This is the truth why there's hate and love for this crap.

they're kids movies... not ever going to measure up to adult standards...

time for older fans to move on...

This is a movie for kids. It's very basic and shallow, the motivations of the "bad guys" are boring or non existent. The only reason you watch it is because it's popular.

While I agree with you, the thing is that the two goals need not be mutually exclusive. Why can't a film be made that offers what kids are looking for but respects the older fan and matches their expected standards as well? It's not impossible. A good example is Wall-E. Great, entertaining film for kids, who love the central character, but also has a solid story and deeper themes for adults. I loved it, my wife loved it, and my grandkids all loved it too. Ok, it's a Pixar CGI film, but the point remains - why can't a Star Wars film be made to a similar standard?

The original trilogy was for kids, too. But it could also be enjoyed by adults. It was a good story, well told. The Last Jedi is a dumb story told badly. It was beautiful to look at, had some really good acting, but the plot was borderline non-existent. It was simply a series of events strung together by an illogical thread. I did love the porgs, though.

From what I can tell, most people are pissed off because this film was a convoluted mess with too many story lines, too many characters and lack of continuity of the original in terms of character behavior.

In fact, it seems like Luke's fate and his actions are the most divisive here. Most contend that Luke would not behave the way he did. It's possible for Luke to change in a major way, but we weren't shown anything that would cause such drastic change (I'm talking about his desire to take out Ben Solo in his sleep, not his behavioral change after the school burning).

There is plenty of love for this film though because it panders to women - all of the depicted, and often fearless, leaders in the rebellion are now women. Most of the dudes are shown as being either trigger happy morons or absolute cowards. From what I gather, most of the praises for this film seem to stem from the female population.

As for me - I didn't like any of the prequels or sequels. I did think some of the, now non-canon, books were pretty good.

There's no doubt that I have changed - most of the big budget films for me are a big miss - meanwhile, they are all getting higher scores than godfather and its kin. Am I getting too old? I doubt it - my opinion in films tends to differ from most people of my age as well, which means the age has nothing to do with it.

Having said that - I seem to be more in tune with the majority when it comes to TV series. Breaking bad, shield, sopranos - they all got critical acclaim, and yet I find myself praising them as well. For sci fi, I'm more of a star trek fan and we have 2 trek shows going now - both of which are vastly superior to anything Star Wars related (it's all a matter of opinion, of course).

At the end of the day, while we all change over time, you also need to consider that film making process changed as well. When compared to our day, too many of the modern films focus on flashy graphics and little plot coherence.

"The original took months of matte shooting just to make a ship fly but now we can use cgi to make 100 ships fly in less then a day. "

You have no idea what you are talking about. CGI rendering takes a hell of a lot longer than matte shooting. Just one single frame can take literally hours of computer processing, and that's after the team of dozens of artists have worked on the image for days.