Was this George's plan all along?

Rating: 1/10 (24 December 2017)

George Lucas is truly a genius. After seeing The Last Jedi I will never again mock Lucas' vision for Star Wars. I will watch the prequel trilogy with a new appreciation. I won't roll my eyes at the lame humor, or laugh at the horrible acting, or mock the bad CGI and Jar Jar Binks (okay, I'll probably still do that). The Last Jedi has done what I believed to be impossible. It made me long for another George Lucas Star Wars movie. Right now I would give almost anything for his version of episodes 7,8, and 9. I can't help but think this was George Lucas' hope from the start. He somehow knew the only way to win back the fans (and make a quick buck) was to have someone else ruin Star Wars worse than he ever did. And that is exactly what happened. Now George will be remembered as the hero, and Disney will be remembered as the villain who gave us The Last Jedi, aka the worst Star Wars movie of the bunch (and there are some clunkers in that bunch).
On a more serious note, TLJ is truly a dreadful movie. It sucks out any of the magic that was left over from The Force Awakens, and left me feeling indifferent about Episode IX, which is something I never thought I could feel about a Star Wars movie. When the Force Awakens came out I did not enjoy it as much as other people seemed to, mainly because I hated the way the movie destroyed everything won in the original trilogy. No one else I talked to seemed to notice this because the movie WAS fun, and exciting, and it was Star Wars again dammit, who cares if (spoilers) Han Solo was killed by his own son, and Luke was off on some island doing nothing? Star Wars was back! Well, it's back again, but this time the movie lacks all of the fun, humor, and mystery of The Force Awakens and it is hard not to notice how atrocious this movie treats the Star Wars lore, mythology, and most especially Luke Skywalker's character.
Staying true to it's predecessor, TLJ continues destroying the original trilogy one scene at a time. Luke might as well be a new character, Chewie and R2 are in about four scenes total, the force is used in ways that are questionable at best, laughable at worst, and I'm left wishing Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill never agreed to be in these movies. But TLJ does not just ruin everything about the original trilogy, it also ruins everything good about The Force Awakens. Instead of building off of the foundation the first movie created, Rian Johnson (who is somehow getting his own Star Wars trilogy after this mess) decided to take a bulldozer to it. If you had any questions after watching TFA, you will probably be disappointed by something in TLJ. Legitimate plot points have been glossed over, or literally tossed aside as if Disney were mocking their own audience's anticipation. This is mostly done for the sake of shock value, and while there was at least one scene that was genuinely surprising, it just rings hollow because this movie gives us no reason to care about anything.
Where is the heart? The plot of the movie is nonexistent, and the "new trio" we all liked in TFA is split up for 90% of the film. Finn's character, who had such promise, is wasted in a pointless story-line and paired with an unnecessary character. Poe, who seems more and more one dimensional, is pitted against another unnecessary character (Are you seeing a pattern here?). Even Rey does little more than chase Luke around on an island for most of the movie. Rian Johnson seems much more interested in Kylo Ren than any of the heroes. He does his best to make Kylo sympathetic, but it's too little too late. The scenes between him and Rey come across more comedic than anything else, and in the end the story-line turns out to be just another wasted opportunity to explore something interesting. But you would think there must be something interesting in a 2.5 hour movie, right? Wrong. The movie could have been under an hour once all of the pointless scenes were cut. Why this movie was aloud to be so long is beyond me.
To sum this all up, I can no longer feel anything but fear when I think about all of the future Star Wars movies Disney is making, and I really wish George Lucas never sold his creation. In a heartbeat I would go back to the days when all we complained about was who shot first, and why the 'yub nub' ewok song was taken out and Hayden Christensen was put in. Most of all I want to go back to a time when The Last Jedi movie did not exist.