Ultimately a disappointing conclusion to what was a disjointed waste of a trilogy.
My major takeaway from it is that nothing in this trilogy is earned, it all feels empty and our new trio of protagonists have almost zero charm, two of them have no development, and none of them are interesting in the least.
PT: Logical and made sense, lacked narrative flow and dwelled for too long on a bunch of pointless things.
OT: Logical and made sense, and also had smooth narrative flow.
ST: Illogical and a lot of it doesn't make sense, also has very little narrative flow.
Apparently in the unique case of TROS it's alright for a movie to be structurally an absolute mess, have the dialogue of an early morning kids shows, but because it has fan service sprinkled here and there it's supposed to be absolved of all its sins.
Finn, Poe, Rey, and Kylo all had fantastic potential after TFA and none of it seems to be realized. Overall I'd say Rey and Kylo ended up looking the best, probably Kylo the most because his arc was complex, but Rey lost a lot of her charm when she was conveniently a complete God-mode jedi at certain points, and then an incompetent child at others all in the same movie.
On a generous day I'd probably give it a 6/10, cinematography and effects were cool, resolution of Kylo's arc was solid, I enjoyed the OT character's cameos, but the disjointed narrative and the head-scratching choice to bring Palpatine back (so Rey, Leia, Luke, and Kylo being force sensitive couldn't sense there's some Sith planet where a universe-conquering army was being built...?) nosedived this trilogy into the ground. I mean wouldn't Luke surely have mentioned to someone before he inexplicably goes and dies "Hey btw, I was hunting down this dude that might have held the key to finding a threatening Sith stronghold where someone *cough*Palpatine*cough* is plotting to subjugate our whole galaxy"? Honestly one of the most poorly executed plots I've seen.
This !!!!!
Thank you Sir, you have summed up my thoughts about this film far better than I could.
I would add a few thoughts, building on what you wrote:
All the Abrams SW films lack narrative flow
Kylo's arc was pretty good, although some dialogue after he resurrects Rey might have been good.
Daisy Ridley had pretty much the same expression for the whole film, until she smiled at the very end. There was so much more they could have done with her being Palpatine's grandchild, without even bringing Palpy back. I did like her final moments in the film though.
People accuse her character of being a Mary Sue - well after ROS she'll be the primary example for Mary Sue characters.
This has nothing to do with gender, as some have suggested, those people forget that Luke recieved some training from Obi Wan ( about not trusting his eyes and using the Force) before and then advice during his successful attack on the Death Star. Luke doesn't listen to advice in ESB and loses a hand as a result and gets thrashed by Vader. In ROTJ he defeats Vader but then is nearly killed by Palpatine. Luke loses and fails and learns hard lessons - Rey defeats a trained lightsaber fighter, Kylo Ren, the first time she holds a lightsaber and manifests whatever force power the story requires on demand without any prior training ( in TFA she does the Jedi mind trick and uses the force to resist Kylo's probing without any training or suggestion she knew such things were possible ) she works out how to heal the snake monster because the story needs her to. I bet young Obi Wan wished he knew how to do that when Quin Gon Jinn was dying in his arms.
Rey is never defeated by anyone and only "dies" after destroying Palpatine, something even Yoda couldn't do
The film ( and the trilogy) relies very heavily on plot contrivances which are so convenient as to be lazy storytelling - e.g. Supporting character has a "Captain's medallion" which can get her access to any First Order ship. 2 minutes later the main characters need to get access to the nearest First Order ship, hey guess what.....
In TFA Luke's lightsabre just happening to be there was a similar convenience.
There were also utterly pointless storylines eg
Chewie gets sent outside by himself, gets captured, we think he's dead and 5 minutes later we find out he's not ( removing any emotional impact or potential for surprise). Surely there was an easier and more sensible reason for Rey to go to Kylo's ship.
The concept that stormtroopers cannot hit anything is taken to the extreme in ROS as the main characters blast their way through Kylo's ship - after a while it became a lot like a first person shooter game and totally undermined any sense of the mains being in any real danger.
The three leads had zero chemistry with each other - which was one of the key ingredients in the success of the OT.
One really needs to turn off one's brain or you start wondering how a crippled Palpatine survived the fall ( that could have used an explanation) and then escaped the Death Star before it blew up, and then amassed the vast resources and manpower ( as in tens of thousands, maybe millions of people necessary to build and then crew his fleet of planet destroyers) and did so in a location so Secret that nobody knew how to find it without the Sith wayfinder macguffin. How did he get all the Star Destroyer parts delivered there ? How did he feed and house all those people ?
Rose got exactly the amount of screen time her character deserved. She wasn't a main or even an important character, so she wasn't necessary for a lot of ROS - hence, she wasn't in it.
Richard E Grant was more convincing in his role as a one dimensional evil officer, in his 5 or so minutes of screen time than Oscar Isaac in the entirety of the trilogy. Who exactly was Poe Dameron ? TBH I never even started to care - he sure as **** wasn't anywhere near as cool as Han Solo, that's for sure.
At the end I was pleased that Kylo Ren's story was brought to a satisfying end ( although he deserved a dignified cremation, like Darth Vader) and Rey adopted the Skywalker name, taking the film back to where the OT started. I was also pleased that the trilogy was over which means that Disney probably won't let Abrams and co near the original SW cast or story again.
I loathed TFA, not because it was a bad film - on it's own merits it was okay, but when seen as a completely unoriginal rehashing of ANH, with a key gender swap, well then its contemptible. I mean it's pretty much the exact same story with less charming leads and weaker storytelling. I give it a 5/10.
So ROS gets a 6/10 from me too. Not a terrible film at all but one which feels hardly worth to bear the Star Wars brand.