Didn't Leave Me Wanting More

Rating: 7/10 (20 December 2017)

As the dust settled on "The Force Awakens" and I had a chance to re-watch it a few times, the weaknesses and flaws that were initially masked by both low expectations and it being so much more like a "Star Wars" movie than any of the prequels became painfully obvious. Fun as it is at times, it's just a rehash of "A New Hope" with a hopelessly lazy second half.
I was worried that "The Last Jedi" would therefore be a retread of "The Empire Strikes Back," and the fact that it's not is a notch in its favor. However, one wishes that Rian Johnson's entry in the space saga had "Empire's" propulsive narrative drive and cliff hanger surprises. Instead, he's made a film that feels like a placeholder until someone figures out where they want to take this story.
I am a "Star Wars" fan, but I am not upset about the things all of the other fans seem to be upset about. I feel like it's still early enough that I can't explicitly talk about what those things are for fear of spoiling the plot for others, but I overall embraced the film's theme of letting go of the past, even if that means letting go of some of our preconceived notions about the "Star Wars" universe and the characters who populate it. "Star Wars" for a new generation, indeed.
No, what I disliked about this film was more lazy storytelling and the fact that it felt stalled. There was a lot of action happening on screen, yet by the end of the movie I felt like the overall story had gone nowhere and all of the characters ended in the same place they started, with us having learned nothing new about them. Finn, for example, didn't have a reason to be in the movie, while Poe, who gets more screen time than in "The Force Awakens," shows us that he's a hotshot, which we already knew. The most interesting character of all of them is Kylo Ren, and "The Last Jedi" does well by him. And Adam Driver is emerging as the new cast's standout.
I did like the murkiness introduced into this film, and the suggestion that good and bad are points of view and the line between heroes and villains can be paper thin. But this movie should have left me begging for a third installment to wrap up all the unanswered questions and mysteries, while it instead made me shrug my shoulders about this part of the "Star Wars" story and want to go watch "Rogue One" again (which I did).
Grade: B+