2nd viewing:

I grow to love this movie even more with my 2nd viewing. It does have problems, most notably the pacing. At times it really does tend to slow down and sorta lose the excitement, but I'm willing to forgive a problem like that because of how the overall greatness outweighs any small problem I have with it. Okay since we got the small thing that bothers me about The Last Jedi out of the way...let's talk about how great it is...again.

One thing that really made me fall in love with The Last Jedi was just how different it was from every Star Wars movie before it. Coming off of The Force Awakens, I was expecting this to be different from J.J. Abrams' first movie in this new trilogy, but I wasn't expecting it to be so...unpredictable and insane. It's like Rian Johnson said to Disney: "I'm going to make this the most ballsy Star Wars movie ever, that it will most likely piss off half of the hardcore Star Wars fans."
But what Rian Johnson really did was mirror the movie that is considered the best Star Wars movie in the franchise. Empire Strikes Back.

The Last Jedi is a perfect mirror to Empire Strikes Back. Where as The Force Awakens was the perfect callback to A New Hope. It's purpose was to introduce new characters and new ideas in an all too familiar story. It passed the torch to new characters. And now it was Rian Johnson's job to create an exciting movie that felt new and original. Just like Irvin Kershner did with Empire. What TFA did with ANH was a callback, but what TLJ did with ESB was rhyming. It's as unpredictable and impactful to the Star Wars universe as Empire Strikes Back was. To quote George Lucas on his famous words:

It's like poetry...it rhymes.