The Last Jedi.....let's hope so!

Rating: 1/10 (19 August 2018)

You would think that for a Star Wars film, with all the money at stake, that Hollywood would sequester the very best writers they could find and would not let them out of the room until they came up with a home run, no, a grand slam script worthy of the epic series they were writing for.
But alas, we're stuck with modern Hollywood, where the only answer to big money and big reputations at stake is to rip off earlier films. When I watched the Farce Awakens (sorry, Force Awakens), I realized I had seen that film before (it was from 1977 and was called Star Wars). Man, I felt pretty duped, and I bet you did, too.
Well, I thought, they wouldn't do that again...would they? Then I watched the Last Jedi. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Yes, I have seen this film before: parts of it are from a 1980 film called the Empire Strikes Back, and parts are from a 1983 film called Return of the Jedi.
Consider:

The film opens with the Rebellion, er, sorry, Resistance, having to escape their base by going through an Imperial, er, sorry, First Order fleet. You know, exactly how Empire opened.

Later in the film, the rebels are pinned on a white icy-looking planet in a cliffside base that is being attacked by AT-ATs, complete with trenches and towers. It looks exactly like Empire's Hoth scene. Oh but wait, it's not ice, it's...red salt? Oh ok, that makes it not a ripoff then (wink wink).

Rey goes to train on an isolated planet with a grumpy but wise Jedi master. Exactly like Luke and Yoda. She even has a dark side temptation hole in the ground that she goes into, where she ends up seeing...her own face! (Ring a bell?)

There's the whole throne room scene, where the Emperor is now Snoke, Vader is Ren, and Luke is Rey. Ren, like Vader, kills Snoke. Saw something like that in Return of the Jedi.

The casino scene opened with a montage of different (CGI) aliens and eerily familiar music that basically said yeah we're copying the cantina scene from Star Wars. (Oh wow, my bad, they actually ripped off all three films of the original trilogy).

Well, let's not belabor the ripoffs, because there are *other* bad aspects to this movie. Snoke, for one, is unbelievably powerful, but we are never told one scintilla about him. Who is he? Where did he come from? Is he one of the much balleyhooed Sith Lords??? Opportunity wasted. Same for the First Order - zero light is shed, and no one really cares, because we all know it's just the old Empire rudely dragged out of its grave to try and make some money.
The characters...who cares. Actually, the lady who plays Rey isn't bad, but she can't save this horribly written mess. Kylo Ren is still all over the map and totally unconvincing as a new archvillain (so much for completing his training).
Rose, who appears to be the new Jar Jar Binks annoyance factor, suicidally stops Finn from sacrificing himself to save his fellow resistance fighters, all so that she can kiss him. That's not selfish, right? Then there's the purple dress blondie general who looks like she's more prepped for the runway than the bridge (seriously, is that how military officers dress in far, far away galaxies?). Benicio del Toro acceptably does his squinty loungy thing, but ludicriously convinces Finn and Rose that he can break the First Order flagship's security system when he unlocks some jail cell doors (I'm pretty sure they're of the same difficulty level, right?) C3PO has like three lines, none of them remotely funny or original.
And on and on. Honestly, there's so much wrong with this film that one review cannot capture it all (read the other user reviews to see what I mean). The humor lines are horribly out of place and ill-timed (the very opposite of what made Han Solo great). Everything is overly loud and in your face.
Perhaps to best sum it up, just remember that Luke Skywalker's last living lines will now forever be: "Seeya 'round, kid".