The last Jedi of the force awakens

Rating: 4/10 (15 December 2017)

First of all, i am not a star wars fanatic, i was not that guy who ranted about the de-canonizing of the EU, i was not a "Legacy of the Force enthusiast and i had no beef about the purchase of Lucasfilm by the big mouse.
I was for sure a OT fan as a kid and a watcher of the prequels during college and i enjoyed them, even with the lackluster dialogue.
So i went with an open mind to watch "The Last Jedi", the Force awakens was a solid 8 to me, not the best movie around but JJ Abrams, even with his mistery boxes sure knows how to produce spectacle.
The Last Jedi was somewhat a mixed bag. First the positives:
-It has the most original camera movements in the saga, Rian Johnson is a master at knowing how to direct each shot . Getting a scene into the mood and pushing the chemistry from actors .

Carrie Fisher was more prominent here than in 7 and she did a good job, sad she wont be here for the third, we can see that her comeback could be even better in these films.

Mark Hamill, even though out of a big picture for a long time was perfect in his older "Get off my lawn" Luke,

-Snoke was believable as a cg character, sometimes i would even forget that Andy Serkis was there in a mocap suit, so Bravo!
-Adam Driver is compelling as an actor, he and Daisy Ridley were well cast and can work with the archetypes that were given to them.
-The effects were polished, sound was top notch, and even without many new compositions, John Williams gives us a great "Member berries" Best off,mixing themes from previous films, like Yoda*s theme,TIE Fighter attack and some tunes from the prequels.
Now for the bad(oh boy):

The movie had a weird tone, some scenes blended really dark themes with a Poe Dameron or BB8 gag right next to them, so i was mostly pushed back from more tense moments.

Some characters were overly two dimensional, yes its a fantasy movie in space but having characters like snoke being overly "Im the bad guy, i manipulated you!" Was too much, Palpatine was a sleazy villain, but remember, he was an idealist, a seducing idealist that kept showing both Luke and Anakin the benefits of the dark side and the failure of the Jedi.

The use of Snoke as a throwaway character, yes, as i said, Andy Serkis even with a two dimensional dialogue sold us a character that, if developed could be really something if it would somehow fit in the world of the story, he comes from nowhere( or some uncharted part of the galaxy) he is really old,tall, he seduced kilo and gets off like a wimp. Well, maybe Disney will someday pull of a Dark Maul on him in some obscure book or tv show.

The treatment of Luke Skywalker was kinda painful, even though Hamill performance is great, luke is used as a new character, like if the Skywalker we knew was a dead memory, he is now the total opposite of the "New Hope" we knew, now he hates the Jedi (but somehow decided to live on a planet filled with Jedi memorabilia), tried to kill his nephew boosting Kylo Ren in the first order (while being the only guy who had faith on his father redemption). His arc is boringly slow for a last minute turn., guess his love for milk is the only characteristic left unchanged.

-Mary Leia Poppins, this idea can sound great in paper, and you can see the love in each shot on the scene, but has a final result it feels cringy, also is really Leia acting on her force powers? Was she trained? Is there an Anakin Ghost pushing her towards the safety of the ship ("Oh Leia, im so sorry for having tortured you, here now i'll save you"), Because we see her force hands magnetizing back to the ship, yep, its the first option and Leia is an action force user, guys, if you want to give her force trained powers show us, make her say she trained with Luke or something...

Luke Skywalker. send off. Im betting this was not a Rian Johnson idea, it feels like a committee deciding to kill the trio by order, Ep7 Han,Ep8 Luke, Ep9 Leia. This only gives the trilogy a very formulaic feel, even in the prequels you felt that the formula was in the chaos of George Lucas "it rhymes" and not in a bunch of people deciding tributes and cameos to please every people imaginable. That way you please no one, and im not really interested in the discussion of a Force Projection , the projection itself worked for me, (EU Luke used it in the comics a couple of times for long calls), its the journey of luke towards his demise, you give a rotten egg to the old fans and a grumpy boring old man to newer generations.

