The Force ain't with Disney here

Rating: 4/10 (19 December 2019)

Yeah, first world problems, I know. And yet guess what? It still bothers me. Stories help shape who we are, and this movie is another act of vandalism towards one of my favorite stories of all time.
The film is glossy and fast-paced in the usual J.J. Abrams kind of way. I was ready to cut it some slack after Rian Johnson stomped in and obliterated in The Last Jedi all the setups J.J. had planted in his (admittedly mediocre) The Force Awakens. Not THIS much slack, though. The movie is a mess, breaking the lore and destroying any kind of victory our heroes had accomplished in the original trilogy.
Say what you want of Return of the Jedi but its climax, with Luke defeating the Emperor by refusing to embrace the Dark Side and triggering his father's redemption, was a thematically perfect conclusion which should never have been undone. This should have taken placed 300 years after Return of the Jedi and let the original heroes and their victories rest in peace.
It's becoming a monkey's paw kind of curse: I didn't like (most of) the Expanded Universe and I got these; I was bored by the Force Awakens and Johnson "subverted my expectations" in The Last Jedi; now Abrams returns and delivers this desperate thing, reeking of damage control and course-correction. Words fail to convey how overstuffed this movie is. It's like asking for a ham sandwich and getting a giant baguette filled with roasted mutton and dripping with marmalade, goat cheese and peanut butter - and you have to eat it while running at full speed. It's nauseating in its excess.
A few words about Rey. She had a good beginning; her introduction in Episode Seven was excellent, among the few things of value in this whole trilogy. However, in spite of Daisy Ridley's charisma, she is such an unrelatable character, with no growth and no arc.
What made Luke compelling was his progression from naive everyman to wise and powerful Jedi. Rey is already there from the start in terms of skills, spine and moral fortitude. It's a monumental storytelling mistake - an overpowered protagonist can work in a power fantasy (James Bond, Mission Impossible, John Wick...), NOT IN THE HERO'S JOURNEY. At the end, like a cuckoo's egg in the nest of the Skywalker story, Rey ends up stealing all the achievements of the original heroes.
Finn was a potentially great character sidelined to hollering sidekick (I will be very happy if I never hear poor John Boyega shout "Rey!" ever again). Isaac, one of the best actors of his generation, is wasted as the quip-delivering hotshot. Driver gets the only memorable performance in the whole thing; while Kylo's arc is a mess, Driver manages to pierce the barrage of noise, explosions and frantic hunts for MacGuffins.
Sadly, J.J. Abrams is a copycat: he can imitate something cool but does not understand what made it cool. Take the scene with ghost Luke rising the X-Wing from the sea. It mirrors the one with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, but THAT was awe-inspiring because we had never seen anything of the sort. However, in The Last Jedi Rey lifts half a mountain, earlier in this movie she almost pulls a bigger spaceship out of the sky... so Luke's display is rather pathetic. I was almost expecting a smash cut to Rey rising from the sea a whole Star Destroyer as Luke is startled and a sad trombone plays.
It's funny. Abrams made the safest, most unimaginative sequel possible, then Rian Johnson gleefully whacked all the story hooks for the third movie, so when Abrams is kicked on stage again he starts babbling incoherent nonsense. As J.J. stands under the limelight sweating, he smashes Rian's story in retaliation.
This is what happens when you don't plan ahead. Sure, even the original trilogy changed stuff during its production, but there is a difference between reworking your initial ideas and making *everything* up as you go along. It's possible to create good Star Wars content in the modern era (Rogue One, The Mandalorian), but not with this lack of foresight.
4,5/10