Rey tries to get Luke involved in the Galactic Civil War, as what remains of the Resistance tries to escape to a remote planet.

Not as good as I remember it. There were moments of greatness, like Yoda's appearance, and the stampede, as well as Rey and Ben's fight against the royal guards and of course Luke's projected fight against Kylo Ren. But most of the story didn't make sense, especially Luke's guilt and the arbitrary time limit. I don't know how Finn and Rose got to the gambling planet and back in such a short time. It wasn't Snoke's ship that was tracking them, anyway -it was the last to arrive, and Snoke didn't even know about the tracking when they started.

Better than the first movie, but still missing a lot in terms of story structure. Does anybody realize that Finn's mission actually caused the destruction of most of the transports? But Luke's part in the story was good, once it got going. I don't like him as the grumpy isolationist master. I also still have a lot of trouble with the premise, that the Republic is gone. I realize that a lot of the reasoning goes into the books that accompany the movies, but neither the original trilogy nor the prequel trilogy did this, and for good reason: it's a bad idea to rely on cross-medium platforms to give away critical information. The books should only offer extra tidbits and ooh moments from those who read them. I did think that Yoda's appearance was great, as was Luke's final (phantom) battle.

I think the biggest problem in this movie is knowing what it's about. While trying to write the summary, I had trouble coming up with something that didn't sound mundane, and I'm not sure I succeeded even in that.

I still can't accept the premise of the Star Wars world at this point in its history. How did the First Order come to terrorize so many systems, after destroying a single planet with elected individuals back in The Force Awakens? How could the Republic collapse like that? It's not as if that one world controlled everything. Over the course of the prequel trilogy, we saw that it took a huge war and the careful manipulation of the clone forces into all of society that allowed Palpatine to take control. Here we're given nothing. How can the small Resistance band be all that's left of the Republic's vast fleets and army? In The Force Awakens, they were covering a small region of space, and had nothing to do with the Republic's military.

There were some great moments here, like Luke's ability to project himself onto the salt planet and confront Kylo Ren with peace instead of anger. Like Kylo and Rey's fight against the Imperial guards, who resemble General Greivous' protectors from Revenge of the Sith. I kind of like that Rey had no significant parentage, that the Force affected her because the galaxy would need her. I also liked Yoda's appearance, and the way he could call down the lightning to destroy the "sacred" Jedi texts.

I also liked the way the casino scenes gave the Star Wars universe a feel for normal people. This is who the Resistance are fighting for. But other than that, it didn't contribute to the plot, and Finn and Rose actually brought attention to the fleeing fleet, leading to their near destruction.

Of course, the visuals were spectacular, which makes up for the lack of story in some regards, as long as I don't feel like thinking too much, which is what Star Wars has turned into.