So hard to watch this disrespectful end of a beloved saga :(

Rating: 1/10 (29 April 2018)

No one sets out to intentionally make a bad movie - not even Rian Johnson. And to be fair The Last Jedi (TLJ) looks and sounds pretty good with an overall decent performance from the cast inherited from the mediocre The Force Awakens (TFA). So much so, that my initial reaction after leaving the theatre was "That was OK I suppose. Not great, but watchable." I maybe rated it 6/10 as a popcorn movie, but 4/10 as a Star Wars movie. The professional critics seem to have left their critical faculties at the popcorn counter because there's no way TLJ was a 90% fresh film!
But every time I thought about it after that, or discussed it with friends, the more I realised it was just shiny Star Wars-like gloss over yawning holes in its structure & foundations, and the more I disliked it. Months later, while I didn't particularly like TFA, I actively hate TLJ because it's one vast chasm of missed opportunities and disrespect of the characters and history of this beloved franchise :(
It's now a 1/10 for me.
TFA was Abrams' usual pastiche of better directors' films. He's very good at casting actors, and has a strong pacey visual direction, but he and his writers can't write a coherent story and usually fail to have really good endings. He's only interested in the next cool set piece, and isn't concerned with how to connect them in a satisfying way. But he does at least get the "feel" of the films he's emulating.
In TLJ, there are so many plot holes, discontinuities, examples of bad dialogue, weird editing choices, inconsistent characterisation, deus ex machinas, violations of established story universe, incredibly weak new characters, an illogical & timewasting side plot while cutting an emotional shot for pacing(!), failure to make a middle film of a trilogy, failure to develop characters from TFA, the lack of any sense of mysticism or mythic scale, that there are Youtube videos that literally take 5 hours to list all the writing crimes in this film. Johnson should never have been allowed to put this first draft script into production. I completely agree with most of those video criticisms.
But it's the tone deaf and ill timed comedy, and the sheer disrespect shown to the Original Trilogy (OT) characters, OT & TFA actors, and lifelong fans of the nearly 40 years of lore before it, that hurts the most. This must be the only film that has ever made me truly angry at the filmmakers.
Johnson started from the position of subverting expectations for all the questions left hanging in TFA. That can be a great writing technique in the hands of a competent writer. The problem is that Johnson fundamentally misunderstands the concept. It only works if the subversion replaces the expectation with something better, and yet completely fitting in the story universe. Replacing it with nothing or nobody isn't subversion, it's stupid & lazy.
Rian takes major OT supporting characters and reduces them to the tiniest bit players, plot devices and a chauffeur in space, and he sends off poor Carrie Fisher in the most unintentionally funny (bad) way. But it's his disgraceful, arrogant treatment of Luke Skywalker (and Mark Hamill) that seals this film as the worse episode of the franchise.
A disillusioned old Luke is a potentially interesting new direction, but we don't get any believable journey that bridges the giant gap between the Luke of Return of the Jedi to this nihilistic hobo. What we get are deeply unconvincing flashbacks and voiceover which go completely against Luke's earlier well established character. And after 2.5 hours we get a hugely disappointing anti-climactic ending to the Skywalker saga, with virtually nothing to look forward to in Episode 9.
Mark Hamill said it best in several interviews, and maybe he knows Luke better than Rian ever could! Just Youtube search "All 50+ times Mark Hamill tried to subtly warn us about Star Wars The Last Jedi".
"When I read Eight I told Rian I fundamentally disagree with virtually everything you've decided about my character ..."
"... I was very surprised and I have to tell you and I should have realized that when I read Seven I said I love everybody's part except mine and on on this one it was similar in the sense that I said to Rian I'm so surprised how you see Luke ..."
"... I almost had to think of Luke as another character, maybe he's Jake Skywalker, he's not my Luke Skywalker ..."
The thought of a Rian Johnson trilogy when, in his own words, he doesn't even understand what made Star Wars what it was, makes me ill.