Two Words... Disappointing and Confusing

Rating: 5/10 (24 December 2017)

All Stars Wars movies get so much hype and deservedly so! Star Wars is one of the most iconic movie franchises ever created. As soon as the trailer for The Last Jedi came out, it exploded everywhere. The excitement just kept building and building, but this movie completely failed to live up to the hype. If I were to rank the Star Wars films, this one would be in the middle somewhere. It's definitely better than Episodes 1-2, but not even close to being as good as Episodes 4-7. It's about even with Episode 3. This movie has so many problems though... The plot and sub-plots are terrible, the jokes aren't funny (thanks Disney), and the characters have hardly any substance to them!
The plot literally consists of The First Order ships trailing and shooting at The Resistance ships from a distance. While that is going on for 75% of the movie, pointless sub-plots are developing. The sub-plot with Finn and new character, Rose, has no ramifications on the rest of the story. It didn't play in at all and went on entirely too long. The sub-plot with Rey and Luke on the island is left unexplained and just takes up time. The majority of that portion of the movie consists of Rey trying to convince Luke to train her/come back to help The Resistance fight The First Order. It doesn't lead anywhere at all and many parts are left unexplained or unfinished. Don't even get me started on Snoke. His character is the most confusing to me. The directors/writers/whoever have done a terrible job explaining who Snoke is. He is apparently some incredibly powerful leader who can just obliterate anyone whenever he wants (I didn't know that until I read another review). He is never introduced or explained in any way though. He's just thrown in the thick of the story and is the leader behind the First Order and ends up being killed off by Kylo-Ren after just a few appearances ??? It's really confusing and a terrible move on the part of the writers. As I mentioned above, the jokes were really bad. That's easily attributed to Disney's cheesy, children's comedy used over the years. It's a PG-13 action film, and it's like they tried to appeal to the 12 year old and under crowd with the humor. Not very smart.
The new characters are just not thriving as the old characters did in the original movies either. Han Solo, Vader, Luke, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and more are all stand outs in the Star Wars franchise. But the new characters, Rey, Finn, Poe, and others just don't seem to be fitting in as well. This film made the characters even more shallow. The characters are spread out in different locations in the galaxy for most of the movie. So a lot of jumping around went on in this movie to get each character some screen time. But it was only for little snippets at a time. It's like you get a little insight on each character for a few minutes in a scene that has no point to the main plot, and that's it. The only character I will say they did a great job with is Kylo-Ren. Adam Driver, who plays Kylo-Ren does an awesome job. He plays his character very well, and adds a lot of substance to the movie. Other than that, you don't see a whole lot about the characters. The whole figuring out who Rey's parents are is getting real old too. They just keep dragging that crap on. Come on now. Are we really suppose to believe that her parents are some trash people from and irrelevant town? They kept harping on that throughout this movie, and it's getting annoying. That's basically the sum of Rey in this movie. If you're a Star Wars fan, you'll obviously go see this movie. But be prepared. You're most likely to be disappointed and/or confused.
With all that being said, I will finish by saying a few positives. There are some unexpected turns in this movie. I was very surprised on many occasions, and it really added some excitement to the movie. Also, as mentioned above, Kylo-Ren is a great character and is executed very well by Adam Driver. Overall I give this movie a 5/10.