Ugh...

Rating: 2/10 (19 December 2017)

A couple of years ago, it appeared that a 14yo girl saw the original Star Wars trilogy and decided to re-write the original 1977 film as a fanfic with herself as an über-powered Mary Sue who instinctively had the powers of a Jedi and more of Han Solo's piloting skills than he had in his own ship. Not only that, but she had perfect skin, teeth, and hair despite living on a desert planet, orphaned at a young age and scraping by on scrap metal sales. She had no scars, body marks, burns or anything else--she was a flawless little princess in an extremely hostile (yes, I deployed to the Middle East in the early 1990s) environment. The rest of the story we know, because that fanfic was turned into a movie, The Force Awakens.
The Last Jedi is the fanfic her daddy wrote, to make all the mean people go away by playing fast & loose with forty years of preexisting lore so that it made his baby girl even more impressive. The easiest thing in the world is to look at an established lore and say "that, plus me, times infinity," which is what they did with Rey AND Snoke (which is the kind of name a child gives a snot-based villain).
We're required to believe that the First Order has all but destroyed the Resistance, but just like The Party's propaganda against Immanuel Goldstein in 1984, the former are only portrayed as clumsy buffoons against the latter's pluck and daring. I guess they were trying for a "girl power" angle on the Resistance fleet, with two women in charge. But when male villains are comically inept--and the girls still run away--it turns female empowerment into a farce because there are no real stakes against an incompetent opponent.
We're required to believe that Luke Skywalker tossed aside his father's (and later his own) lightsaber--the only remaining item of the good in the man--as immaterial.
We're required to believe that a neophyte has all (if not more than) the knowledge of a Jedi master, without training, and that she came not from force-sensitive parents but from random civilians with no unique traits. Didn't we already have this character, named Bella Swan?
There's a useless middle section about the evils of wealth and animal abuse which does not belong in the story. A single line from Laura Dern's vice admiral could have saved us this tedium. Nostalgia Critic calls this a "big-lipped alligator moment," but this is easily 1/4 of the film--it serves no purpose other than filling time.
We're required to believe that the man who led the Rebellion, destroyed the Death Star, defeated the Emperor, brought Vader back from the Dark Side, and restored order to the galaxy has become a cowardly recluse because ONE student started going bad. This is the sort of wish-fulfillment a teenager writes about himself after being kicked out of school. We also learn that Yoda was available to advise him as a force ghost, but chose instead to undermine him and destroy the legacy he spent 900 years to build. It's a bit like that godawful trend in Marvel Comics where the "classic" hero meets the new SJW version, has an epiphany and realizes that the latter is a better product, and that he (the classic) should bend the knee.
We're required to believe that the snot-based villain predates the Empire and is more powerful than Palpatine, but his evil consists mostly of saying "I knew that" and making snarky remarks at his emo apprentice, which undermines his own credibility and sets up the "your overconfidence is your weakness" strike you see coming ten miles away.
We're required to believe that the Resistance's survival will be threatened because... well, in The Empire Strikes Back the Imperial fleet couldn't bombard Hoth from orbit and sent walkers instead. But no such barrier exists here and the land-based attack just drags out the run time.
It's obvious that this poor imitation of a Star Wars film was intended to provoke emotions in people who can't maintain intellectual consistency from one moment to the next, but want to be associated with something greater than they are capable of handling.
Han's gone, Luke's gone, and Carrie Fisher can't reprise her role. That leaves Lando, Chewbacca & the droids as the last vestiges of the original series for Disney to throw under the bus for Episode IX: The Final Cash Grab.