Marginally Better than the Prequels

Rating: 1/10 (16 January 2018)

It was going to be difficult to please everybody and in the end this movie ended pleasing very few people instead.
The thing that made The Force Awakens so enjoyable was that it was able to re-connect Star Wars fans with many of the things that made them have an emotional connection with the original trilogy. The realignment was sorely needed after the dismal prequel trilogy. Yes, there were fan service call backs and the familiar plot of blowing up a death star. But, it worked. Abrams is very good at playing in other creator's sandboxes... moving the pieces around, making them fit, telling new stories while keeping the elements familiar.
That went out the window with The Last Jedi. I was initially very excited to see what Johnson would do with the story now that the table had been set. In some ways he does a very respectable job moving the entire narrative along. However, he does this at the expense of the original characters.
This treatment of Luke is perhaps the most universally derided part of the movie and for good reason. Luke Skywalker is a hero to so many people. To portray him as a weird hermit and failed Jedi is an affront to many Star War's fan's core beliefs. Yes, I get that people may become jaded with time or that occasionally challenging an audience's perception of a character can be a useful story telling device. However, Johnson took it too far and this leaves Luke's long awaited appearance wholly unfulfilling. The notion that he'd kill his nephew is completely at odds with everything we know about him.
Leia's 'space walk' moment, or whatever you care to call it, was a cheap ploy that immediately takes you out of the movie. I feel that this unnecessarily toys with the audience especially in light of Carrie Fisher's passing.
Now, I was shocked and appalled when 'fans' pitched a fit over the casting of Daisy Ridley and John Boyega for TFA. The level of racist and misogyny commentary was horrible considering what this story is supposed to be about. However, I feel that Disney has crossed a threshold and is now trying to shoe-horn in strong female and minority characters where ever and whenever possible. This is especially ironic after they've spent the last 70 years making money off the whole 'Disney Princess' convention which has now fallen out of vogue. I love Daisy Ridley's character. However, the A-wing pilot, Admiral Holdo, and the Tico sisters are wholly unnecessary and this line of discourse plays out in the whole casino story line. It took Star Wars 40 years to finally introduce a character of Asian origin and the best you can do is Rose Tico? Look, she's not as bad as Jar Jar by half, but she's not much better. I really hope that this character becomes something meaningful in episode 9.
Its my option that truly great movies are able to subtly touch and reflect on current events. This movie, instead, hamfistedly says eating Porgs are bad (vegetarianism), income equality is bad (slave labor and the excesses of the 1%), using animals for entertainment is bad (Fathier racing), through the DJ character that choosing sides is bad (so let's all be mercenaries). While these are not necessarily plot points they are obvious, persistent, and irritating.
Finally, before I finish, I do have one good thing to say. Although its far too little and way too late the final scene of the movie reminds us what much of this franchise has been about. It reminds us that greatness can come from anywhere (Luke, after all, was just a farm boy and his father a slave). I think that this final scene is timely and is something that all Star Wars fans can connect with. We all believe that there's something great in us, some latent ability that can propel us to achieve great things. Its finally an admittance that there is no 'chose one' as Anakin was prophesied to be but rather a realization that great things can only be accomplished by many people working together. Its the one note that The Last Jedi correctly hits.
In sum, I don't think Rian Johnson really understood the world in which he was working and it shows. The movie has its moments but will serve as a dividing point in the fan base for years to come (unless it gets the Highland II treatment). Now, Rian Johnson doesn't care about this, he's been paid. But the rest of the fan base will either have to reconcile their differences with the movie, or choose to ignore it like I ignore Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's also damning that the supposed Blue-ray version will have an additional 20 mins pushing the run time to nearly 3 hours. In the end Johnson didn't understand the sand box in which he was playing and instead of telling a Star Wars story he simply missed the mark and told a bad one.