The Last Jedi dismisses The Force Awakens, abandons nostalgia and, worst of all, treats fans with utter disdain, in favour of an overtly political appeal to the masses.

Rating: 1/10 (20 December 2017)

At first The Last Jedi is deceptively pleasing, thanks to an impressive opening space battle and a lack of predictability, which hampered the enjoyment of The Force Awakens.
Unfortunately, it goes on an increasingly rapid and deep descent into the all too familiar territory of ticking off items on the Hollywood virtue signalling checklist. Most instances of this are so jarring that they ruin the immersive cinema experience for any politically conscious viewer. Attacks on The One Percent - check. Attacks on capitalism - check. Attacks on animal sporting spectacles as a form of animal cruelty - check. Strong female character needlessly debasing a male hero, in a sign of feminist empowerment - check. Character made to feel guilty about eating meat - check. The clumsiest of all movie subplots is the vehicle for most of these checklist items, and could've been avoided entirely were it not for the aforementioned male hero debasement. Keeping the hero and the audience in the dark about the escape plan is lazy story telling at its worst.
Despite Daisy Ridley doing an even better acting job this time round, the film ruined Rey's character - she had no significant character development beyond The Force Awakens and they removed the mystique behind her character with an innocuous line regarding her ordinary parentage. She's fought Kylo Ren to a stalemate twice now, and it seems any hope of an interesting development in their relationship has been quashed, as Snoke has been unceremoniously removed, and they're cemented as the leaders of their respective sides.
Finn's character had so much potential, and that has been stripped as well. That you could've taken his character out of the film entirely, without influencing the outcome at all, demonstrates how pointless he has become. The ultimate noble sacrifice during the siege on the planet could have provided his character with some redemption, but even that had to be spoiled by the Rose character, in a selfish act of a affection, that had no reasonable basis in plot developments, and could have very easily led to the immediate destruction of the last remnants of the rebels. Yes, the plucky Rose, who has no other distinguishable, let alone redeemable, characteristics beyond assisting in meeting the desired diversity quota.
Force users no longer need ships to fly through space. Force users have foolishly been wasting bandwidth by communicating via hologram, when apparently all they had to use was astral projection. Every subsequent space battle in the Star Wars universe should, logically, now consist solely of using the almighty light-speed kamikaze run. *picardfacepalm.jpg*
The comedy in the film is forced and uninspired, reminiscent of the same mess that Disney infuse into their Marvel movies, rather than the clever delivery of Alan Tudyk's K-2SO in Rogue One.
There's so much more awfulness to unpack; the lack of a menacing villain, disappointing direction for Ben, dismissal of The Force Awakens, the nature of Luke's death. This movie is a steaming pile of garbage that, like The Phantom Menace, I'll never bother watching again. It's unlikely that I'll see future installments at the cinema before going through some reviews.