I thought the whole movie looked incredible well. The visuals were amazing, the shots great and the special effects pretty stunning at most points. Didn't really like how Yoda or those CGI penguin birds looked like but apart from that there isn't really something visual which was bad or bothered me (except the salt planet which had a huge mountain range right next to a geometrical perfect flat ground as if it was made out of something like Minecraft bioms, that just felt odd).

I also liked the connection between Rey and Kylo even though their Facetime moments were somewhat weird and casually explained by Snoke in only one sentence. I really think they could've made far more out of this. Luke's internal conflict is good as well. Him not really sure what to do when Rey shows up was interesting.

All in all I think the storyline was pretty weak though. There wasn't really happening that much. The whole movie was basically one big long fight with some characters leaving just to come back afterwards. Some of the characters were pretty useless and unnecessary. Hackerman was literally just a random tool which suddenly appeared and then suddenly disappeared without any depth at all. Rose felt extremely forced (her sister beeing the hero at the start was cool though) and so did her "love story" with Finn whose only use in the whole movie was knowledge about tech stuff of the dark side. Chewbacca was also there I guess. Who is Phasma again? And I hate those penguin birds. They literally had no use or role besides supposedly being cute and sell as toys.
Snoke was a joke as well. I somewhat liked that there wasn't known that much about him in ep.VII to keep it somewhat mysterious who he might be. But literally nothing was added in VIII. I mean, this is supposed to be like the most powerful and evil being who's on his way to enslave the whole universe and destroy any hope and rebels (which looks quite promising at that point. But who is he? What is his past? What did he do? How did he get into that situation? You don't just randomly show up one day, get a huge army and number of evil subordinates and start to conquer the universe. Same with his death. No fight, no story, nothing. Get killed by a cheap trick and that's it. Noone even seems to care that much (except Hux maybe) He really just was a stand-in for an evil overlord without much effort and deepth put into him. Maybe you could make an extra movie about his backstory though (greetings from disney).

I think the humor was pretty annoying. It just felt like there was a forced joke every two minutes to gain chuckles from the audience. Sure, some sort of comical input might be good for some moments of relief but for me all those constant jokes made it more difficult to take the movie serious. But I mean, after Leia doing the Princess Peach floating it was hard anyway. Like seriously, what the fuck was that? Again many situations where a character is at the absolute edge of a certain death and then get's saved last second and incredibly close. It's very common in Hollywood nowadays but imo it's just annoying. It just makes it hard for me to feel the tension and importance of a dangerous scene with a main character when I know that in 95% they somehow will survive anyway no matter how hopeless the situation is.

I also think that there were so many situations which were just plain stupid and didn't make any sense. For example the first order not calling reinforcements when literally 100% of the resistance was helpless trapped in a single spaceship to really make sure they'll win the fight. Nah, just follow them for like 8 hours while firing useless shots, what could possibly go wrong? Or Holdo not telling her plan to the crew. Like seriously, why wouldn't you tell your completely desperate mates that there's still hope instead of letting them go insane, becoming distrustful and trying to desert? What's the point in keeping that strategy secret? Also, why would she need to stay on the ship? Doesn't that thing have an auto-pilot or what. It really bothered me that right after it was said that "someone needs to operate the ship" she just stands there watching out of the window doing nothing. The lightspeed kamikaze was pretty dope but how it came to the situation was just stupid. Or when they landed on this salt planet and were completely helpless and almost unarmed in that cave, why would the first order under someone with Kylo's temperament land their absolute slowest equipment not right there but like 20 miles away so that it'd take another 30 minutes to reach the cave and actually attack? Especially after playing the clock worked so well the last time when they were chasing the space ship. That's just stupid. There were more situations like that, these were the ones standing out for me though.

What bummed me the most was the lack of character development though. Except for Luke noone important really changed during the film. Sure, they had fights, they achieved something, grew stronger, learned things, struggled, had issues with themselves, almost switched sides and so on, but all in all the intentions, positions in the universe and mindsets of all main characters are basically exactly the same at the start and at the end of the film. Many unimportant people died though. They lost a lot of support, a big useless overlord was replaced and Jedis are still a thing, apart from that they're pretty much in the same situation like at the start. Kylo betraying his master was probably the most interesting part but considering the importance of that character it isn't much either. There were a lot of opportunities to really change the situation but none of those were used. Rey could have switched to the dark sides. Kylo could've switched sides as well rising against a mighty Snoke and creating mistrust in the resistance. Rose could've saved Finn which results in the mini death star gun destroying the whole rest of the resistance with only them, Luke, Chewie and Rey left. Or let Finn have his heroic death. Or at least let Leia die after being blasted into space. Or something completely different, just let something happen to get new conflicts or at least some sort of a new position. It feels like they're really afraid of letting go of old characters while at the same time introducing lots of new ones resulting in many half assed appearances of some of them. Luke returning and Rey picking up stones was pretty neat but apart from that the end is really weak imo.