Neither clever or funny nor compelling or moving

Rating: 1/10 (16 December 2017)

I grew up with Star Wars, liked Looper, and was really looking forward to this movie. But I was stunned by how bad it was. Johnson tried to be clever, funny, and surprising, but failed on all counts. I don't mind that Star Wars is taken into a new direction and stripped of what we think we knew about the universe Lucas created. But I do mind that the characters are - even for a Star Wars movie - cartoonish and utterly unbelievable, and that the storyline is riddled with unnecessary subplots that could and should have been cut.
Also, the movie is tonally jarring. There is a lot of slapstick esp. when it comes to Luke Skywalker, but the main plot is borrowed from the new Battlestar Galactica, which is a about a merciless foe running down an utterly defeated and increasingly desperate enemy. That would have called for tense, character-based storytelling, and not for misplaced attempts at humor, clever twists, and ridiculous villains.
This movie is a lost opportunity. Johnson could have ended the Jedi not with a childish and historically tone-deaf burning of books, but with telling us how a Luke Skywalker we could have seriously came to the conclusion that the Jedi were flawed and needed to end. But Johnson was so caught up in breaking the beloved toys of Star Wars fan boys that he forgot to tell a compelling story along the way.