Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Charlie T — 27 Sep 2018

Very, very disappointing.

I went into this movie after reading glowing reviews from critics, calling this the 'best Star Wars movie since Empire'. The Force Awakens was a decent outing, but just teased us with the Luke Skywalker appearing in the very last scene of the movie. The credits rolled before he even spoke a word. This film picks up from this point exactly.

We wait nearly 35 years for this moment only to be let down monumentally. We see his character throw his fathers light sabre off a cliff, as if to say he does not care of its significance. A metaphor for how this movie does not care for the characters and lore of the previous films in this saga. The characters in the movie actually clumsily state repeatedly how the past must be 'killed'.

The treatment of Luke's character is bemusing. Mark Hamill himself stated on more than one occasion how he fundamentally disagreed with how the character was written.

The writer/director Rian Johnson chose subverting expectations over consistency and good storytelling.

The tone of the film is totally messed up - every serious moment is undermined with a bad joke. No-one laughed at this poor jokes at my screening.

This movie looks gorgeous, the effects are fantastic, some of the action is great to watch. BUT it disregards how the universe works, the characters do not seem consistent with the previous films, it has very clunky overtly political tones.

I left the cinema very disappointed, and did not return. This is the only Star Wars movie I did not see multiple times in the cinema, the only one I did not buy on Blu Ray. After seeing this I could bring myself to watch Solo; I just did not want to be let down again.