This is the worst Star Wars film.

Rating: 1/10 (20 December 2017)

That's quite an achievement. The prequels were so bad it's hard to rank them. The Force Awakens was a derivative retread of the first film that pillaged the characters and fairytale of Star Wars, writing the central characters out (or plain killing them off) in favour of emo Darth Vader, a load of other dull cardboard cut-outs and way too much CGI. There's nothing good about The Last Jedi. The script is truly awful, what passes for characterisation is so contrived that it's insulting, there isn't even a single exciting action sequence or fight. As a Star Wars film, perhaps script and characterisation aren't that necessary but when they're this bad the film is unwatchable. Crucially, there's no coherent plot, just a whole load of stuff that happens. So many tiresome grand gestures, sickening amounts of CGI, the odd pointless grandiose speech. Perhaps up to this point The Phantom Menace had been the worst film in the series. Its tale of some trade federation blockading a CGI planet is more gripping than the goings-on of The Last Jedi. They do some stuff that's supposedly really important. Then do some other stuff... and some more. Then the film ends. After The Force Awakens I wasn't expecting much, but how could it have been worse than the prequels?
I can't believe it's been a whole year since Rogue One. It's what Star Wars should be aiming for. I never got to write a review but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. In some ways, it could be the best Star Wars film as it's pretty solid all-round. The script and characters are well put together. There aren't really any throw-away, under-developed characters who're merely there as walking plot devices - they are all fleshed out to some extent and everyone has something useful to do. A bit like Mad Max: Fury Road, really. The friendship between Cassian and Jyn was well-developed and so touching that it moved me to tears. Not that the film was without flaw or clichÃ©, but I think the writers really went out of their way to give us an interesting tale here. They knew the essence of what made Star Wars special and gave us some more of it rather than regurgitate tired facsimiles of what we've already seen. Friendships don't always have to end in romance and that feeling you get when you embrace a friend before you part ways for some time can be a powerful one. Everything in The Last Jedi is dialled up to eleven all the time and I just couldn't care less. The attempts at humour to lighten the mood are weaker than The Phantom Menace, but at least that film had a decent-ish fight at the end. The Last Jedi feels like a confused remix of scenes from the previous films (including the prequels). Like the prequels, the cast really doesn't care. Why should you?