Finished watching it from our generous Korean friends on the high seas. Many Bulgogi's were consumed in the watching of this shit show.
1. Do not think, just watch. This movie survives on the surface, the first hour is as everyone said, Episode 8 crammed into 15min. Digging any farther into the basic story telling concepts breaks immersion. Who,What,When, Where,Why, and How are utterly immaterial to JJ's concept. Sit down, enjoy the ride, fuck you very much for the movie ticket leave and do not think. If I was going for a Fast and Furious or Transformers movie, this would be OK. I'm going for Star Wars, and Star Wars has Lore, History, Myth, and Legend. Answers and depth is not JJ's strong suit, only Flash, don't look at the man behind the curtain, enjoy the pretty view. If you get anxiety from too much light stimuli go mainline a bar of Xanex, you'll need it for the first hour.
2. Physical effects were absolute trash tier ripped from a B-Movie. CGI can cover allot of sins but the beautifulness of Lucsafilm was that they could make you believe that the objects you were looking at were real, belonged, and were absolutely built/designed just like that. All i could see was anytime the movie zoomed in on a physical, non-cgi'd item, it looked like something out of a grade school science fair project: The Wayfinder in kylo's ship, the wires hanging out of C3-PO when he gets hacked, the shitty pieces floating around the death star, and sweet Jesus in a basket Exogol looks like a Scrap yard you'd find in a West Virginia back country. All the money went to the digital effects and no one cared to make props look like they belonged. The Photoshop Copy/Paste of the fleets at the end was enough for me to go "Fuck all this, where the fuck were these assholes a month ago?"
3. Palaptaine had too much lipstick on. Seriously was he sitting in the same car as Lesley Nielson eating some pistachios from Naked Gun? Fuck all the makeup on him was godawful. Again, physical assets were ignored and not cleaned up in post.
4. Nothing matters, no consequences - Rinse repeat everything said on here. No one was in any threat, there was no stakes, any drama created or loss is invalidated in 5 minutes by whatever caused the problems to occur in the first place.
5. Slow Down, It gets good - When the main trio gets to be themselves , to relax, when the frenetic OMGFASTERXPOSITION! is removed then it's actually not too bad. Luke's shit hole island was fine, the digging through the Death star was OK, the final battle was not so shabby. When the movie stopped forcing you to dump cocaine levels of dopamine into your brain the movie has some OK parts.
6. IT's all Plug n' Play - Movies are filmed at different times and different areas and different things and put together in post. This movie felt , like many has said, like a jumbled up mess of Check Marks (need a chase, need a heiest, need a loss, need a fetch quest, etc) that a JJ abrams movies is known for and then in post they figured out where the hell each piece went and fucked off in any type or semblance of plot/story. None of the goddamn Fetch Quests are necessary if, and this is a HUGE IF, any of the main characters were to stop for one goddamn second and say "Hey what do we know about X, Is there anyone there we can talk to? Oh Lando is there? Put him on speakerphone. Lando my man get the thing we need, appreciate it, going to look for Y now Leia says she can't wait for that MadDog2020." Recon, intelligence, and any amount of delegation is ignored as the characters rush from one set piece to another.
7. Pandering to fans - yes it's all there, yes it's bad. Fuck it all it doesn't make me happy I loathe the rat needed to kiss my ass in order for me to watch this. JOKES ON YOU CAPTAIN!!!11!
Summary: The awful pacing, the incessant pandering, the shitty graphics can't put a big enough bow on this pig to not realize the pig's a pack of bacon that's already rotted in the sun. At the end of the movie you take home your "Participation" award and drown your sorrows in vodka and painkillers. 1.5/5 stars.