Not the best of the franchise, but does enough to keep the momentum going for Episode IX

Rating: 7/10 (1 January 2018)

'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' (Episode VIII) has a big challenge - live up to the original trilogy and build upon the solid foundation laid by 'The Force Awakens'. It achieves both in parts, but probably not overall. If Episode VII was reminiscent of 'A New Hope', Episode VIII doesn't really emulate 'The Empire Strikes Back' too much. It starts with a pretty good space battle between The Resistance and the First Order, with Poe Dameron (Issac) and General Hux (Gleeson) the main players. Poe's a great character, but probably needed more of him. The characters are all in different locations, so the film spends a bit of time hopping between them - Luke (Hamill) and Rey (Ridley) are on Ahch-To; Leia (Fisher) is with Poe on a ship being chased by Hux & her son, Kylo Ren (Driver); Finn (Boyega) is on a mission with Rose (Tran) at Canto Bight, a casino planet.
Unlike the original and prequel trilogies, 'The Last Jedi' doesn't pick up a few years later - it's almost the next day. Some of my main issues with the film are because of this - The First Order had their massive "Starkiller Base" (and seemingly thousands of soldiers) destroyed at the end of Episode VII, so how do they suddenly have two of the biggest spaceships ever seen? Where are all their resources coming from? My other gripes are that's it's probably a little too long (2 hours 30min), we don't learn where Snoke came from or how/why he's so powerful/in charge, Laura Dern is not really needed, Benicio Del Toro's character could've been done much better and we don't see nearly enough of R2-D2, C-3PO, or Chewbacca. The film spends too much time in the space stand-off between Leia and Ren and is a bit disjointed cutting between what's happening.
In saying all that, there's plenty of positives, with Rey being the shining light in this new trilogy, and Ren continues to remain an interesting character. It's good to see Luke have more screen time, even if he's still brooding over his failure of Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. The Porgs were funny and cute, not annoying as I thought they might be, Chewie finally gets a hug from Leia (something that annoyed me at the end of Episode VII) and there's a few good lightsaber duels, and the final act with the AT-AT's/sky-speeders is very well done.