An utter desecration of the series

Rating: 1/10 (22 December 2017)

The problem is not that Last Jedi and Force Awakens are vastly inferior to the original films; it's that, without cynically piggybacking off the original films, there would be no reason for these movies to exist at all. Not only has Disney has subverted and disrespected the original films' themes and strongest character, the new characters are bland and unmemorable. And the central conflict is an incoherently plotted rehash of the Rebels-vs-Empire dynamic. Also, while I was initially excited by the return of the original films' aesthetics, the "traditional" Star Wars vibe has come to feel like a sad, bland recycling since it's in the service of bad storytelling. Star Wars has become a hollowed out shell and, based on the Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores, people are starting to notice. Here's hoping Disney will course-correct, though I'm not counting on it.