The most pointless Star Wars movie ever

Rating: 1/10 (12 August 2018)

Let me be clear - Lucas' prequels were worse as movies, had worse performances and technically looked like poor CGI. But at least those movies helped to establish Star Wars cannon and lore. They added worlds and characters, and helped to expand the universe we love. The Last Jedi, in comparison, is a parasite movie. It rides along on the lore it inherited, contributing nothing while consuming everything, it uses up and destroys lore and characters, but adds nothing. It's bungling director clear had no idea he was meant to take the baton, then pass it on.
The Last Jedi ends pretty much exactly where it starts, minus a few characters that were unceremoniously killed off. Luke Skywalker dies for no real reason, Snoke dies for no reason and without ever being explained. Basically, we're supposed to take this as a changing of the guard, except the new generation of Star Wars characters, Rey and Ren, aren't even a shadow of the great heroes and villains of Star Wars of yore.
The movie is a long boring sequence of failed attempts to do things, which ultimately fall flat, and eventually leave you wondering what the point was. There's no real character arc or progression for anyone, Rey basically teaches herself The Force because learning from Skywalker would be perpetuating a patriarchal construct. Kylo Ren is utter flaccid as a villain, he mostly yells and strains so hard you're worried he'll burst a blood vessel. Everyone else's performance serves no purpose and could have been edited out without affecting the final result of the movie. The forced humor is cringy, the forced love connection between Rose and Finn is cringy, the casino scene is straight of a cringy Lucas brainstorming session.
Worst of all, this movie leaves no reason to want to watch its follow up. The characters and mystique that could have been are dead and gone. Ryan Johnson didn't just kill Luke Skywalker off pointlessly, he killed Star Wars. I will not be watching the next one, and I strongly urge you to do likewise.