Not a 'franchise killer', but not the most satisfying movie

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2017)

I was really disheartened by the reviews by users after having seen the glowing critic reviews of this title. Words like 'franchise killer', 'worse than the prequels' and 'mindnumbingly bad' were being thrown around like wildfire. Avoiding the spoilers was like trying to avoid grass in a field. This review will contain spoilers to back up my statements.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi picks up immediately where episode VII left off, with our new characters all up to many exciting things. We were looking forward to Rey's jedi training, Luke's story since episode 6, Finn's continued badass-ness and so on. For the most part, we got exactly that, but this movie falls flat in terms of how each of these stories were weighted. Rey's training was only 2 scenes, while the reveal of Luke's sudden (and inconsistent) need to kill Kylo Ren as a child due to fear of him being evil was did not sit very well with me. On the positive, Finn's arc was great fun, although the romantic element was a bit odd.
In terms of continued character development, along with the introduction of new characters, this movie does well. We learn to love Rey that little bit more. Kylo Ren is a bit of an oddity. Is he really evil? Is he confused? This movie does well to continue to develop this element and made the twists and turns that followed all the more exciting.
Luke, however, takes a bit of a backseat. I (and many others) wanted to see more of Luke and learn more about how the hell he ended up on this island. However, it appears the production team want us to sway away from the old cast and focus on the new generation. If you think about it, this has happened before. Yoda was huge in the prequels, yet his presence in episodes 4-6 is overshadowed by new characters. The same can be said with Obi-Wan in episode 4. So for people hating on this, try and rationalise the reasoning.
Now onto the specific issues I had with this movie. Let's forgo the 'Mary Poppins' reference to Princess Leia in space (although it was a bit odd) and focus on two things that grated with me. Firstly, since the Marvel era, many movies want to add comedic elements to an otherwise serious storyline. It works for Marvel movies, but not very well in other cases. Take the 2017 release 'Justice League' where they tried to copy Marvel and it not only made the comedy feel forced, but also misplaced. The same is true here. Jokes don't need to be inserted all the time guys! The second thing was the final plot twist that Luke sent a Jedi Shadow of himself to fight Kylo Ren. However, after this pseudo-fight, Luke dies. If Luke was intending on dying in the first place, why on Earth did he bother sending the shadow? Hmm.
All in all, Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a good movie. I enjoyed watching it as an average movie-goer. Sure, there are story elements that could have been done better, but I think they did a darn good job. Just because they have not followed through with all the fan theories does not mean they deserve such hate. Enjoy it for what it is, a great space opera!