{Spoilers!}A lot of the scenes that could have been saved for an epic climax in episode IX were instead shoved into episode VIII. Just when we think Kylo Ren might've been redeemed sooner than we thought -- his character says "lolnope!" and immediately turns on Rey. Rey's lineage is also left unclear, which was a question that the movie was advertised as answering if I remember correctly.

Several key original trilogy characters also get next to no screentime. R2-D2 and Chewbacca were almost completely left out of the entire ordeal.

Kylo Ren's origin story is also completely incongruous with Luke's core character (and even Mark Hamill disagreed on this subject). The entire mythos of Luke revolves around his willingness to sacrifice himself for the little bit of good he could see in his otherwise evil father. In direct contrast to that heroic and selfless act, are we really supposed to believe that same character would seriously consider killing his own nephew just because he saw a tiny little bit of darkness in him?

Aside from that, the ending of Luke's character is also very sudden and unwelcome. There is a certain anticlimactic feeling to watching Luke just suddenly disappear just because he had used the force a bit too much. The movie seems to forget that this is the #1 most beloved character in all of the franchise, and all he had done up to that point was... nothing.

Aside from these major points, the movie was indeed an enjoyable experience. I do not intend to say I hated it... however, I do believe that a few major mistakes were made during the making of it. It used up some major story elements that could have been saved for IX, and ultimately serves to be little more than a setup to a movie that is now going to have to rely almost entirely on new characters that people as-of-yet have shown little to no connection as of yet. That is not to say the characters themselves aren't good -- but these characters are now completely on their own, and will now have to rely almost completely on their own merits and weight. It definitely feels to me that Luke's character had been underused, and watching him die to Kylo would have almost been preferable to watching him disappear into his force-induced hallucination of the twin suns of Tattooine. This is not to say it wasn't a beautiful way for him to go -- but the timing felt wrong. And overall -- that's what the movie really boils down to: bad timing of events.

Also... don't even get me started on Snoke one does not simply kill off a character who's backstory had not been explained