I am going to start this review by stating I am not happy at all to be sitting here writing a negative review of a new Star Wars movie. The last thing I wanted was for these movies to go back to being disappointments and with The Force Awakens and Rogue One both being awesome I really did not expect this one to be bad. But I honestly cannot fathom how long time fans of Star Wars liked this movie considering what went on in it.

 

If you care about the legend and lore of Star Wars then this was an awful movie, if you don’t then sure it was a good movie but this is supposed to be Star Wars and The Last Jedi didn’t feel like it at all. To me the first scene of Rey and Luke sums up this whole experience perfectly. Rey represents Star Wars fans and the lightsaber represents the legend and lore of Star Wars. Luke represents Disney. Star Wars fans cautiously but optimistically handing it all over to Disney and they just carelessly toss it away like a piece of garbage. Wow. That scene actually made me sink lower in my chair I was so disappointed but we’ll get there.

 

The opening scene was awesome with the overwhelming exception of that atrocious attempt at comedy like what the fuck was that. There is comedy in Star Wars but that was ridiculous. I felt like I was watching a SNL Star Wars spoof, years of build-up and this is how they start the movie. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. But I got past it watching the great sequence of Poe taking out the surface cannons and then walking the razor’s edge of opportunity vs reckless by taking out the dreadnaught but losing all the bombers. I loved the questions that raised and how it really made you think about what the value really was of taking it out. How many dreadnaughts are there? How long does it take to rebuild one? How many bombers do the Resistance have? The answers to these questions and more are crucial in determining whether Poe was taking advantage of a prime opportunity or letting his reckless pride cost the Resistance lives and ships they cannot afford to lose. Thought that was going to be a bigger deal in the movie but I would soon learn I should get used to disappointments.

 

Liked the chase and tracking through hyperspace, thought that was really the only time they started to create a sense of dread for the First Order as the big enemy. Poe not being allowed in the loop made sense after the dreadnaught attack and he reacted exactly as you would think his character would hearing the plan was to escape in unarmed transport ships. Thought Laura Dern did a good job but was kind of wasted at the end in a sacrifice that prob should have went to Leia, esp considering what else happened but ugh we’ll get there.. Figures the only one that could take down a hotshot flyboy like Poe Dameron is our Princess Leia haha Still that Kamikaze move into the ship was a cool moment and after they started bombing the transport ships I’d had about enough of the First Order and was ready for that victory lol considering Poe did not get into an X-Wing outside of the first scene I think he is going to be kicking some major ass in the next movie. But holy shit if I never have to hear anything about another fn spark to burn the First Order down it will be too soon.

 

 

Now to address the elephant in the room, “that scene.” When the explosion hit the ship and Leia was blown out into space, I started to feel the emotions thinking we were about to see a beautiful death. She says may the Force be with you one last time, crosses her arms on her chest and finally disappears joining her Mother and Father. Seems like it writes itself but what they did instead was just…I wanted to leave the theatre. Princess Leia can now fly through space and get back to the ship no problem. Might be the worst scene in the history of the series. Totally out of line with anything Star Wars has ever done, it’s almost like he is making fun of the movies by doing bullshit like this. How anyone that calls themselves a Star Wars fan could be ok with that scene is incomprehensible to me, Just lazy, bullshit storytelling which is exactly what this whole movie is and even scarier what they are clearly setting up for the future movies. I’d love to be able to get Carrie Fisher’s reaction to reading in the script she would be flying through space. Depressing that one of our final scenes of her will be this piece of shit,

 

We go from ruining one beloved Star Wars character to another and this one really sticks in my craw bc Luke Skywalker was 1 of my heroes as a kid. Watched RotJ hundreds of times in a bathrobe reciting every line he spoke so it’s safe to say I’ve been looking forward to getting to see him on the movie screen for the first time. Well I am going to emphatically state that was not Luke Skywalker. After all these years we get Luke back on screen and THIS is the story you write for him!? THIS is how you have him behave!? Unfuckingbelievable. Sorry but Luke Skywalker would never entertain the thought of killing his own flesh and blood nephew no matter how much “darkness” he saw in him. And he certainly would not get to the point of standing over him and actually igniting his fucking lightsaber. Not for 1 second and fuck you if you think that lol Luke Skywalker is the ultimate hero and they turned him into a depressing piece of shit. Wow yeah great job Rian Johnson and Disney. Can’t even give us Luke dispatching of some red shirts, just some shitty force hologram fight with Kylo Ren. All these new powers everyone suddenly has are just lame, hoaky garbage.

