A bloated mess.

Rating: 2/10 (17 December 2017)

If you had told me that there would be a Star Wars movie that would be so offensive to my tastes that I would look back at the prequels with rose tinted eyes I would have called you crazy. But here we are, two days after seeing The Last Jedi I'm left shaking my head with how Director/Writer Rian Johnson has not only shattered the new lore and mythos JJ Abrams was setting up with 2015's The Force Awakens but proceeded to wreck the legacy of one of films most beloved heroes.
This is the longest Star Wars film, clocking in at a 150 minutes, and yet it somehow manages to cover less ground than any other Star Wars movie. It splits off into three plotlines, one involves Oscar Isaac's Poe butting heads with a new character by Laura Dern. It's played up comedically and feels like an imitation of an old War movie, there's not much weight or tension put into it. Then we have John Boyega's Finn go on this Casino planet for a Codebreaker and the whole thing felt like an incredible waste of time. Like Poe's story this is also just mainly for laughs and had this story been cut from the film entirely very little would have been lost, it's insanely forgettable. The most important part is the return of Luke Skywalker and his training of the lead Rey. And for me this was the only part of the film that somewhat worked as Hamill is a charismatic actor but for every scene that made me smile there was a moment that just bewildered me. Did we really need to see Luke drink milk from a nasty Sloth Alien? Oh and I almost forgot Adam Driver's Kylo Ren meanders around angrily.
This all culminates with a final battle on Not-Hoth. And it just feels like Rian Johnson gives the biggest FU to the audience by making things so anti-climatic. We get one really good sword fight and the rest is just pretty much forgettable. At the end nothing much really happens, frankly I feel one will be able to just go from Episode 7 to Episode 9 and not miss anything.
I'm writing this review (and created this account) because this film has received an ungodly amount of praise by critics standing at a coveted 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. And it is so very undeserved. Disney can do way better than this wretched mess, Thor 3 and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies feel like better Star Wars films. This movie just makes me sad, and it negatively impacts The Force Awakens by just brushing aside all the potentially exciting things JJ Abrams was leading up to. The audience deserved better and so did the Star Wars franchise. It feels as if Rian Johnson was so committed to subvert all the tropes in Star Wars that he forgot what made Star Wars fun.