-Rey and Kylo, the legacy of the force, i have very low interest in these characters, more with Kylo, mostly because of his tortured soul, but i cant see him as the main baddie in 9, he is designed as a emotional wreck, a brat, a vader fan boy, the toy of snoke, we know his frailties, his despair, Vader worked better in Empire (if you skipped the prequels) he had mistery and his low tolerance for failure of his staff was vaguely funny, but it wasn't a in your face joke, the broken man was inside a literal shell. Ben Solo has showed us his soul and heart, even if you would show the man killing hundreds of rabbits (or porgs) i will never see him as a menace to fear.
Rey is different, agendas apart she gives more of herself for the cause, we see her train and her will to be a Jedi and save the galaxy, those are positives i guess, but she is so overpowered, such a blank slate of a character (even though Daisy Ridley's and Johnson efforts to give her density), Rey had very few tribulations and got so far that she loses believably as a "human" being in my opinion. At least make us identify with her cause, give us her suffering, her ideals, her sorrow, make her want to get rid of this burden called the force (give her some of Lukes motivations), slice her a limb at least (not sure if joking), i've identified more with Lara Croft in the original game than with this avatar of a Goddess.
the only way they could work from now on was to switch Kilo to the light side and Rey to the Dark but Disney would never do this to their main female protagonist. Its a shame, they are great actors but due to a bunch of corporate and social factors they aren't getting pushed to the next level. Sure, Disney might get her pregnant with a skywalker seed, but having this action figure, a model for every girl out there being used to bring skywalker babies to the world would be a risk. Everything is risk it seems. Male, female, black, white, asians, treat them as characters with a good story, there is your true representation. and that takes me to :
Poe Dameron, Phasma, DJ , Chewbacca, Finn and Rose, the representation underrepresented, Poe is a perfect pilot with stupid decisions and he is the joker of this film, Phasma is an "action figure bait" and a waste just like the previous film, Finn is goofy, clumsy and brave just to face Phasma in her bobba Fettian cameo, Dj is Benicio del Toro with a speech impediment, Rose is competent and Finn's new love interest, brave and cute. But this is another irrelevant component in this movie, their participation on the overall story takes too much time and seemed like secondary quests on an RPG , yes those you leave behind because of so much filler.
Sure there are funny moments with them, they are great actors afterall, Rian knows how to make action set pieces work, but at least make them more involved in reys story and not a fetch quest: Finn and Rose are seeking a hacker and afterwards to release captive animals, Phasma is seeking Finn, Poe is seeking his leadership among a pink haired Laura Dern and Chewie is trying to surpass Han's death among a stray flock of Porgs (Im fine with them). At least in Empire, Han/Leia plot is intertwined with Luke and Vader's Journey, it doesn't feel forced, Luke abandons his training because he feels the suffering of his friends who are escaping Vader, that takes him to cloud city where he is late, Han is lost to the carbonite and he will lose the fight against his father. here Rey abandons her training because she is fixated with Kylo, the group meets at the end, in the chaos of battle they work together to fight the first order, they are all great soldiers, pilots and tactical thinkers, i felt they couldn't die, it was just an action scene where the script pay offs started to show. Rey hovers a boulder barrier while Luke Ex Machina appears to face the nephew in his ultimate form, skywalker is happy because the last Jedi is now Rey.... Sure she trained for a couple of days and now is the carrier of the last Jedi books (the ones she stole).
The film isn't mediocre, its just a lost chance to blend the cool ingredients they had in The Force Awakens, Just disappointing and bland. So i dont blame Rian Johnson, i've seen him getting threats on Twitter, he wasn't to blame but the overall committee thinking of modern film making, its just like a sawed off shotgun, if you want to hit multiple targets in the distance it will disperse your shot all over the place with little to no effectiveness ( and im not even a gun person), movies want to be progressive and regressive, for all ages, for all genders, for hardcore fans and newer audiences, for all cultures and ideologies, and so they get bland, diluted in their potential. The directors for future Star Wars movies and the story group should start to focus on telling cool stories, if they want to kill characters do it but first show us their potential and we will sob or cheer. Like George Lucas said, its "beautifully made", but i found it lacks soul and real risks.
I thank you