This kills the Star Wars

Rating: 1/10 (20 August 2018)

I'm a woman who has loved Star Wars for more than two decades. I created this account because I want to talk about how much I hate The Last Jedi. It's been 9 months since I first saw the movie and I am just as angry about it now as I was in December 2017. This movie has killed part of my love of Star Wars, which means it has killed a part of me. This movie is a criminal. My issues with the film:
1. TLJ is calculated to enrage Star Wars fans.
The people responsible for this movie claim to love Star Wars, but TLJ is a hate letter to Star Wars and to everyone who loves it. The contempt for the material and its fans comes across clearly in myriad ways (lightsaber toss over the shoulder, killing Ackbar offscreen, breaking the lightsaber, burning up the original Jedi temple, Luke badmouthing the Jedi, etc), but never more clearly than in the way Luke Skywalker was portrayed. His character is the most beloved and representative of Star Wars other than Darth Vader. When you choose to make him gross and ridiculous (breastfeeding scene?) and transform him from a noble hero into a cowardly, lying, treacherous weirdo (attempted murder of Leia's son? Rude and scary hobo?) you know that the intention is to offend and to destroy a legacy. A competent writer and someone who actually liked the material would have found a way to raise up the new characters and make them shine without having to destroy, literally and figuratively, the OT heroes.
2. TLJ is poorly written and poorly edited.
Rian Johnson wrote an incoherent 4 hour long story and tried to tell it in 2.5 hours. The result is a movie that feels disjointed and poorly paced. The plot is nonsense, especially the Canto Bight sequence, the Poe and Holdo drama, Rey's entire arc, Snoke's demise. The movie has been praised for delivering twist after twist, but the story goes nowhere and it's shock for the sake of shock, with no real meaning. The movie is an exercise in nihilism. Nothing means anything.
The characterizations are poorly handled, especially Rey. She is one of the worst heroines I have ever seen. None of her decisions make sense, and it's unclear what is driving her character forward or why we should even care about her in the first place. She earns nothing, works for nothing, she is special "just because" but also she is nobody. OK?? The stunt with her parentage is completely ridiculous, and another instance of trolling the audience. Luke's arc is fine within TLJ, but makes zero sense if you consider the OT; it's like he's a new character that Rian Johnson made up on the spot. Poe is elevated to consequence to the detriment of Finn why?? The big thing about TLJ is supposed to be the women. So many women, binders and binders full of women, but they are all poorly characterized: incompetent Holdo, lame and sappy Rose, boring and unrelatable Rey, annoying Maz, poorly acted Connix who can't think for herself, sexually harassed Space Cow and even Leia with the ridiculous Leia Poppins BS and giving Poe's mutinous ways a pass because he's cute. Gross.
The tone of the movie is a mess. This is not Marvel, stop trying to make it Marvel with the dumb comebacks. Star Wars is all about bad puns and lame humor, that's part of what makes it so great. The humor in TLJ is like a wink and nudge to the audience that just cheapens the experience and makes it unequivocally 2017 as opposed to timeless. The ill-timing of these so called witticisms undercuts the gravity of moments that would have otherwise been beautiful ("No one comes from nowhere---oh yeah, that's pretty much nowhere." *eye roll*)
3. TLJ is a vehicle for certain individuals to clumsily promote their political agenda.
I have no problem with Star Wars being used to proselytize (George Lucas did it) so long as the message is conveyed in a sophisticated way that is transcendental and conveys a larger, universal message. "Capitalism is BAD and rich people are BAD" is dumb and hypocritical coming from Disney. "MEN ARE BAD AND WAMEN ARE GOOD" is an even dumber message. The way this agenda is being defended has caused division and toxicity among the fandom like never before.
Are there good things about this movie? Yes. Some of the visuals are stunning, Kylo Ren is fabulous, the Rey and Kylo Ren dynamic is poppin and the "hand sex" scene and Praetorian guard fight is stunning. These few things allowed me to watch the movie more than once so I could confirm how much I absolutely hate everything else about it. Honestly Kylo Ren and what will happen with him and Rey is the only reason I'm going to bother watching episode IX. I don't care about anything else at this point, and once Kylo's arc is done if these people are still at the helm of Star Wars I am no longer going to take part in it.
Going by the approach to Luke Skywalker, to previous Star Wars movies, to the lore, to the mystique of Star Wars and to a portion of its fanbase, I am pretty sure that The Last Jedi was a deliberate troll on the part of Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy, seeking to "revitalize" the franchise and get a conversation going by diving straight into the current culture wars, dragging the franchise along. But they miscalculated BIG TIME and they are paying for it now. They can try to discredit fans and gaslight people all they want--TLJ is generally despised by all except newer fans who don't care about "old Star Wars" and what it represents. But those new fans aren't the lifeblood holding the franchise afloat. When you go after your consumer base predictably the money will stop pouring in. And money is really the bottom line for Disney. Let's see how this plays out, but I'm willing to bet that the RJ trilogy won't be happening. And if it does I can guarantee I will not be watching it.