Star Wars - The Last Jedi. - some thoughts - warning spoilers.

I've done some stewing on it and realized it is a bit of a mess.

It also feels like it's missing connective tissue.  Nothing as particularly glaring as Leia and Chewbacca not hugging over the death of their closest friend/lover and instead of hugging the protagonist.  It just needed a line here and there. 

however, like everybody else, I'm putting in my own two cents.

1. Closed Ideas.  Every scene needed a proper beginning, middle and end of the movie before throwing new ideas at them.  It's what made Empire strikes back one of the strongest movies of all time.  A great example of this is when Rei and Kylo are reaching out to each other and luke breaks the connection.  that scene wasn't completed and it felt cut midstream.

2. the passive-aggressive nature of Luke Skywalker.  why did Luke leave a bread trail he didn't want others to follow.  An easy way to fix this is simple:  He didn't. R2 did.  just a simple line of his favorite astromech telling him off could set it up.

3. Finn:  the worst thing they did was have Finn show up in a comedic scene when he woke up.  it stunk and took away from the scene.  You can't make him funny anymore because it has bad timing and his story arc felt a little jarring.

4. Rose: I like Rose, but we had a stronger connection to her sister who died in the first five minutes.  And seeing Rose Actions later, does this mean that her people are lemmings?  I hope she's allowed to actually do something next episode.

5. BB-8 needs personality  After some amazing droid characters, bb-8 is little more than a magic 8 ball.  Contrast it with r2d2, c3p0, ig-88, chomper, hk-77, K-2SO and hell even the trade federation battle droids.  The only thing we know is he is a little  (which puts r2 in the prequels to shame) and Poe really loves him.

6. If Finn and Rose have to be on Snoke's ship,  have the magic 8 ball assisted with c3p0 "I'm a pro of sneaking around in imperial places."  with them.  As stated before, the magic 8 ball doesn't have much personality and it would be a great way to show more of a personality by playing off c-3p0 (make him super polite to create an additional dynamic and contrast to r2). This use of a team makes it easier to hand off the torch to the next generation.  Plus it saves the scene at space Vegas by cutting down one more set (completely unneeded for the final scene which did a great job).

7. Holdo felt like a walk on a tv show.  Can you imagine Poe butting heads with Admiral Akbar instead and it was his last stand instead.  She should have been either setup in episode 7 because while the actor did a great job, I had no emotional attachment to her.  So even when she's right, she's dead before we knew her.

8.  Needed more aliens.  This is more of a personal quirk, but star wars introduced me to alien player characters.  I'm seriously glad Chewbacca is still there, and he's still kicking ass, but that was a whopping 5 minutes.  They blew up Ackbar in the first act and it honestly cheesed me off. I understand the actor died between sets, but for all the multiculturalism of the staff, they are all stinking humans (save that one morn like guy that doesn't even get a line).  Hell, I'd be happy to have an elderly wicket in an x-wing whose been around the galaxy.  Say what you want about Ewoks, they were alien cannibalistic teddy bears that for all their comedy, could seriously haunt your dreams when you think about it.

Now that I've triggered you with Ewoks, I point you to the numerous better choices of aliens in the star wars universe that you could have picked.  The Gaff, The Gran, The Rodian, or even a Jawa could have satisfied that itch.

The acting itself was fine.  Mark Hamil and Carrie Fisher knocked their roles out of the park and Rey and Kylo did a descent job defining their characters.  Poe had a descent story arc and it was fun watching a lot of the tropes we expect from star wars fall flat on their face.

When all is said and done, it's about the same as episode III.  A descent movie with some mistakes here and there.