Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Fabian W — 17 Dec 2018

TLJ feels like it's designed to be everything that Star Wars fans DIDN'T want, almost for its own sake, to make a point. You can call this bold, but you can also call it arrogant and self-indulgent. It would be forgivable if Johnson set up a whole slew of interesting new plot threads and ideas, but he didn't. In fact, he seems to abandon his iconoclastic mission during the scene aboard Supremacy where Ren simply reverts to type, being an oddly motiveless angry kid, and we get an utterly traditional showdown battle.

And then nothing is set up for the final chapter. No interesting questions, no cliffhangers, nothing unresolved. Other than the aforementioned question of what on earth Kylo Ren actually wants. Are we rooting for him to die? To be saved? What's at stake? What's motivating me to see Episode IX? Nothing really, after such a terribly written movie.

The main four things that make the movie unforgivable for me are as follows:

* Luke's portrayal.

* The complete misunderstanding of "balance of the force".

* The lack of attention to lore consistency (as in actually having to train to properly utilize the force).

* The fact that the protagonist isn't a Skywalker.

Everything else I can live with. Yes, even Rose and Canto Bight, because those scenes don't affect or alter the mechanics of this ongoing saga. But the points listed above completely ruin the movie and the sequel era as a whole and make The Last Jedi an unforgivable entry into the Skywalker saga.