Style over Substance: Visual Effects and Humour cannot offset the fact that the Script is a poorly written fan-fiction

Rating: 5/10 (14 December 2017)

Non-Spoiler Section:
Star Wars Movies Ranked-
1. Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. Return of the Jedi
4. Rouge One
5. Revenge of the Sith
6. The Force Awakens
7. The Last Jedi
8. The Phantom Menace
9. Attack of the Clones
It's just above the two worst prequels. That should tell you something.
The Last Jedi is style over substance. Stunning settings over strong characters. Jokes instead of interesting, deep, philosophical lore. Large CGI battle sequences over compelling, logical storytelling. Entertaining but screwed up story-wise.
The Last Jedi didn't copy Empire Strikes back. Instead it was much worse. Far, far, far worse.
The actions sequences are cool. Some of the humour is good but gets a bit excessive, at times being out of character and at other times undercutting an important dramatic moment. Some of the actors did their darnedest to try and save it with some performances that clearly showed a lot of dedication.
None of this stops the fact that, from a story perspective, TLJ has screwed up the entire trilogy. And potentially parts of the OT too.
It puts too much stock on the 'twists' and 'shock value' and forgets its meant to be bridging the gap between TFA and Episode 9 by ruining some of the glory that 9 deserves. It tries to do too much, forgets its part of a trilogy and fall flat on its stupid face with wasted potential. There is a lot of wasted potential.
Also, I've decided that the character of Rey is utter trash. It's a shame because I like Daisy Ridley but the actor is not at fault when screenwriters eliminate any character growth by making her automatically so good at everything with 0 struggle, flying in the face of established Star Wars lore. Poor writing has let good potential down. In fact, this applies to virtually the entire cast.
Rey: Good Potential, Good Acting, Poor Writing- the Mary Sue label applies more than before; the Luke training scenes were nowhere near extensive or good enough to justify her abilities. She basically has one lesson that's more about the zen side of the force than actual practical application, maybe because she's been shown to be unexplainably good at that already.
Finn: Good Acting, Poor Writing, Underutilised- literally everything he does is inconsequential to the overall storyline. He's involved in a subplot that would never happen if a leader wasn't unreasonably tight-lipped about her plans.
Poe: Good Potential, Poor Writing
Kylo: Good Acting, Better Writing than most beside one scene where all realistic character motivation flies out of the window and he does something audacious and out of character
Snoke: Screwed by atrocious writing; one of the most interesting new characters messed up royally (/sarcasm/ "OMG he's actually Jar Jar!" /sarcasm/)Leia: Not bad, Carrie Fisher did well, but still some questionable parts brought on by the writers.
Rose: Meh, part of the aforementioned useless subplot for most of her screentime
Phasma: Wasted
Hux: Wasted, a bit of a joke in this movie even though Domnhall Gleeson tried really, really hard
Laura Dern and Benicio Del Toro: Wasted (who even knows their characters ffs)- insultingly small parts
Luke: "I disagree with pretty much every major character decision they made for Luke"- Mark Hamill. Me too, Mark, me too.
BB-8: Cute but as much of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu (I guess he's a boy?) as Rey to the point where all logic flies out of the window and you wonder why Luke isn't training BB-8 to take on the entire First Order by himself
There was an especially poor decision which;
1. Messed up the future of the trilogy for the sake of the shock value of subverting an archetype which exists for a reason
2. Makes no sense for the characters involved in terms of motivation and previous evidence of ability
3. Eliminated the pay-off of a confrontation that fans have been looking forward to since TFA was released
4. Was a massive middle finger to the fans who were waiting for 2 years to be let down by this one scene
5. Makes it painfully obvious that TFA and TLJ have two different directors with conflicting visions and are stepping on each others toes
This scene was the worst in the movie imo, despite being "cool" for the 5 seconds after it happened. People who've seen it will probably know what I'm talking about. People who haven't; if you look into this review too closely you might actually be able to guess.
This isn't really a spoiler but sort of is; where in the name of the Force are the Knights of Ren?
tl;dr This movie is the 3rd worst in the series behind the two most reviled prequels. Massive disappointment and I'm terrified that this Writer-Director is doing another damn trilogy entirely of his own ideas.