bummer

Rating: 1/10 (13 December 2017)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017, Rian Johnson)
Well this film is a very mixed bag and somewhat a disappointment. After JJ Abrams brought back the magic with a somewhat overly familiar kick off to the new trilogy I had been looking forward to seeing it go in new directions for the next episode. However whilst it did go in some new directions (as well as mirroring previous chapters), I did not like where it went or think it was executed very well.
I am not really a fan of the director and this did nothing to change it. The visuals bar the space battles were not memorable, the design of creatures was often poor and going backwards with an over reliance of cgi is such a shame after how good The Force Awakens looked. The humour in the Force Awakens was much mover over the top than we had ever seen before in Star Wars but it still worked but in The Last Jedi it kicks off with Marvel Cinematic Universe style humour that doesn't fit and continued to sprinkle that in throughout. The magic was missing and the beats just felt all wrong for large sections of the film. I did not care for the script but it was the directorial execution that was more uninspired and I am happy that JJ will be back in the directors chair for the last part.
There were things I did like though... as in most all of the scenes on the Island with Luke Skywalker and Rey. As mentioned before the space battles looked very slick, especially the opening one. A couple of new characters shone like Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) and DJ (Benicio Del Toro) but some disappointing characters from The Force Awakens were still quite bad like Snoke (Andy Serkis), Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) and Admiral Hux (Domhnall Gleeson). One thing that was a pleasant surprise was the little furry creatures known as Porgs that have caused much debate were actually pretty good and used sparingly.
In the end it was a very messy unfocused film that did not wow outside of the space battles with a mixed bag of performances and too much silly humour which should not be confused for charm. A huge disappointment but some seeds are set that could easily be steered into a rousing final chapter in two years time.