No answers, no real stakes, poor dialogue.

Rating: 4/10 (20 January 2018)

I finally got around to seeing The Last Jedi several weeks after its release and somehow managed to avoid any spoilers. I had heard that it wasn't landing well with fans but I just brushed that off as people expecting too much or being dismissive of a direction the story was heading; after seeing this movie I can see why they were so upset.
The best part of the movie arguably happens in the opening scene. Scrolling texts, rebels desperately attempting an escape, dynamic space fights and a bit of humor. It makes you feel like the movie is picking up where it left off and the amount of casualties and character interactions makes you feel like this movie has weight, sadly it doesn't continue on this path. The space fight sets up a scenario where all characters except the main 6 or so are nothing but pawns, just nameless bodies waiting to be killed with no real consequences for their deaths other than a sort of "whoops, lost a few more". They handcuff every character to just kind of stand around and it makes the whole movie feel stale, and the fact that so many die just makes it seem like they never really mattered anyway.
The stagnant Rebel vs Republic standoff aside the interactions of the main characters are equally dull. In a movie that set itself up to seem like there would finally be answers to log standing questions, fans got none. We finally get an answer to who are Rey's parents, apparently they're no one important and they reveal that bluntly and with no real weight behind it. For such a major driving force of the first movie it didn't seem to matter at all. Luke is sad because he failed but still seems to have learned nothing from his experiences. Snoke is very present, and shows off very little power, and is killed without much resistance or conflict with no answers about his origin or motivations, he never fights, he just gets killed and now hes done I suppose. Kylo Ren is the only redeemable character in the story, we get a half answer about when he destroyed the temple and ran away from Luke but even then it left more questions than answers, and his big "turn" where he interacts with Rey is rushed and unfleshed out because of the previously mentions rebel plot being dragged along. Finn's entire side story just seemed like they didn't know what to do with him. He had no real impact on anything in the story, he could've been left out entirely and the main plot would not have changed. The final battle was inconsequential and anti climactic. I left the theatre not only underwhelmed by the movie I saw but not excited for any other films in this storyline.