Ineffective, unexciting and pretty pointless latest addition to the SW franchise

Rating: 4/10 (17 January 2018)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Following on from the end of The Force Awakens, Rey (Daisy Ridley) has tracked down Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and seeks his training to become a great Jedi master. Meanwhile, the evil Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is scolded for his failure to kill Rey and banished from active duty. Despite his apparent death at the end of the last film, Finn (John Boyega) has survived his encounter with Ren and becomes involved in a mission to sneak aboard a First Order ship and disable a vital component to bring it down.
As well as being one of the most enduring franchises, Star Wars is also the one with the most distinctive fan base, the die hards who fill out the sci-fi conventions, and know every character, group and all the general titbits about it. Unless you are one of these dedicated, obsessive fans, which I cannot say I am, then it's just been overkill these last two years, with The Last Jedi marking the third SW related film in that space of time. In the end, I only went to see this one simply because there was nothing else on...and, this time round, I really did think that my time had been wasted.
Knowing the loyalty of the fan base, the writers seem glumly aware that the characters (including Princess Leia, marking her final appearance after Carrie Fisher's death last year!) will sell the film more than any compelling story or well written script, and so we have all the main players from the last film in a continuation of events that serves no purpose in expanding the story in any meaningful way. But what's really shocking here is that even the special effects and battle sequences fail to produce any sense of genuine wonderment or spectacle, and leave you as cold and unimpressed as the writing.
The majestic wonder of the first three, epic films, which is what flickered whatever faint interest I had in the series in the first place, feels sadly squandered and abused now. I think even hard core SW fans would have to agree that the franchise needs a rest, time to recharge its batteries, or maybe even just call it a day on the big screen and...maybe move to Netflix. **