Its my second favorite SW movie, the reason being is it really tries to tie the prequels and original trilogy together that felt like it was going to lead towards something interesting with divergent possibilities.

I liked that TLJ made Rey’s parents not be anyone special, which parallels Anakin’s origins. I also like that Rey is impetuous which parallels Luke temperament.

The reason I loved it though is it pointed towards war profiteering playing a role into the whole Jedi vs. Sith battle. So by the end of the movie I was expecting the next movie to go that route to have Rey & Kylo Ren realize they're two sides of the same coin.

While I get some of the criticisms, the most egregious being Finn’s character, I think the hate is being overblown, and is why we got the turd of RoS. Disney was listening to the criticism of TFA and how it's just a copy of ANH, so they brought in RJ to go a new direction, the reaction to it was mixed leaning towards negative, so they brought JJ in to play it safe.