conflict left for the last film.
The throne room fight, awesome.
Poe still totally reckless, reckless to a degree that it will get him killed in the end (and killed lots of others already!). Really fitting for a fighter ace. But also slowly growing.
DJ being a slimebag and selling them out. Real scum, such a slap into the face.
The First Order iron in the laundry.
The bleak outlook end of the film. Remember ESB? And actually it is bit more closed in itself then ESB, which is just an unsatisfying bridge gap in a triology.
The Kylo and Rey interplay. You really did not know how it would end.
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THINGS I do not see as a problem
Some complain about Chekhov's gun. Having more than 22 years of GM experience (passion play style, not dungeon crawling) I am not of Chekhov's opinion. Cause sometimes you want red herrings, like Luke's X-wing. At the very least, Luke's X-wing can be seen as a hommage or easter egg. If you apply only Chekhov, you never can have easter-eggs.
Luke does NOT die from any light saber wounds. He does from exhaustion. Kylo clearly says to Rey "try that and you die" - Luke does a LOT more than this, also remember he already connected to Leia before the whole projection. And he wanted to die on Ahch-To.
Snoke dying. He clearly was too full of himself, and too confident. In a way he is like the whole First Order. All just Wannabee-Bad-Asses, trying sooo hard to be like the Empire, Palpatine and Vader. Him underestimating/misreading Kylo. And clearly Rey and Kylo can connect even without him, so even here he was overconfident.
Some here ask, why is there no Interdictor. Caveat of not having seen the Clone War cartoon series, and not having seen Rebel season 3 (not available here yet, please do not spoil!), the only Interdictor in film is the one in Rebels, and it fails catastrophically. It is also quite a liability to trade and a risk for your own Empire/1st Order ships, even in normal operation.
Holdo not explaining a thing to Poe. Poe is less rank then her. And they did not know if there was a mole somewhere.
People here comparing it to all the moviesd of the last years and saying it's a rip-off of A+B+C+D. There is always a certain style of aesthetics, ambience, camera moving - call it fashion or maybe its just an effect what is right now tought at moviemaking schools/courses/hands-on-education (just compare movies from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s etc)(At least we are away now from the late 90s-style cameras in every action scene moving so fast you cannot see anything) - so of course movies remind you of other movies. And there are only some very few archetypes of storytelling, of course stuff is similar!
People here complaining about Luke contradicting some Lukas interview. You know, Luke can be wrong, don't you? Regardless how this turns out, I really like his stance on Yedi and Sith using the force totally wrong, they do not have the right to do this.
Canto Bight: I think it needed to be shown how oblivious many are to the galaxie's future. How cruelty is deeply rooted still (or again?) And to show how the resistance spark gained ground in the end nevertheless. You could connect to the kids, you knew who they were (Not some random people or scenes like the celebrations in the remastered OTs)
Who says that DJ is just a random hacker? Maybe he is exactly this superhacker, but just lost horribly to the guy in white, including loosing the plumberry(?) brooch to the guy in white, and thus being thrown into jail cause being broke, not paying his debts? Remember, they throw Rose and Finn into jail for just a parking violation.
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AMBIVALENT
The clipping - a lot more coherent this time. But still, Finns arc and esp Phasma got the short end of the stick, feels like they had to clip a lot to get down to 2.5hrs.
Yoda suddenly active and physically affecting the world, before that, force ghosts only acted as guides (caveat, me having not seen Clone wars series). And - while he was funny, being the funny clown is not really fitting to Yoda. (At least he was not bad-CGI hopping around like being on amphetamins+way too many energy drinks).
OK, maybe Yoda found it neccessary to actively manifest physical effects, critical stage for the Jedi...
The Dreadnought's military role is a stupid superweapon one. Why only having big guns downwards, why not having them along the spine, so you can fire upwards as well.
I can accept the battering ram on the moon, after all the First Order is stupidly fond of giant symbols and weapons as demonstrations of power. But I do not like it. It is not really practical if you have orbit to space bombardment and really versatile atmospheric-capable heavy punching starfighters available. They would normally just destroy that slow thing once it is fielded, so why build such a vulnerable piece at all?
Not happening more at the dark side place on Ahch-To. I hope Rey gets teased a bit more by the Dark side in the last film.
Finn relapsing into his coward role. Poe especially, but even Finn and Rose responsible for soo many dead. Not sure yet what to think about this.
Astonished that they did not kill off Leia.
Holdos ram. Her being able to steer it alone. Would have been more fitting if some few skeleton crew and maybe a critically wounded Ackbar (to give him a worthy end as well, but maybe they wanted to not diminish Holdo's sacrifice) would have helped her steering and calculating the jump.
You need a really BIG ship (enough mass) to have an effect. Also it does need extreme precision in jumping, that's why it probably is not practical and not a common tactic. There might be some taboo on it, otherwise it woúld be a common tactics to just hyperspace jump bombs/susicide ships into the middle of enemy fleets or into enemy star system's suns, causing them to go nova.
I think Holdo gambled and got lucky, jumping precisely where she needed.
It would have been much more logical if only one certain ship type and individual has the tech to track. So it was a bit forced explanation, and really stramge, that every capital in the First Order fleet suddenly has this new tech.
The BSF17 bombers make no sense, sorry.
Deus-Ex BB8. That, however, is a Star Wars tradition, compare Deus-Ex R2D2 and Deus-Ex Chopper.
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THE BAD
Still not explained where Snoke comes from. Still not explained where the First Order is from, and how they have that much resources. I like reading. I like vast tomes. However, whereading a book is REQUIRED to understand a film, than it IS a bad film. Then you can just stay with the books, no need to even make the film or watch it.
Partly this is TFA's fault though, as that movie did set the premise/proposition for the whole new triology. It should have been explained there already.
Maz hopping around like being on amphetamines+too many energy drinks.
Leia space scene.
Two lowly TIE fighter soo easily critting the Raddus bridge, while the Raddus clearly has megatons of shielding power left later on. Clearly they were dealed the Critical hit card "Viewport Rupture" under the shield. Sad that Ackbar met such an unworthy demise.
They still have no grasp on distances and view distances in space, how vastly space actually is.
The runaway chase could work if everyone has the same acceleration, and the First Order was too late out with accelerating. Then the starfightrs could actually not keep up before running out of fuel. But still, why did they not just microjump some cruisers or destroyers to a place in front of the Raddus, then shooting her down?
Why not just send some missiles, these have to be faster than ships, otherwies they would never work?
