Hamill: "This is not my Luke Skywalker" Fans: "This is not our Star Wars"

Rating: 4/10 (29 December 2017)

I had begun writing a review a few days after seeing this, listing all of the missteps this film makes, both as part of the franchise, and as a standalone on its own merits. It's too long to post here. Suffice it to say that people's main complaint about The Force Awakens was that it felt too familiar, a reworking/ rehash of the very first Star Wars (since termed "A New Hope"), and The Last Jedi eschews all the familiarity completely, creating not mere twists and surprises but gaslighting our understanding of our favorite Star Wars characters and inventing an unfamiliar lore. I know why people did not like TFA, and I respectfully disagreed. I cannot comprehend why people like The Last Jedi. If TFA was too much like Star Wars, then the producers and director Rian Johnson (let him never work in the same galaxy as Star Wars again--I'm not quite to the point of spitting on the ground when I say his name, but I am thinking about it) made quite sure this completely flipped the script, to the point of insulting all the fans who claimed to want to see something new (be careful what you wish for). I am intentionally avoiding spoilers, as those are in my "long" review (this one isn't exactly a pamphlet), and there are simply too many poor choices in character development and storyline. Save for the exceptional visuals (particularly the final hyperspace sequence), and an admittedly excellent performance from Adam Driver, this movie has very little to offer Star Wars fans, or movie fans in general. Its attempted humor is almost always mean-spirited sarcasm (or an aloof wink through the fourth wall), the character development relies on a necessary regression to make it seem, and there is an unnecessarily political theme which would be very unpalatable in most other science fiction movies, but is particularly out of place here. Many people are complaining about the overtly feminist message. I disagree. I have no issue with the strong female characters, even when portrayed beyond the point of implausible Mary Sue perfection. It's that the male characters are always so deficient, with the above-mentioned character regressions serving inexpertly as character development, that the female characters' wisdom and authority seem so incongruous. Even an old friend shows up and behaves maniacally.
I checked imdb the next day to see what TLJ was being rated; it was an 8.2 at that time. I thought not only are the critics wrong (I was excited to see this movie based on the reviews I read just a day before), but they were likely bought off by Disney. Moreover, the imdb members were giving this a rating that was way too high. It has since settled into a more appropriate 7.6, but even that seems too high for this. Many people are logging on to give it fewer stars than it actually deserves, to offset the many too-high ratings (anything above a 7). How bad/ even divisive is this move? It is lowering the rating of the Force Awakens! People are logging in to pan that movie (much better than this one, on nearly all levels), just to prove their love for this. I was planning to pan this as a 1, to offset the high ratings, but I will give it a more honest 4 stars (2/5) for the excellent space battle cgi, the choice to bring back an old friend in a more familiar form, and Adam Driver's performance, each of which merit another consideration of this entry into the Star Wars canon.