"Disney-era films are objectively better as films than the prequels."

>Not too sure about this. At least the prequels had an end in mind: the rise of Darth Vader. Sequels don't feel like there was a plan to begin with. SOMEHOW, the empire is back and they managed to build a XXL death star without anyone noticing. Rebel alliance are rebels again SOMEHOW.

My beliefs lean more towards Democrat but I frequent lots of Republican/Conservative forums. I also have a lot of Republican friends. It's kinda shocking how often the same arguments, verbage, and even the same "clever' jokes pop up time and time again. I'm sure many of them feel they think for themselves but (for example) next time there's a stabbing in some foreign country, there will be a hundred comments saying "Ban assault knives! Ha ha."

I see that same behavior when people defend The Last Jedi. "You just don't like a female lead." or "It didn't follow the story you had in your head." or any number of premanufactured arguments that are repeated ad nauseum. I'm sure people who say these things think they're being original but...

It gets frustrating especially when there's a ton of videos that easily explain what's wrong with the movie. I used to defend Batman v Superman. I'd say "You just don't get it", "You're not a real comics fan", 'You're just a Marvel fanboy" or whatever. Turns out, BvS was just a bad movie. I didn't want to admit it.

TLJ is a bad movie (IMO) It does a lot of things wrong. It's cool if you like it. I still like BvS but I won't ever dismiss the opinion of someone who criticizes it, anymore. But  that doesn't mean that following movies can't be good. I WANT Rise of Skywalker to be great! We shall see.

Agreed! Some of these talking points really DO really remind me of political arguments with how irrelevant they are to the actual topic at hand and how they all seem to be repeating the same points - often to attack the person themselves. Which is pretty bizarre to me when we're dealing with a run-of-the-mill sci-fi film. I mean honestly if it didn't have the Star Wars name slapped on it nobody would give this cheese fest a second look lol.

There's a youtube video (Mauler or something) that dissects and breaks the Last Jedi down to an absurd level of detail and outlines all the things wrong with the film with a ton of highly insightful and nuanced points - and this video series was like 5 hours long! And yes, I'm not too proud to admit I watched all 5 hours lol. It was at that point I realized "ok, this film is OBJECTIVELY bad." I mean, of course you can still like it, more power to ya if you do, (and Mauler mentions this too) but some of these people not only argue that it's actually great, but that those who DON'T like it are the problem in some way. It's laughable. 

It's like, I enjoy Revenge of the Sith. At the same time, I recognize it's objectively NOT a good film. It's a guilty pleasure. And I CERTAINLY am not going to engage in personal attacks on those who DON'T enjoy the film!

Of course that's not to say there isn't a degree of subjectivity in art and entertainment. Of course there is. But there IS also an objective element to some of it. Otherwise someone can simply shit on a painting or something and call it art lol. You've got to draw the line somewhere or it's all meaningless. 

I liked the movie, therefore I'm deluded, and I'm in the wrong for encouraging others to watch it instead of listening to people who say "don't bother"?

Yeah, sure. How about you bite me, okay?

Even I don't think TLJ is perfect, as I clearly stated, but I think the most strident criticisms of it are unfounded.

Luke's characterization seems like the most common target. Well, to me Luke feels completely in character. The pessimistic, defeatist, emotional Luke growing up to be an old pessimistic, defeatist, emotionally broken hermit. It's his natural disposition. Even Yoda calls him out on his old bad habits. And the idea that Luke Skywalker, the man who did this in a moment of anger and weakness:

...might also in a moment of weakness ignite his lightsaber after seeing what lied within Ben's mind but still refrain from striking him down seems completely plausible to me. It seems to me that a lot of fans had this idea in their head that Old Luke was supposed to have become some wise Jedi Master, an Obi Wan 2.0 or whatever. Or something more akin to however Luke was portrayed in the old Legends material. Instead we got OT Luke with grey hair and some people called foul. In other words, their headcanon was ignored. A legacy character's portrayal not conforming to your personal idea of how they should be portrayed does not make the movie bad.