 

So we have Luke who has totally abandoned being a Jedi Master and hero to the point of running away leaving everyone to fend for themselves. We have Rey who is going to Luke for training, don’t know why since she can do anything she wants. Rey and Kylo Ren can now have these ‘force conversations’ like this is the worst shit I have ever seen. If it wasn’t ruining something I have a lot of love for I would have been laughing my ass off at the complete and utter ridiculousness of it. Kudos to Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley they almost made it work with their acting but I still thought it was just awful. That was one of the things that really made this movie disappointing, the actors were ready to fuckin go and they just had even less to work with than the prequel actors. Pisses me off we are back to this again. These new powers need to be introduced WITH PROPER EXPLANATION in the new movies without all the characters/settings we know, finish this story properly and then move on, don’t fuck with the original story trying to satisfy ego’s force feeding new ideas. These force conversations were so awkwardly bad to sit through I don’t know if I can handle another movie with them.

 

So then we have Rey and Kylo doing the Vader/Luke elevator ride from RotJ before going to see Snoke which felt very forced. In a surprising twist I actually liked, Kylo Ren ignited the lightsaber into Snoke, killing him. Didn’t bother me at all Snoke was 1 of my least favourite parts of TFA and was not looking forward to having to explore his story, Kylo Ren is more than capable of being the driving bad guy. Rey/Kylo fighting back to back was pretty cool although I didn’t like it quite as much as others but I was in a pretty foul state at that point both times I watched it. Really didn’t feel it as they were trying to get the other to turn, they haven’t taken the time to really define the good/bad guys so there is no real sense of emotion either way. No real sense of dread for the villains. You feared the Empire. First Order is just loud, comical yelling with some cool weapons.

 

You might have thought Finn was an Original Trilogy character the way he was used in this movie, he really did basically nothing. The whole plan to infiltrate the ship did not work and he didn’t take out the battering ram at the end. Happy about that last one they had me thinking he was gonna pull a Russell Case from Independence Day. Good thing they didn’t, the difference btwn the aliens in ID4 and the First Order here is astronomical. Finn’s sacrifice would not have seemed worth it here whereas the ID4 scene made total sense. After such a great showing in TFA I thought he would be much more of a focus but he was reduced to a filler role here. I liked the Rose character but it’s almost like they created her to stop people from wanting Finn and Rey together. They did lead us to the introduction of the Codebreaker, an awesome character played by Benicio Del Toro. Well awesome until they tried to do the whole ‘no such thing as good or bad guys’ bullshit and turned him into a straight up scumbag. His info led to the death of a lot of people on those transports. Hard to come back from that, shame bc I was lovin the character. We got a Finn showdown vs Phasma, was hoping for a bit more but at this point I won’t complain. The scene on the platform where Finn and Rose are about to be executed was one of the best, or worst examples of the lazy, bullshit storytelling they are establishing. The big explosion takes out everyone except our 2 heroes lol like that is just too fucking much. Then Phasma comes back with a crew like she wasn’t just standing right there. For movies that did take the time to focus on the details and little things to make everything real as possible, these are depressing changes.

 

Speaking of depressing changes, they couldn’t even leave Yoda alone they had to ruin him to. So arguably the greatest Jedi master thinks Jedi texts are boring and not worth reading. What exactly is his message here, history books are boring? If you already have history books stored on computers, go ahead and burn all the physical copies? lol this is almost too pathetic to be real. This movie finished off what the prequels started in ruining Yoda.  Luke and Yoda back together on screen should have been an amazing moment but instead it was just bad. Last but not least, The Mighty Chewbacca watches his best friend die right in front of him and is reduced to the background in the next movie to help sell Porg toys. No confrontation with Kylo Ren, didn’t even seem all that bothered by it other than the brief moment talking to Luke. Not like I expected the movie to revolve around Chewie but if you kill Han you gotta do something in response with him. Maybe at the end of the next movie Chewie will use his new magical powers to fly away with the Porgs and go live on Endor. Don’t need any explanation, anyone can do whatever they want.

 

So we get to the final stretch for the movie and it made me not want to watch anymore. Only thing I liked was Kylo Ren’s reactions to seeing the Millenium Falcon and then Luke Skywalker, perfect esp to the Falcon hahah was underwhelmed by the Kylo/Luke confrontation esp given their history. I actually liked the explanation that Luke blamed himself bc he reached out and brought Ben into training instead of waiting for him to come into it on his own. It’s perfect bc that is exactly what Yoda was trying to get him not to do, react impulsively. Instead of being patient making smart, calculated decisions he was impulsive and reckless, just like at Cloud City. Almost cost him then but it did this time with the fall of Ben into Kylo Ren. But they ruined it all by having Luke be the bad guy in all this by coming close to killing Ben. What should have been an epic confrontation ended up a dud, projection swerve would’ve been great under different circumstances. Was thinking Luke was actually there to be struck down by Kylo Ren and do for Rey what Obi-Wan did for him, wouldn’t have been my choice but better than what actually happened. So now I guess Luke is dead. No heroes death, nothing at all just an anti-climactic fade to black. What a sad end to one of the greatest movie characters in the history of film.

