Big budget, but bewildering.

Rating: 5/10 (15 December 2017)

Did you want the sequel to The Force Awakens to actually explain plot points without creating more giant plot holes? So did I, but this was not to be. The film certainly has some pretty setpieces, but it's so fundamentally flawed that it beggars belief. To the critics who have near-universally praised this film I can only ask: did you see the same movie that I did?
The theme of The Last Jedi beats you over the head until it's sure you get the memo: let it all die. The First Order, the Rebels, the Jedi, it all needs to go - even new characters that we don't know anything about. If this isn't an allegory for the whole film, I don't know what is.
Did you want to know what the deal was with Snoke? Who he was, how he came into power, how he met Kylo Ren? Too bad, he's dead. He didn't even give us the courtesy of answering any of those questions. Did you want Carrie Fisher to have a proper send-off? Unfortunately she was the crux of the most bewildering and comedic moment of the film, and after that scene she was of no actual use to the plot whatsoever - even posing the question later on when our good guys turn to her for guidance of "What are you looking at me for?". I can only assume that Leia was kept alive for the sole purpose of seeing Luke's force projection later on in the film to attempt to give them resolution before he died of exhaustion, but it could have and indeed should have been done in a different way. Her arc was concluded in that moment before the Superman sequence that felt like it came out of a particularly awful dream. Yet Leia is still alive by the end of this movie. Holdo, who should have taken her place to carry on the fight was killed in a visually appealing but utterly stupid sequence that makes you wonder why lightspeed wasn't weaponized in every other film in the Star Wars universe when it could be used to such devastating effect. It certainly makes the sacrifice of Rose's sister feel completely and utterly pointless at the start of the film.
Speaking of the start of the film, the opening is so awful I almost can't believe it. Hux is now nothing more than a walking joke not even ten minutes in to the film because of an extended sequence between him and Poe which plays out like a prank call and ends with a "your mother" punchline. This isn't hyperbole. Poe then continues to be insufferable throughout the feature, pretty much directly leading to the death of the majority of the remaining Resistance. If he and Holdo could've talked like adults and established what the plan was, then there would have been no need for Finn and Rose to go gallivanting off to Space Monaco in order to bring back Benicio Del Toro. Del Toro's character is an interesting one, but he's introduced far too late. The problem here is that his character arc is so truncated and devoid of resolution that it's complete and utter sequel bait, and by this point you're aware you're watching a juggler with far too much going on to keep it all up in the air. The Monaco subplot tries to establish that the war is propped up by people who profit from it in some way, and it makes you think that it really wouldn't be so bad for Rey to join Kylo and just nuke it all from orbit. Especially the porgs.
The tone of this film is unbelievably erratic, swinging from slapstick to emotionally/hormonally charged to awful porg cameos that utterly outstay their welcome. I struggled to care about any of the growing number of dying Resistance fighters, and even Admiral Ackbar only got a passing nod as he went up in flames. Luke's character is written as if he's utterly lost his mind for 90% of the film, which compromises a lot of Hamill's performance. In those moments where he actually is written like the Luke we used to know and love, he's fantastic. As for others: Yoda's force-ghost is an utter madman who can now call down lightning from the afterlife, Finn is a massive coward despite his character growth in TFA, Chewie is absolutely relegated to porg joke territory, etcetera. Amongst all of this awful writing, Kylo stands out as the only one with a decent character arc. In fact, Adam Driver's performance goes some of the way to redeeming this film, and if he could have carried the movie solely on his broad shoulders then he probably would have. I'm sure this wasn't the writer's intention, but he's the only one in the movie that seems reasonable despite throwing a couple of temper tantrums. Daisy was a decent counterpoint to Adam, but there's even less justification for her absurd powers now that we know she was born to a couple of no-names, so if you were looking for some vindication that she was a Skywalker, you're going to walk away disappointed.
This isn't the full extent of my gripes with the film and I've certainly got issues with some of the lazy framing of scenes and general cinematography amongst other things, but I think I've covered enough to justify my 5/10.
TL;DR:
TLJ could have been a good movie with a different director and a screenwriter that knows how to create a cohesive narrative, but it's bogged down by stupid plotholes, stupid writing and too many characters. I'd give it a miss in the cinema, but if you're looking for a pretty popcorn movie that you don't want to think about, this might be an okay watch. It's not the worst film ever, but Rian Johnson and Disney seriously dropped the ball. It's no wonder that Disney didn't want the Battlefront II controversy when this is already polarizing enough.