What...was THAT?

Rating: 4/10 (12 January 2018)

I'll start by saying that I'm not a huge fan of Star Wars. It's entertaining enough but not great, and it's the most overrated film franchise I've ever seen. Now that that's over with, I'm not going to mince words.
I paid to see TFA in theaters, and I wasn't too happy to realize that I paid to watch ANH all over again, which coincidentally was my least favorite of the original trilogy. Apart from that, though, I liked the movie, at the end of which I had multiple questions. But I figured that those questions would be answered, at least in part, in The Last Jedi, so I eagerly awaited its release.
How could I know how disappointing this movie would be? It was a trainwreck on so many levels. The plot went all over the place. Character development sucked. And I can't say that I enjoyed how the legacy characters were handled.
Let's start with the plot. Half of the plot is dealing with the idea that the First Order can track the rebellion through lightspeed. Thus, Finn and the new girl, Rose, go to some casino planet to find a guy who can help them circumvent this problem. The guy ends up betraying them to the First Order (surprise, surprise), effectively ensuring that their mission fails. I don't care that the mission failed, but the whole casino thing bored me and Finn's entire plot line seemed to contribute very little to the story. It almost felt as if the writers were giving Finn busy work to do. On top of that, at some point in this weird plot point, the audience is supposed to believe that Rose fell in love with Finn. The most meaningful interaction between them occurred when she described how she hated her home planet, so I don't understand what the writers were going for there.
On the rebel ship, I really don't even get what was happening. I zoned out every time the scene moved back there. Leia got blasted into space but used the Force to fly back to the ship after she was just floating around for several seconds (and should have been dead). As a result, someone else was put in charge, but she and Poe didn't see eye to eye, so he led a mutiny against her. At this point, Leia woke up and shot Poe, but there doesn't seem to be any tangible punishment for treason. Again, I'm unsure of the significance of this part of the story. Are we meant to see that Poe is a hothead? Or will this disappear in the next film, just as some of TFA's points seemed to disappear in this one?
Meanwhile, on Luke's island, Rey is trying to convince him to rejoin the fight against the dark side, but he refuses to do so because he's apparently become a crotchety old man in the last 30 years. Finally, she convinces him to give her some Jedi training. However, most of it must have occurred off-screen because I saw very little of it. Yet, when she left the island to try to convince Kylo Ren to join the light side, she's remarkably skilled with a lightsaber AND the Force. Thanks for the five minutes of training Luke. By the way, did any of you have questions about Snoke or Rey's parents after TFA? Oh well. We learn that Rey's parents were drunks who sold her for booze, and Kylo Ren managed to cut Snoke in half with relative ease before we learned anything about him. Other than the fact that he was using Kylo, but everyone (except Kylo) already knew that.
I have to say that Kylo Ren is starting to really irk me. From what I understand, he's meant to be a character who is constantly caught between light and dark. But he strikes me more as a poser who's acting out for attention and wants to convince others (or maybe himself) that he's badder than he actually is. I didn't like him before, but I figured that Snoke was going to be the main villain like Palaptine, so I sat through his scenes in stony silence. When he killed Snoke, I was horrified. Why? Because that meant Kylo would be the new face of the bad guys, and I find it difficult to take this guy seriously as a villain. He's like the a rebellious teenager who never grew out of the phase, and it's less excusable for an adult to behave in such a manner, especially when you kill your father just to make a point.
Now, I could POSSIBLY get over the shoddy plot, Finn's useless foray to the Las Vegas of the galaxy, Rey's inexplicable mastery of being a Jedi, and even my extreme dislike of Kylo. However, I can't forgive how Luke and Leia were treated. Luke went from being a starry-eyed rookie to being a cynic who tried to kill his own nephew while he slept in bed. I understand that people change, but I don't know if they should change THAT much. I was relieved to hear that Mark Hamill was similarly displeased with how Luke was written.
As for Leia, she was in a coma for most of the movie. When she woke up, nothing reflected the fact that Carrie Fisher (may she rest in peace) will obviously not be able to appear as Leia in Ep IX. It's my understanding that she was finished filming her scenes for this movie at the time of her death. In the end of the film, she flies off with what's left of the rebellion, but what will they tell us to explain her absence in the next movie? I don't think that they should have killed her. That's too easy and, frankly, seems kind of disrespectful to the actress and her memory. I'm sure that there are good ways to write people out of the script off-camera, but this film didn't give me the impression that the writers, directors, or whoever are capable of doing that.
Star Wars was always overrated, but it still use to manage coming up with a decent story, even in the prequels. However, 2016's Rogue One and 2017's Last Jedi don't really feel like Star Wars movies and prove to me more than ever that Hollywood is all about the Benjamins rather than making a quality film.