This film does not feel like a star wars film

Rating: 4/10 (14 December 2017)

I'll keep this spoiler free apart from spoilers for the force awakens. I left the cinema after watching the force awakens so full of joy and happy discussing every point with my friends "wasn't that bit great", "the return of the falcon was amazing", "when he took that extra step forward i knew he was dead" so on and so on, but most importantly it filled us with questions. "Who are Rey's parents, who is Snoke, what does he want, why is Luke on this island all alone, what has he been doing" etc etc. The same question I'm sure you all have.
So I was extremely excited going into see the last jedi today hoping my questions would be answered to progress the story and give more depth to the new characters particularly Rey, Snoke and Kylo. Now fast forward 2.5 hours I'm leaving the cinema heading to my friends car and we are both deflated. We weren't moaning about how we'd have to wait till 2019 to find out how it was going to end instead we are now both worried, what is going to happen and how they are going to fit it all into another 2.5 hour movie. The pace of episode 9 will have to be a lot quicker than this, very little happens for the middle 1.5 hours of the film it starts well which will make your expectations climb even higher before you become quite frankly bored. I never thought I'd be bored watching Star Wars but I was. The new characters that are introduced could have had their roles covered by some of the existing secondary characters that we all know. The questions are sort of answered but also sort of not, its clear they wanted to hold some answers for the finale of the trilogy. The whole film feels like it needed to be put into the editing suite one more time to reduce it length and make it more dramatic.

I will say the only positive I can think of from this which is that from the trailers I thought this was going to be the Empire Strikes Back but with the new characters names inserted in place of the old, it is definitely not this but I know wish it was. There are a few good scenes I should say but they do not overcome the biggest issue by far with the film which is that I did not feel like I was watching Star Wars and it is down entirely to the writing. Yes there are Stormtroopers, Lightsabres and X-wings but these don't make Star Wars feel so special. Star Wars films make you wonder what is going to happen next and you have to listen to certain characters every word as it may be vital the audience goes along with the protagonist learning with them. It's full of shocks and twists throughout several in each film in the originals, Yoda telling Obi Wan in his force ghost form that "there is another" in the Empire Strikes Back never mind the most famous cinematic revelation of all. The Last Jedi feels much more like a mid season episode of a Sci-fi show you would see on Netflix rather than a Star Wars film. This is a problem not even the prequels had. I really struggle to believe that this is the best script they could come up with, I think more likely it was Johnson's first idea that they have tweaked slightly, signed off by Kennedy to get it into production to keep the money coming in. There are moments where you think that this is the sort of thing you would come up with as a kid and think this is brilliant but when you grow up realise how laughable those ideas were.
For the first time ever leaving a film I felt truly sorry for someone who wasn't even involved with the film,George Lucas. I presume he attended the premiere,inside he must have been wanting to walk out find a corner and have a good cry about what he was seeing happen to his galaxy far far away. This is a huge contrast to how I felt leaving the Force Awakens. I wanted to go straight back in and watch it again, part way through The Last Jedi I thought to myself "I don't think I'll ever watch this again". On leaving and after some discussion with my friend who I saw it with we both came to the same conclusion, it was disappointing but we'd both like to see it again, now several hours after it ended I realise that I only want to see it again out of some hope deep down in my heart that I have missed something but really my head knows that I haven't.