Just plain underwhelming

Rating: 6/10 (23 June 2018)

I don't think the last Jedi is the worst movie of all time. I don't think it's the worst Star Wars movie of all time. But it is just painfully average. Rian Johnson has repeatedly stated that he made the film according to his own vision, disregarding what the fans wanted. Watching the movie, this is so clearly not true that the idea is laughable. It's pretty obvious that Johnson made this movie not with the intent of following his own vision, but with the intent of purposefully ignoring what the fans wanted. There is no problem with ignoring what the fans want when making sequels or movies within a universe, and making a movie with your own creative vision. A problem does arise however when a film is made solely to subvert expectations and disregard what fans want. This movie is the definition of wheel spinning. Over the course of the plot things happen sure, but the movie itself has a sense of weightlessness in its treatment of consequences for its actions. The movie is about failure. When Poe fails, he gets the resistance bombers wiped out. This leads to his demotion and launch of a secret mission to get a code breaker. When this mission fails, it leads to the death of 80% of the resistance fleet. Yet by the end of the movie, Poe, Finn and Rose face no consequences for their actions. Poe is even set up to become the leader of the resistance in the next movie following Carrie Fishers untimely death. The movie contains failure aplenty, yet the movie itself fails to derive any meaningful character development from this failure.
Another point of this movie that really bothers me is Luke. There are so many issues relating to Luke in terms of character and logic that it boggles the mind that this is the best Disney could come up with. The character flaws can be explained away by the 30 years that have passed between this movie and Luke's last appearance so I'll focus on the logical errors.
1. Luke didn't want to be found, yet he left a map in a deactivated R2 to his exact location. This literally just doesn't make sense
2. Perhaps the biggest logical flaw with Luke is his death. Luke being able to project his form across the galaxy makes no difference to the ending of this movie, and deprives us of a display of Lukes Jedi mastery. We never get to see how Luke's skills with a lightsaber have developed over the 20+ years he has presumably spent training. Instead we get to see that he learnt a new force power, that was so draining that he died from using it. WHY? Why not just have him fight Kylo properly and die. What the hell is the point of him being a projection if he dies from using it.