Terrible direction and writing, wrecks what might one day be a good Episode 8

Rating: 3/10 (16 January 2018)

I went to see this today, curious as to how it could be possible for so many film review sites and publications to rate the film so highly, and yet so, so many actual viewers rate it so badly.
I simply could not believe that Disney could have 'bought off' so many hundreds of magazines and sites (including this one)- after all, if thats possible, why didn't Warner Bros do the same thing with Justice League?
But I'm afraid to say there seems to be no other logical explaination.
The reviews I read from the likes of Empire and so on, spoke about how moving and thrilling the film was. Twitter was alive with people saying they were shaking with excitement and shock and so on.
I honestly think you would have to have serious mental problems to have that kind of reaction to this drawn out, heartless, often cringe-worthy movie.
Sorry to say it, because I wish I didn't agree, and had enjoyed the film more myself, but the overwhelming mass of reviews on this site, that did not like the film, are right.
It does not in the slightest, channel 'Empire Strikes Back', it has much, much more in common with 'The Phantom Menace' particularly in its ill judged attempts at 'humour' that are about on a par with Jar-Jar Binks.
And it suffers from the same key problem that did, terrible direction.
That became totally clear when the first credit shows at the end, 'Written and Directed by Rian Johnson'. Almost everything else wrong with the film could be overlooked, if the writing and direction were not so awful.
Right from the start, we are subject to Johnsons so called humour, and whether its your brand of humour or not, there is no escaping the fact that he relentlessly makes characters do things they *simply would not do*.
Very early in the film Rey hands Skywalker her sabre, to swelling music, asking him to train her in the ways of the force. Skywalker chucks it over his shoulder and walks off. We are supposed to fall about the place laughing, but we just cringe, because there is simply no way Luke would do that.
And that sort of rubbish, happens non-stop through the film, destroying almost every moment of drama, emotion or tension, shaking you out of the story, removing every trace of any feeling of 'epicness' this 'space opera' should have and subjecting us again and again to Johnsons, inane, insensitive, childish attempts to make us laugh.
StarWars never was 'funny' per se. But it had funny moments and these came about not from some forced directoral 'cheap gags' but from the characters. Han Solo was a wize cracking, cynical, rogue, and therefore he said things that were funny sometimes, but always the comic moments were believable as things those characters might *actually do or say*
The other big issue is that its far too long, but again this smacks of poor direction to me. The film just feels like it desperately needed a decent editor to tighten it up, give it the pace and drama it deserves, but that Johnson just would not let it happen, couldn't get rid of all the 'good bits' he added.
The light at the end of the tunnel, is that most of the garbage *can* probably be edited out by fans. So once the DVD comes out keep your eyes peeled on fanedit.org for a better version. There are edits on there that even make 'The Phantom Menace' almost decent.