Episode II of Supreme Leader Kathleen's Mickey Mouse Moneygrab Space Adventures Ruins Star Wars' Rich Legacy

Rating: 2/10 (4 January 2018)

The Last Jedi is, first and foremost, a bad movie. It's been rightly praised for amazing visuals and a (demographically) diverse cast. But when those are the only things a movie has going for it you're talking about one of the Matrix sequels; not a modern classic, as professional critics have inexplicably dubbed TLJ. The plot is a mess, the screenwriting is lazy, the characters are shallow, the tone is jarringly inconsistent, and the narrative meanders pointlessly for long stretches. Don't get me wrong, parts of the movie made for a reasonably entertaining diversion while watching it, but I left the theater feeling disappointed and came to detest the film the more I thought about it. It seems like writer/director Rian Johnson was so focused on "twists" and "subverting expectations" that he forgot to tell a compelling or coherent story.
All that would've been bad enough if the movie had been called M. Night Shamaylan's Transformers 17. But this is, for better or worse, a Star Wars movie. And in Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson's hands, it manages to destroy the franchise's rich legacy. I can only assume that's Disney's idea, to make way forr a neverending series of empty mass-appeal quick-buck knockoffs. How else to explain retconning beloved icon Luke Skywalker into a loser and a coward? Or the similar albeit less overtly hostile treatment of Han Solo in The Force Awakens? Or nullifying everything that happened in the original trilogy? Professional critics praise these choices as "bold" and "modern" because all heroes eventually fail, and happily ever after doesn't exist, and blah, blah, blah. Sorry, but I don't go to a Star Wars movie so I can feel bad.
Moreover, nihilism and moral relativism in cinema isn't "modern." It was a hallmark of the 1970s cinema to which the original Star Wars trilogy was a reaction. While the original trilogy soared above those conceits with a simplistic, satisfying, unifying fairy tale, TLJ is a concession to them. TLJ gets bogged down with partisan political activism and humor that's already stale because the filmmakers either don't know or don't care that the original trilogy's themes were timeless and universal.
All of which is to say that TLJ isn't a "new direction" for the saga, it's a deconstruction of it at a fundamental level. In a breathtaking show of arrogance and incompetence, Johnson and Disney have decided to erase everything that came before and replace it with ... well, quite frankly, garbage. TLJ appears to have been calculated for fleeting appeal to the baser instincts of a mass audience, an explosion-filled nostalgia trip that denigrates the nostalgia so unintelligent people will think it's "edgy" or "challenging."
The film is certainly successful from a box office standpoint, but I suspect it won't hold up to repeat viewings or stand the test of time the way the original trilogy did. A film this narratively bad and thematically cynical can't generate that kind of lasting loyalty. I have no interest in finding out where the pointless story and underdeveloped characters go from here. Some day people will look back on TLJ as the movie that derailed the franchise. Until then, stay tuned for much, much more of the same from the studio hellbent on killing the golden goose.