Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Narafed — 24 Dec 2017

The only way this movie works is as a stand-alone fan fiction. As a stand-alone movie it's fine; but when you put it as the second film in a cannon Star Wars trilogy; completely unmaking the first film in the new trilogy, it's not fine at all.

Every character returns, exactly as you knew them in Episode VII! Yes, every character is the same as the first movie. In fact, there is no character development in this movie at all; it’s like they wanted to remake the first movie; it’s only been a couple years! It’s not a problem if you don’t know who Snoke is, or who Rey’s parents were; because it never mattered, boy how clever; straight out of the “M. Night” twist playbook!

I didn’t have an issue with Han Solo dying in Episode VII, because Harrison Ford wanted that character to die off a long time ago. Killing off Luke, especially in the way they did, was a very unattractive move to a lot of people; in fact, Luke’s whole journey in this movie is the complete opposite of what it was in the original trilogy. They effectively unmade the original trilogy. It’s like, if someone were to make a sequel to Citizen Kane, but made every character you love into a child murderer. Why would Luke want to kill Kylo just because he “sensed” he went to the dark side in his heart? Luke literally tried to turn the most iconic fictional evil villain in history back to the light; Darth Vader, and he succeeded in the end! Princess Leah is also an iconic fictional character, and she floats through space like a champ too; also, where the hell did she learn how to do that? If Leah can float through space with force abilities and no training, did Jedi even need space ships at all in the Clone Wars?

So, we’re supposed to “let the past die”, and accept that the main characters are at conflict now, and were in the past, for seemingly no reason at all. There is no reason for Kylo Ren to be on the “dark side”, and there is no reason for Rey to be on the "light side". Nothing matters in this movie, and that’s a big problem, especially for episode 9, and the entire future of Star Wars itself. They not only effectively unmade Star Wars, they made it pointless now too. Disney just wants to make and sell some “Team Kylo” T-shirts, that’s all they care about.

If I were directing Episode 9, I would have Finn wake up from his coma from the first film, and be like "Wow, that was one hell of a nightmare"; that way episode VIII never happened.