The end of Star Wars

Rating: 1/10 (15 May 2018)

The Last Jedi, with its motto to "let the past die" severs all connections to what made Star Wars special - beloved characters, fans, primordial battles between good and evil, to name a few.
Being the middle movie in a trilogy, one would expect this episode to be a conduit that would effortlessly ease us into the finale (even with a few cliffhangers), but its disjoint and jarring narrative has left fans like myself questioning the merit of following the franchise anymore.
The Last Jedi makes short work of any fan expectations or build ups over the last few years and destroys legacy characters in its bid to make the new ones shine. It's like Vince McMahon trying to shove Roman Reigns down WWE fans throats by having him beat Undertaker and Wrestlemania. It didn't help there, it doesn't help here.
The score and visual effects stand out in an otherwise incoherent story with more plotholes than its predecessor. The movie doesn't even continue plot-points established in the Force Awakens and instead uses the most beloved franchise set in a galaxy far far away, to deliver political messages that are relevant to Earth.
Gender and racial equality were never a problem in Star Wars - Leia, Padme, Ahsoka, Ventress are all strong characters who happen to be women, just as Han, Luke, Obi-Wan, Anakin are strong characters who happen to be men. And when we are considering a galaxy far far away, why should equality just be limited to the human species? We haven't seen a single noteworthy alien character in the new series. BB-8 is just a ball, as Han put it with no personality quirks like C3P0 or R2D2. Chewbacca continues to be wasted as a character - Leia hugging Rey instead of Chewie when Solo dies in TFA was a big slap on the face and this movie continues that grand tradition of dissing aliens and droids to establish pseudo-equality.
Coming back to the movie, the new characters - Rey, Ren, Poe and Finn all have little or zero character development.
1. Rey still yells and swings her saber like a grotesque neanderthal (Obi-Wan's comment about the lightsaber being an elegant weapon for a more civilized age is lost on her). With little or no training, she bests Luke and a bunch of mook guards with fancy weapons.
2. Ren is still unclear whether he wants to join the dark side or the light side and what was he wishing to complete or finish that his grandfather started? Eradicating sand from the galaxy?
3. Poe is the most wasted character of the new line as he's reduced to an arrogant hot-headed pilot / snob who cannot take orders from a woman
4. Finn, the token representative of "diversity" is lost in an uninteresting 30 minute sequence that eventually had no effect on the central plot.
The worst disservice made by the movie is reserved to the favourite twins of the galaxy - Luke and Leia. Luke's characterization in this movie has been openly opposed by.. well, Luke himself and all the outcry from Mr. Hamill seems justified. We don't see a Jedi or even a monk. We just see a grumpy old man who wants to die alone. Yet conveniently left a map so that people could find him... Luke gets beaten up by Rey (of course, she cannot put a wrong step) and eventually decides to use some form of Force Astral Projection to distract Ren so that the Rebels can escape. He eventually dies alone on the island as he wanted to. Leia on the other hand warps all established norms of the galaxy and travels through space, unprotected and no one even mentions it again in the movie. It is like you see a person's head severed in an road accident, gets up, picks his head and attaches it to his body and walks away while everyone around just say "ok" and move on.
There is no coherence within the movie, within the trilogy and by extension, within the franchise anymore. Episodes 7, 8 and 9 had a blank canvas to paint on (unlike 1, 2 and 3 which were just vehicles to narrate Anakin's fall) and have failed miserably. The movie is the first in the episodic Star Wars movies to not feature a lightsaber battle and that would probably be the least of the complaints one could have.
It is probably the worst Star Wars movie ever made and has potentially killed off the franchise for loyal fans. Sure, it will make money, but no one will care anymore.