Best since The Empire Strikes Back

Rating: 9/10 (22 February 2018)

This movie is not, by any means, a perfect film. However, I do think that there's something to be said about how ambitious, entertaining, and daring that this movie is. If you read some of the reviews on here, and other places on the internet, you'll see some common complaints such as "Luke's character was ruined" or "entire plotlines were pointless!" I address these two specifically because I believe that they were actually some of the best parts of the film. Luke's character was, quite frankly, improved. In the original trilogy, he was a hero in training who wasn't perfect and almost succumbed to the Dark Side. In this movie, he's a grizzled, old Jedi master who has his reasons for questioning whether to get involved or not. It makes him way more complex and also isn't something completely out of the character that was originally established. As far as the "useless" plotlines go, THAT'S THE ENTIRE THEME OF THE MOVIE! Failure is readily apparent in this movie and aside from the very end, characters both good and bad are constantly failing. Luke fails Kylo Ren during his training. Rose and Finn's mission ultimately fails. Poe fails Holdo by turning against her. Kylo Ren and Rey both fail to convert the other. Snoke fails to retrieve Luke's location from Rey. The entire Resistance pretty much fails to exist. Leia fails to get backup. It's everywhere in this movie and quite frankly, it's goddamn refreshing to not have the heroes succeed. I know I'm not addressing a lot of the complaints, but that would take ages (and plus a couple of them are actually good complaints.) The romance between Finn and Rose is REALLY bad. It didn't need to be there and it didn't really make sense. The movie also did drop a lot of things that were brought up in The Force Awakens, but the things that it did drop I feel like might make a return in IX so I'm not too upset. Production-wise, and I don't think anyone is arguing this, this movie looks amazing. Everything technical from the special effects to the cinematography, it's a beautiful movie. The acting and script were both also pretty good aside from a few jokes that don't quite land. Overall, this movie is damn good. It's hard for me to believe that anyone truly thinks that this is worse than the prequels. The prequels are quite garbage. You can like them, that's fine, but saying that they're better than this? Unbelievable. For my ranking, I personally would put it below The Empire Strikes Back and the original movie, but I would actually put it above Return of the Jedi. Tough call there, but I think it's the right one.
Also this is loads better than Rogue One, which is also pretty garbage.