A very sad turnabout for Star Wars after The Force Awakens

Rating: 4/10 (19 December 2017)

The Last Jedi had a lot of pieces of what could have been a good movie and then instead of becoming one kept adding more and more and more. Most likely due to the criticism the Force Awakens got for being too much like A New Hope, The Last Jedi really wanted to keep the audience spinning and not be The Empire Strikes Back. Unfortunately more is often not better. Also, it is not always a good idea to try and beat something that already was amazing.
Sure a lot of people were kept guessing and were surprised by decisions but a good movie needs a good story and good characters and general cohesiveness. The entire movie came off like a group effort mad lib of sci fi and action ideas mushed together in a giant mess. Parts were pretty but as a whole it was not well shot, poor directing detracted from an awesome cast of actors who acted wonderfully. Most of the criticisms I've seen before are petty jabs at individual decisions such as whether or not a character should have died or that a theme was bad etc. The really problem was there were too many good ideas that were squeezed together in an inartful manner into a confusing mess that created a story that lost all of its continuity with the previous movie/movies in the long series it was supposed to be a part of. ...And several VERY BAD ideas. Literally there is an entire plot line that was a senseless waste of time and I think deleting it from the movie as a whole would have left me enjoying the movie far more.
I hear all the people who claim that those critical of this movie are die hard fans who didn't like their expectations of Star Wars go unmet. While I admit that I am a true fan (let's please pretend Episode I never existed...), I was only let down by how not good this movie was as a whole. I did not enter the movie with any pre-existing expectations of who should live or die or what any of the answers to the questions left by The Force Awakens should be but left the movie greatly disappointed and upset. I can think of really only one positive thing this movie had to bring to the table: the development of Poe's character that was left sadly dismissive in the Force of Awakens but in all other manners this movie fell flat.
First of all, to really surprise me as a viewer I shouldn't have all answers to all questions given to me in the middle movie of a trilogy. The middle needs to be the biggest cliffhanger of a trilogy. The first part is the scene setting and the middle is the rising action leading to the climax and resolution. While seemingly insurmountable devastation abounded in this movie, with all character and plot questions neatly tidied up it does not leave one just not being able to wait until the next episode. Secondly, many characters completely abandoned all character development made in previous movies. The most notable is the story of Finn. For a character who grew from cowardice to heroism in the Force Awakens pretty much nothing that that Finn did or said made much sense in his character arch. It really seemed like the director didn't like the development of Finn so started from scratch with the same general idea. It just didn't make sense.
Thirdly, while I appreciate some of the more progressive themes that were attempted it felt like a stew of morality rather than a part of the movie as a whole. Pretty much none of us like cruelty to children, or animals or corrupt wealthy people etc. etc. but it would have been nice to see like one strong idea besides the word "hope" repeated unnecessarily like a broken record when the story wasn't the sort to really lead there yet, instead a smattering of snippets of moral themes not flushed out well at all. I felt the same thing with the characters. This movie added countless named characters who had approximately five minutes on screen to do something pointless and ultimately just detracted horribly from the story as a whole. Each additional character by themselves was a decent possible addition but the creators needed to pick just like 1-2 and really develop them instead of wasting time on the others. A movie isn't like Game of Thrones where season after of season or chapter after chapter can tie together seemingly unconnected events and people; they had 2 1/2 hours to tell us a story and I left unsure of what that story was and terrified at what they might do next.
Finally, this was supposed to be a Star Wars movie. That doesn't mean the expected needed to happen but it should have felt like part of the Star Wars story as a whole. I couldn't keep track of whether I was watching Battlestar Galactica, Sliders, Tarzan, or Casino Royale and that is problem. I am very glad that JJ Abrams is coming back for the finale. I can think of no one better to fix this mess and let Star Wars end in the epic manner it should, worthy of all those shouty words dramatically marching across the screen to John Williams deserves.