Adult Crybabies Ruin Their Own Movie

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2017)

Let's start with some facts:
a) The original Star Wars films were playful, bubblegum films based on classic Hollywood tropes and Saturday serials. They were both melodramatic and deliberately silly, because they were made for children of all ages. They were not masterpieces of filmmaking (with the exception of the visual/sound effects, of course). If anything, they were masterpieces of adventure and entertainment. By the time Return of Jedi was released, Lucas's vision had started to unravel and the films had become ridiculous in certain respects.
b) The prequels were uneven at their best, having none of romantic charm of the original trilogy. Mind-numbingly bad characters, dialogue, and pacing plagued every episode and made common people wince. Horrible.
The Force Awakens was a simple reboot, if not a retread. But at least it was competent entertainment in most respects, with a couple of great new actors and characters introduced.
Which brings us over the course of 40+ years to The Last Jedi.
There is nothing more sad than to hear bearded men with college degrees and real jobs pissing and moaning about canon and expectations while completely missing the point. This is excellent, exhilerating entertainment and escapism, and by the end of it I was 12 years old again. I wanted to be Luke Skywalker. I wanted a real lightsaber. I wanted to branded as rebel scum.
The film has issues. The entire Finn/Rose subplot was a useless distraction, and chews up time that would have been better spent on central characters. But many of the glaring, maddening failures of Lucas as a filmmaker seem to be forgotten now. Now there is only contempt for Disney - and everything they do with the Star Wars universe.
My hope is that some aspects of the lore that seemed to be trivialized in this film will be better addressed later. And we have the new addition of the standalone films being released, to reframe and clarify.