What's next? "Rey is a Mary Sue!"? Please. She's even more flawed in this film. Still stubborn, impulsive, naive, hotheaded, and nothing goes according to plan for her (in keeping with "failure" as an overarching theme of the movie). There's nothing about her any more Mary Sue-ish than, say, Luke using the Force to get the kill shot on the Death Star despite next to no training, or young Anakin whoops-ing his way to getting the victory for the good guys at the Battle of Naboo.

Snoke's death? Not really much different than Palpatine in the OT. Snoke and the Emperor were both one-note Bigger Bads who served as a plot device to advance another character's story arc and spent their brief screen times engaging in evil gloating. Vader killed Palpatine to save his son and redeem himself. Kylo Ren killed Snoke to achieve his own goals. And just like Snoke, Palpatine had no character background or anything. His history was a blank. We just knew he was the leader of the bad guys. Palpatine didn't become fleshed out until the prequels. Snoke may be the Bigger Bad, but Kylo Ren is the main antagonist, and it's his story that matters on the villainous side. The fact that some people didn't get the back story they wanted out of Snoke does not make the movie bad.

The "Holdo Maneuver"? Pointless technical quibbles easily handwaved away, and such minutiae not immediately satisfying your questions does not make a movie bad (as if the writers are obligated to explain to you in the film itself how they view the economics and tactical usefulness of a lightspeed kamikaze in a way that satisfies you). And besides, it's an awesome scene.

Let's be honest. There is precious little in the way of legitimate film criticism coming from the vocal minority that are TLJ's haters. It's not a bad movie by any stretch. Rabid fans not liking something does not make that film bad. Ishtar, Howard the Duck, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Dragonball Evolution, and the works of Uwe Boll and Seltzer & Friedberg are bad movies. The Last Jedi is not, even if it doesn't satisfy your needs and desires as a fan.

I liked the movie, therefore I'm deluded, and I'm in the wrong for encouraging others to watch it instead of listening to people who say "don't bother"?

Yeah, sure. How about you bite me, okay?

Even I don't think TLJ is perfect, as I clearly stated, but I think the most strident criticisms of it are unfounded.

Luke's characterization seems like the most common target. Well, to me Luke feels completely in character. The pessimistic, defeatist, emotional Luke growing up to be an old pessimistic, defeatist, emotionally broken hermit. It's his natural disposition. Even Yoda calls him out on his old bad habits. And the idea that Luke Skywalker, the man who did this in a moment of anger and weakness:

...might also in a moment of weakness ignite his lightsaber after seeing what lied within Ben's mind but still refrain from striking him down seems completely plausible to me. It seems to me that a lot of fans had this idea in their head that Old Luke was supposed to have become some wise Jedi Master, an Obi Wan 2.0 or whatever. Or something more akin to however Luke was portrayed in the old Legends material. Instead we got OT Luke with grey hair and some people called foul. In other words, their headcanon was ignored. A legacy character's portrayal not conforming to your personal idea of how they should be portrayed does not make the movie bad.

What's next? "Rey is a Mary Sue!"? Please. She's even more flawed in this film. Still stubborn, impulsive, naive, hotheaded, and nothing goes according to plan for her (in keeping with "failure" as an overarching theme of the movie). There's nothing about her any more Mary Sue-ish than, say, Luke using the Force to get the kill shot on the Death Star despite next to no training, or young Anakin whoops-ing his way to getting the victory for the good guys at the Battle of Naboo.

Snoke's death? Not really much different than Palpatine in the OT. Snoke and the Emperor were both one-note Bigger Bads who served as a plot device to advance another character's story arc and spent their brief screen times engaging in evil gloating. Vader killed Palpatine to save his son and redeem himself. Kylo Ren killed Snoke to achieve his own goals. And just like Snoke, Palpatine had no character background or anything. His history was a blank. We just knew he was the leader of the bad guys. Palpatine didn't become fleshed out until the prequels. Snoke may be the Bigger Bad, but Kylo Ren is the main antagonist, and it's his story that matters on the villainous side. The fact that some people didn't get the back story they wanted out of Snoke does not make the movie bad.

