Maybe I'm just sentimental

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2017)

I really must be missing something because I came out of the theatre on premiere night of STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017) thinking I had just seen the best Star Wars film since 'The Empire Strikes Back'. But, hey, that's just me! LOL Believe me, I've been to movies where I've seen them in the theatre and known right away whether or not they are trash, and TLJ is not even close to that. The only part that underwhelmed me was that casino planet nonsense, but otherwise, I thought this film hit every right note start to finish. For one thing, I really liked how tight and focused the plot of this movie was. None of this jumping around from planet to planet. Just 3 or 4 major settings to centralize all the action. I also love how fluid this film was with 'The Force Awakens', picking up where it left off. You can actually watch TFA and TLJ as a 5-hour film and I'm not complaining about that!
TLJ continues the Star Wars story picking up where TFA left off with our central heroine from the first film Rey (reprised excellently by Daisy Ridley) finding the legendary Jedi Master and original trilogy hero Luke Skywalker (brilliantly played by Mark Hamill in arguably a career performance), who is living as a hermit on a distant island planet in self-imposed exile due to his failure in training his nephew Ben Solo/Kylo Ren (superbly played again by Adam Driver), many years before Emperor Snoke (acted exquisitely by chameleon Andy Serkis). Meanwhile, the Resistance led by Princess Leia Organa (wonderfully played by Carrie Fisher in her last film role) fends off the First Order dreadnoughts with lead pilot Commander Poe Dameron (energetically reprised by Oscar Isaacs) as the remaining rebel flagships make their escape from the home base. The First Order is led again by General Hux (wonderfully played by Domhnall Gleeson in a scene-stealing performance). Additionally, rebel converter Finn (once again played with confident charm by John Boyega) awakes from his coma and joins forces with rebel soldier Rose (well played by newcomer Kelly Marie Tran) on a mission to a local planet to retrieve a master codebreaker so they can infiltrate the First Order flagship to remove a tracking device they are using to locate the rebels. During Rey's training with Luke, several deep secrets are revealed that compels Rey to choose sides between Luke and Kylo.
While TLJ is a very long movie, I was never bored due to great pacing and the strong acting and characters leaping off the screen. In particular, Hamill plain stole the show with his more world-weary, wise, and cranky version of the iconic Luke Skywalker. The Luke-Rey scenes were very similar to the Yoda-Luke training scenes from ESB. The island scenes were my very favorite set pieces with beautiful visuals, scenery and those cute Porg creatures. The battle scenes were invigorating and edge-of-your-seat. Also, it was great seeing the old faithful characters like Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, and the new old faithful BB-8. As well as one that caught me completely by pleasant surprise. Rian Johnson did a phenomenal job carrying on the Star Wars saga in my opinion. Not sure why there have been such negative reaction to it. I enjoy these new movies almost as much as the originals. Looking forward to Episode 9!