How about the performances and dialogue in TLJ? Are they below average for the series? How do we determine what bad acting is (and in part dialogue) vs. good? I hope I don't sound like a prequel hater, I have love for the prequels, but take Padme in RotS for example, a line like "He said... you turned to the Dark Side. That you... killed Younglings!", Natalie Portman's delivery of this line often creates laughter from the audience, when it should be creating a sense of horror and sadness from emotional engagement with the character of Padme, this is because the audience does not emotionally buy the performance of the character of Padme, her expression does not ring true as an authentic display of a person accusing their husband of massacring children. This disconnect between the emotions the character's are suppose to expressing on screen, and the emotions the audience feels was frequent for many viewers across the prequels (not too many people felt romantically engaged by Anakin's "I don't like sand" romance).

Looking at TLJ, take Poe and Holdo's interactions early in the film for example, Poe feels outraged by Hodo's actions, he resents her, suspecting that her leadership is sabotaging The Resistance, and for many in the audience we felt Poe's emotions in those scenes.

Take the scene where it is revealed that Luke pulled a light saber on a young Ben Solo, and in a moment of weakness desired to strike him down, as an audience many of us felt discomfort, disgust, fear, and even disbelief when this is revealed, which is just what we are suppose to feel as an audience.

Watch the dialogue between Rey and Kylo following their duel with the praetorian guard, notice the subtly in their performances.

These are a few examples, I could make a longer list, but I don't have the time at the moment, so hopefully these examples are sufficient.

I'll finish with an excerpt from an interview with Harrison Ford in 1977,

Interviewer: That's what is interesting to me, the fact that, people like you and me, and others that I've talked with who say, "well I don't like sci-fi, I don't like that sort of thing. Wow! I love Star Wars." Why do we like this?

Ford: Well it's a fantasy it's not science fiction so much as it is space fantasy, and it's about people. It's finally about people, and finally not about science, and so the energy of the movies goes towards exploring these human relationships, and I think that's what makes it so accessible to people.

For the people who enjoyed TLJ they felt emotionally engaged with the characters in the film, Rey and Kylo perhaps being the strongest source of engagement with the movie, and this is in part due to the strength of the performances and writing.

While this might not make you enjoy the movie as a whole, I hope perhaps, it can be one thing you recognize as admirable about the film.