I feel no conflict, only disgust

Rating: 1/10 (31 December 2017)

Remember how The Force Awakens left you excited about Star Wars again and wondering what would happen next? Well Rian Johnson's "The Last Jedi" stomps all over those expectations while making a mockery of them. It's almost as if he went out of his way to make all the payoffs in this movie as unsatisfying as possible. What's worse, after seeing this movie I was left with no anticipation for the next. It will be an easy decision for me to skip further installments in theater, and this is coming from a longtime fan. I have been watching these movies since I was 12. I have read countless Star Wars books, dueled my brothers with homemade lightsabers, and enjoyed great Star Wars games like SW: Republic Commando and the original Battlefronts. I love Star Wars. I hated The Last Jedi. I have concluded that what Disney is making right now is money, not Star Wars.
Specific ways this movie fails at being Star Wars in my eyes:

Star Wars has always felt like it's own world, "A galaxy far far away" and now we are seeing phone jokes, your-mom jokes, and illegal parking in Star Wars. Fuel has also never been an issue before in these movies, but apparently after years of operating a Rebellion, Leia forgot to have her crew gas up in this installment!

Plot holes! It's o.k. to add new things to canon, but it needs to mesh. Light-speed kamikaze runs make the dogfights around the Death Stars seem unnecessary. Lightning-summoning force-ghosts seems to beg the question what all the other ghosts have been doing this whole time.

TLJ includes some really obvious virtue-signaling. Leave the politics to Star Trek please! If you start involving real-world politics/issues as blatantly as was done here, you bring us back from the galaxy far-far away and out of the experience.

TLJ seems to be overtly telling fans to let go of the past. Maybe this would be more convincing if Disney Wars could do the same. What are the New Order and Resistance factions besides a rebranded Empire and Rebellion? When Lucas went to make the prequel trilogy, he did not recycle the same factions, ship designs, and conflicts.

Apparently Rian Johnson considers himself a big fan of Star Wars, but I would argue he fundamentally misunderstands what Star Wars is. Star Wars is a fantasy in space! It has knights, princesses, and evil emperors. Turning it into Sci-fi is only o.k. insofar as you do not compromise the escapism that exists at this series' core. In his enthusiasm for subverting the audiences expectations, I think Rian has robbed this installment of all its "romantic" qualities and left it cold and dead.

The struggle between Good and Evil is less believable when the villains become comic relief. When was Darth Vader ever funny? He was more effective that way.

I could spend a lot more time and get into detail about various plot-points, but I wanted to focus on why this movie fails at being Star Wars.
Please show this review to anyone who tries to tell you "No one hate's Star Wars as much as Star Wars fans" or, "People who hate The Last Jedi are misogynists who don't like Rey."