The "Holdo Maneuver"? Pointless technical quibbles easily handwaved away, and such minutiae not immediately satisfying your questions does not make a movie bad (as if the writers are obligated to explain to you in the film itself how they view the economics and tactical usefulness of a lightspeed kamikaze in a way that satisfies you). And besides, it's an awesome scene.

Let's be honest. There is precious little in the way of legitimate film criticism coming from the vocal minority that are TLJ's haters. It's not a bad movie by any stretch. Rabid fans not liking something does not make that film bad. Ishtar, Howard the Duck, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Dragonball Evolution, and the works of Uwe Boll and Seltzer & Friedberg are bad movies. The Last Jedi is not, even if it doesn't satisfy your needs and desires as a fan.

Rotten Tomatoes scores for all the Star Wars films:

A New Hope: 93%
The Empire Strikes Back: 95%
Return of the Jedi: 81%

The Phantom Menace: 53%
Attack of the Clones: 66%
Revenge of the Sith: 80%

The Force Awakens: 93%
The Last Jedi: 91%
Rogue One: 84%
Solo: 70%

The general consensus among critics is that the Episodes I & II are average or mediocre films, with RotS being pretty good (and the general consensus among most of the general audience agrees with that assessment, with RotS being considered the high mark of an overall unimpressive prequel trilogy). Meanwhile, the general critical consensus is that, Episodes VII & VIII are excellent, on par with the first two films, and that Rogue One is pretty good, too, and Solo merely decent at best. I think that's a fair assessment of the Disney-era films.

I know it might be controversial to say so, but film critics are usually right (note the qualifying language I'm using and will continue to use; critics are humans and therefore not perfect). They are typically people that went to film school, studied film seriously as art, and are generally best equipped to be objective about what makes for good film, such as the quality of its writing, cinematography, screenplay, acting, set/art/costume design, etc. General audiences are not (fans especially can be too obsessive to be objective, case in point the more toxic segments of Star Wars fandom). When critics universally praise a movie, it's probably a good movie, even if it's not for everyone. When they universally pan a movie, it's probably a bad movie, even if some people may unironically enjoy it as dumb fun (and there's nothing wrong with enjoying an objectively bad movie). Audiences too often think that critics are only right if the critics' opinions are congruent with their own. If critics praise a movie they don't like or pan a movie they do like, they call foul, but if their tastes agree with that of the critics they nod their head in agreement. We see this all the time. As an example of the latter, every time "Anticipated Blockbuster X" gets glowing reviews the people looking forward to the movie trot out the RT score to say "See! It's a good movie!" Meanwhile, movies that are legitimately mediocre films sometimes become hits with general audiences (live-action Transformers, anyone?).

Also, your questions about the First Order and the Resistance are easily answered. It's clear from the films that the Empire didn't just vanish, but reconstituted itself under a new name, and that the Resistance is Leia's own personal paramilitary organization separate from the New Republic that, unlike the Republic, sees the FO for the threat it is. With only the Resistance seeing the FO as a serious threat and the FO holding up in the Unknown Regions (a barely-explored part of the galaxy that was established in the fiction long ago and retained as canon), the idea that they could keep Starkiller Base a secret (hell, the Rebellion only learned about the DS2 because Palpatine let them). It's easy to put two and two together. There's also a lot of details in sources outside the films. If you want a wiki summary, here you go:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Resistance
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/First_Order
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cold_war

I'm not saying the movie is gonna flop. It's not. It's going to do phenomenally well and I'm gonna contribute to it. What I'm going to say is what everyone else said when they heard that Rise of Skywalker destroyed Endgame's pre ticket sales; "What the hell is Atom Tickets?'

Honestly after the Solo situation, I take Pre-Ticket sales with a grain of salt. According to pre-ticket sales Solo should have been a huge hit. We all know that wasn't the case.