A well made movie with an abundance of wasted potential

Rating: 6/10 (19 December 2017)

To start this review, I wan't to point out that I did like this movie, well the majority of it anyway, but I feel like my pointing out only what I enjoyed is not just when it is evident that this movie has glaring flaws. I'll list my Pros, then cons to give an analysis into what was well-done and not so much.
Pros:

Kylo Ren: I was one of the few people who watched the force awakens and actually enjoyed the character of Ben solo, I found his inner conflict interesting to a point that he became the best part of the force awakens, and this movie only deepened my interest in Kylo Ren, the dynamic between him and rey in this movie is also very new and inventive and works on all levels. The conflict inside Kylo Ren is familiar but also so fresh and new for the star wars universe.

Rey: When watching the force awakens all I could think when I saw her on screen was how wooden her acting was, and how unlikable she was as the main protagonist, so when I saw her in this movie I was pleasantly surprised with her acting and the direction her character goes (Even if some of her lines were borderline cringeworthy), having said that, one pivotal moment in the movie that could have made this movie phenomenal did slightly ruin her character for me, I will get to that later however.

Poe: Another character I was utterly uninterested by in the force awakens was Poe, which was surprising as I usually love his work as an actor. However in this film the way he was handled was much better, he was a much better presence to have on screen and his dynamic with Leia and even Admiral Holdo (Who I strongly disliked) was very engaging and I really liked his fighter pilot skills which were also drastically underused by JJ, whilst the opening scene was great to watch, do bombers not apply to the rules of gravity? How did they drop in space? That is nitpicking however.

Cinematography: The force awakens was built of nostalgia and cheap cop-outs, but the way that the film was shot was even worse, the shots in that film were like something an amateur shot, but this film is beautiful to look at, nearly every shot was spectacular, particularly the scene on Crait, and a scene that also stood out to me was snokes throne room, I loved the bold red that was on the walls behind snoke.

Luke: Luke Skywalker was an average character in this movie, not really anything special about his character, but Mark Hamill did the best he could working with this strange direction in this character, and he was always enjoyable to watch.

