Not really Star Wars any more

Rating: 3/10 (19 December 2017)

The Last Jedi. Some of you will like it. Some of you won't. I didn't like it. It was okay, but very average and missed so many opportunities. Both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi are riding on the goodwill of the original series, and quickly draining it.
No real spoilers here. Just comments about the film rather than the plot.
It's a narrative & thematic mess with some of the hands down, lamest plot devices ever thought of. Some really interesting ideas as well, to be fair, but some entire sequences & characters are completely irrelevant to the plot and only seem to exist so the director could make some pointed social comment.
No wonder the rebels/resistance keep losing. Militarily they're disorganised and stupid. At least in the original episodes they were half-competent. Here they're reckless and short-sighted.
The biggest thing though is that it seems that Disney is desperately trying to drag Star Wars away from the original episodes. I think Rogue One was the last actual Star Wars movie we'll see (maybe Solo will be though). Obviously they need to do so in order to recoup their costs in buying the franchise. The Last Jedi also kind of trashes a lot of what The Force Awakens set up (which isn't a bad thing, that movie was crap).
The Kylo/Rey parts were the best and had some amazing potential (which was summarily ignored), and I hoped they'd save the film, but instead we just got really thin characters and absolutely zero development for the next film. The original trilogy had the Emperor and Vader. Although they were pretty under developed characters (in some ways), at least they were villains who cast a long shadow. Here, the villians are barely part of the story in a lot of ways. Remember Darth Maul from the Phantom Menace? Remember how evil he looked and you just knew he was going to be a cool character? Then he did practically nothing and then died? Awesome, wasn't it?
After these latest two, it's obvious that Disney has no plans for the current trilogy. Each film trashes what came before it and provides very little for what will come after it. There's almost zero continuity between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi in terms of story. Thematically they're empty (although I suspect it may be part of trying to drag it away from the original episodes a little, ie: no Skywalker family).
Ultimately, this is a corporate film rather than an artistic one. I dispair that the director has apparently been chosen to write a whole new trilogy after the hack Abrams wrecks the next film. It'll be less and less Star Wars.