Losing it's Lustre

Rating: 7/10 (4 November 2018)

While I tend to give SciFi movies a lot of leeway as they tend not to be traditional, dramatic films, the Last Jedi had too many weak spots that kept pulling me out of the Star Wars universe.
Special effects, as always, were excellent. Even though the Porgs weren't well received, I found them to be nice moments of levity.
I guess my main issues were that the series has lost some of it's epicness. What was once considered to be a galaxy - stretching space opera has turned into a 2.5 hour TV show. Also far too many attempts at humour in the first third of the movie. I wasn't sure we weren't dosed to be watching a comedy.
Kylo Ren occasionally flashes to being almost diabolical only to fall back to caricature and cartoonish. The same with Poe this episode.
Snoke as a villain was better in The Force Awakens. This time, for all his "menace" he kept allowing his general and Kylo Ren fail without any repercussions. Not too menacing after all.
Maybe it was too much going on while feeling that the story dragged as well. Parts were rushed, others killed the pacing of the movie. I don't know.
The writing has certainly gotten more childlike. Too many modern-day colloquialisms which kept pulling my husband and I out of the story.
That all said I did enjoy this movie and really liked both Laura Dern as admiral and Kelly Marie Tran's Rose. I look forward to seeing her character grow in Episode XI.
I just hope Disney and the writer's return to the galaxy-spanning nature of the original movies and hopefully write Kylo Ren as a truly menacing character.
Fingers crossed for better results in Episode XI.