Moving onto the cons of this film, of which there are many, I wont go into nitpicking territory here as that would be a discredit to Rian but rather the bigger problems and massive missed opportunities.
Admiral Holdo: What was the point of this character, not to discredit Laura Dern's performance which she did fine in, but this character was literally useless, why not have Admiral Ackbar, a star wars icon, go out by going full speed into snokes ship rather than this underdeveloped lady who nobody has any emotional attachement to? It seemed to me that she was a plot device to develop Poe's character, but couldn't that have had the same result by using Leia?
Casino Planet: All of the star wars movies have an uninteresting and quite hard to watch sub-plot, but this whole set-piece with Finn and Rose was not only pointless to the story, as the resistance took off anyway, but also just a massive anti-animal violence/anti-capitalism campaign which felt completely out of place in this universe, and also, why include Benicio Del Toro's character? Jeremy Jahns made a nice suggestion in his spoiler review that I found very interesting, why not have Rose be this master codebreaker, and skip that whole casino sequence entirely? Rose was also entirely unengaging, however it is not really her fault as this is her first movie effectively, but when she releases this strange camel species into the wild she says "It was worth it", Rose seems to think that saving a couple of camels was worth the first order taking over the galaxy, give me a break. Then conveniently DJ shows up on a stolen spaceship with BB8 and whisks them off to snokes ship. Ridiculous writing, and a clear political message that does not belong in this universe.
The next point is more of a missed opportunity than a straight up problem, and that is how Rey and Kylo did not team up after that magnificent set up for it, for the whole movie they build this very well done connection between them, we have them telepathically communicating which I loved, and then Kylo phsically appears in front of Rey in that hut on the island, they spend the whole movie with moments like this, and you see Rey defending Kylo from Luke's critiscism, then we get to this scene where Kylo chops snoke in half after being ordered by him to kill Rey, then that lightsaber vs guard scene which could possibly be not only the best fight scene in star wars but the best scene in star wars full stop. When they 'Teamed up' I thought that Rian really did something here and that they were going to team up, the two most interesting characters in this movie were going to team up. But then for some reason Rian decides to keep Rey as this by the books hero who won't ever go to the middle between Sith and Jedi and is only good, after Kylo proposes a team up, which had my audience ecstatic and excited, Rey simply replies "Don't do this", Rey reaches out her hand and I thought oh my god they are really doing this, I am amazingly impressed, then she just tries to take the saber and the most missed opportunity in the history of star wars surfaces. How on Earth was this not a good idea in the mind of the writers, nobody wants this incorruptible hero anymore, that middle-ground not bad not good proposal by Kylo was so unbelievable and shocking that could have really made this movie great. Then we go back to Kylo is conflicting and the most interesting character and Rey is okay all over again and it's all ruined.
The way Luke died: I was one of the few who realised when he first spoke to Leia that he was a hologram, evident by his change in appearance from the rest of the film, and when he walked out even though I knew I still thought it was bad-ass him walking out to face a fleet of AT-ATs and when he was getting shot at by the whole fleet then brushed his shoulder, I thought that was also cool, then when Kylo Ren comes down and he starts attacking Luke, also great, but then when Kylo realises he's not really there I am thinking, what happens now? Then we see him on the island, worn out to the point of 'Death' (Not really death more becoming one with the force), well hang on a second, if Kylo was able to physically appear in front of Rey on the island and project himself there and come out unscathed, then why can't Luke, the most powerful Jedi also do that, why did he die? He was going to die in 9 if not this one but I just feel it wasn't a proper send off.
Captain Phasma: I never really cared for Captain Phasma, I never really got the hype surrounding her, and didn't really care that she was in the force awakens for about 10 minutes, that didn't bother me, but when she was brought back here for even less time I said to myself, why does this character even exist? She gets killed by Finn (A janitor) in her 5 minutes of screen time in this film, why was she on the press tours with the rest of the main cast if she is in it for 5 minutes? Why is she on the poster?
The children on the casino planet: To be frank, I do not care at all about any of those children on the planet at all, and they are like people out of the prequels to be quite honest, something I caught that many did not is at the very end, when he is looking at the stars, he uses to force to bring the broom to his hand, which could be one of two things, the boy will be the protagonist of Rian's new trilogy planned, or some stupid message about how the force is in everyone.
General Hux: I don't mind Domnhall Gleeson, I really liked his film 'About Time' but asides from that he has always been that unnecessary side character that most don't notice, and that is present in this film just as much as the others. His character in the force awakens was set up to be serious and almost Hitler like, but here he's the opposite, that brings me to my next con, Humour.
Humour: Humour in movies works a lot of the time but just as much of the time it doesn't, The Last Jedi seems to be inbetween these two, I'll go through what worked and what didn't here:

Luke throwing his fathers lightsaber off a cliff, didn't work at all, disgraceful to star wars legacy, and unfunny.
Porgs, worked some of the time, like when chewbacca was eating one of them, sure that was mildly funny.
General Hux, his humour didn't work at all.
Rey had one line I found quite funny, I'm paraphrasing here but she says something along the lines of "I have seen your daily routine, you have spare time" to luke, and that was quite funny as it wasn't the awful slapstick humour this movie often resorted to.

-Poe, Just like the force awakens, his humour was so hit and miss, sometimes he is funny, other times it's just slapstick humour, but I think his character doesn't take itself too seriously which is good for someone with Isaacs' charisma.

There was an awfully cringe line said by Daisy Ridley regarding the fact that Kylo didn't have a shirt on, which felt out of place and unnecessary.
This wasn't meant to be humourous but when Leia 'Flew' towards the ship, what was that? The way they showed that was borderline abismal, I mean whilst it was cool seeing Leia using the force, it was not a sight for sore eyes as the cgi in this scene was just poor.

Overall, this was not a bad movie, filled with so many great moments, but not a great one either, mainly because of the multitude of missed opportunities that JJ has to deal with, in episode 9.