Just saw SW:E8 and I do agree with most criticisms. In general, the diegesis was often annoying, eyerolling, or just plain bad, but the narrative in general I enjoyed. It is only Star Wars, after all. Some thoughts:
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Kylo is annoying, but at the same time, I am tolerant of it, and in general, it's for one big reason that I saw was Johnson's entire point with this movie: to change the politics in Star Wars.
It was a shift from characters being princes and marrying princesses to being common, from removing the privilege of the Force and the fate of the galaxy from the hands of an elite cult that control an organized religion (Jedi) and putting it in the hands of the people (nobodies from nowhere). The casino sequence could have been shorter (totally unnecessary stampede), but it also served a narrative purpose that I ended up liking. Especially the bit where Benicio shows how the wealthy get rich off both sides of the war, not just off the bad guys.
It did mark a paradigm shift in the series, and it wasn't just the little things, like actually shooting at Skywalker with the giant weapons instead of insisting that he (Ren) be the one to kill him in some act of annoyingly unnecessary hubris. Even the "one big weapon" part at the end just resulted in a busted door. They didn't take it out, they had to run. I really liked how heroics were obviously part of it, but were constantly disparaged, especially through Poe and his relationships with his two female commanders. All they had really been doing up to this point was blindly following what amounts to their own version of a royal family, who were at war with essentially a rival faction, while literally, trillions of people died along the way. The whole saga was a neverending cycle of death, and they were perpetuating it.
None of the character's big stunts worked. They all failed. And it sort of made all the previous stunts, which were celebrated as successes, a failure as well. I like that Luke's temple failed. Organization and hierarchy where always the bane of the Jedi. The Dark Side thrived off of it. When Luke is talking to himself-via-Yoda at the end, I like how failure is recast as education instead. When he "dies", it really felt like Luke had finally come to terms with it all, achieved Nirvana, and finally became one with the universe.
It brings me back to Kylo being annoying. Why should he be anything but? He's an overprivileged little brat. Royalty. A member of the great Skywalker family and he assumes that he has the right to power. He breaks the toys he can't have, rather than see someone else have them. In the narcissus sequence when Rey goes into the underbelly of the island, we see what the Dark Side really is, a mirror, infinitely replicating. Luke was telling her to see through the mirror, to "reach out", and to be truly connected to an other. The biblical phrase "through a glass darkly" came to mind. I thought it was a lovely message, delivered in a lovely place, by a character and man who means so much to people who grew up with these movies. I really appreciated it.
I also really appreciated how Kylo and Rey talked to each other using one of the most basic elements of cinematic language: the eyeline match. It was shot in exactly the same way that it would have been if they had been in the same room. I loved every second of it. It made it a movie for me in a way I haven't really felt for a long time.
We needed to get that space-cowboy-movie feeling back, the gunslinger with nothing to lose on a big flat screen. We didn't need the people who had a legacy to live up to, and a responsibility born of privilege to lead, or at least, to be followed. I feel like a burden has been lifted from the whole SW universe, and it opens the door to a more relevant, more politically interesting future. More importantly, it gave me that feeling back. It was great that the kids in Star Wars play with the Luke Skywalker action figure just like I did. It brought it back to where it always should have been.
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Apart from all that, it was basically just a load of fairytale nonsense with lame dialogue, questionable acting, and an overcomplicated plot that just barely overcame the burden of so much other bad writing and bad acting that came before it, and will most certainly come after.