 

Then Rey saves the day once again using the force moving hundreds of large rocks, just doing whatever she wants no training no explanations just more lazy, bullshit storytelling. Looks like the mystery of her parents is no mystery at all because that would require explanation and effort so can’t do any of that. Rey being Luke’s daughter opens up the best most exciting possibilities IMO so that was my hope. Rey being a Kenobi I would not have liked but would take it over nothing. I suppose Kylo could be lying and they could pull a swerve making her someone we know but I certainly ain’t holding my breath now. Any thought about her being anyone special is gone, she is just some nobody with powers that any other nobody could have and use. Rey seemed like she was going to be the next Luke Skywalker after the Force Awakens, couldn’t have given her a better platform to launch from and they just cut the legs right out from under her in this movie. Now I understand why they were surprised she was so popular after TFA, they never meant for her to be what she became to the fans.

 

So when you take all of that into consideration, you have a movie that just flat out sucks. It’s almost like this movie was designed to say ‘Hey, you know all that cool shit we set up in the Force Awakens? Yeah we’re not gonna do any of that.’ It also seems like with the way they have written them they wanted to drag the 3 main characters out onto the main screen and execute them. There is no logical explanation for it but I can only assume it’s to help establish the new characters? Totally unnecessary. That’s 1 thing that has been driving me nuts about people defending the movie, saying that they had to do this to the main characters bc people only wanted them and would only accept the old characters. That is just insane, when it was announced Disney bought Star Wars and new movies were coming people were just excited about more movies. Nobody was demanding the old characters be featured or that the movies had to revolve around them, they could have easily set the story at a time the old characters weren’t around and everyone would have come out to see it. Now because the old actors were still old enough to contribute, of course people wanted to see them back but I think the majority were happy to watch them help enhance and establish the new characters. And that is what I thought they started to do in the Force Awakens and would continue in this movie but I was monumentally mistaken.

 

Another line coming out from people defending the movies is that anyone that didn’t like the movie only wanted a retread of the original stories and can’t handle anything new, which is just ridiculous. They didn’t just make an original story, they stripped away everything that made it Star Wars. The criticism of this movie is all down to quality, if they told a good original story and stayed true to the legend and lore, people would embrace it but that isn’t what this was. One of the things that I didn’t like about The Force Awakens was that it followed so closely to A New Hope. At the time I thought they did that bc they didn’t know how people would embrace new movies and wanted to keep it closer to what we know then would make bolder choices in the next ones. It’s one thing to change the story to go in a different direction but they ruined a lot of things that had been built up in these movies since the first one. Everyone wanted Rey to be a Skywalker bc she exists in the same part of the Star Wars galaxy as them so of course we want the next hero to be connected. But if they had set the movies in another part of the Star Wars galaxy without Skywalkers, Kenobi’s etc.. she still would have been as popular and the movies would have been just as big as long as they were good.

 

I’ve heard the line they had to do something to establish that you don’t have to be a Jedi to control or use the Force, which is also completely ridiculous. The Jedi were just very great at helping people harness their skill with the Force so they could use it to help good overcome evil. But we have already seen that 2 of the greatest Jedi ever, Anakin and Luke, were not raised in a Jedi Temple. The Jedi eventually helped both harness their skills but they are not responsible for creating that skill. If you have it you have it but must figure out how it use it THROUGH TRAINING. You don’t just wake up and know exactly how to harness the Force and use it to your advantage but that is what they are trying to establish going forward. Instead of having to put effort into making interesting training sequences and explanations for everything in the movie, they just make it that anyone can do anything whenever they want. Don’t need to know what they are doing or how they can do it, they just do it. I mean fuck, not like it’s hard to show training just do a montage. Even Rocky had a montage – Team America Fck Yeah!

 

I thought this was the movie Kylo Ren starts to break into that Vader level as a villain but it was a major step back for him. Didn’t get to see the Knights of Ren, he made himself Supreme Leader but it didn’t really feel like he was in control and in charge. They could easily set him up that way in the next one but I feel this movie was largely a waste for him other than killing Snoke. I think we are heading to Kylo and Rey getting together in the end although not sure who would be the villain to rally against.

 

Well I think I have said everything I wanted to say. So sad that we are at the point where a new movie can replace Attack of the Clones as the worst Star Wars movie. At least AotC felt like a Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi did not feel like one at all. Really caught me off guard after how good TFA and Rogue One turned out. After the 1^st viewing I had no desire to see this again but knew I had to, after the 2^nd I have no desire to watch it. I saw TFA and RO in every available format, not this time. Fn sucks I love being excited about Star Wars. I was looking forward to new stories that didn’t involve the characters/setting we know but if Rian Johnson is directing them you can count me out. With the new direction of the movies, might have to face the reality of saying goodbye to Star Wars and just becoming a casual fan of it.

 

This new movie spits in the face of the legend and lore of Star Wars and I don’t see it being a one-off. Like I say I really can’t fathom anyone that was a huge fan of Star Wars liking these movies. I’ll have to see E9 to finish the story so hopefully that is much better but I have lost all faith in this crew.