Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Tonymatt6676 — 11 Jan 2018

‘Star Wars The Last Jedi’ is quite possibly the most disappointing movie I have ever seen, not the worst, but the most disappointing. The previous movie, ‘The Force Awakens’, had plenty of problems and was essentially a rehashed and modernised version of ‘A New Hope’, but despite this I still left the cinema with that feeling of childlike excitement that usually goes along with seeing a Star Wars movie. With this movie, I left the cinema with a very different feeling.

There are so many issues with this movie that I doubt any review could cover them all without writing a lengthy tome on the subject, but the problem that stood out most obviously to me was the very poor script, not only in terms of dialogue but also with regard to story telling and basic continuity with previous entries in the series.

A Jedi Master contemplating murdering a child, fuel suddenly being a consideration in the SW universe, hyperspace ram-raiding, 2 fleets of ships that have EXACTLY the same maximum speed, WW2 style bombing runs in space with ships that are so hopelessly slow that even when they reach their target, they are too slow to escape from the blast of the bombs they just dropped, and a totally inconsistent timeline are just some of the many problems with this movie.

Besides the above issues, which many may consider’nitpicking’, there were other serious problems with this movie, such as character development......as in there wasn’t any. Rey is essentially the same character at the end of this movie as she was at the beginning, unless you count her seemingly magical ability to develop new skills instantly as character development. Kylo Ren was a whiney, bad tempered child in ‘The Force Awakens’, and he still is in this movie and Finn had basically the same character arc in this film as he did in the last one.

Poe Dameron is the only one of the new main characters to have any real development....and it was all bad, with him now having regressed from a seasoned and skilled pilot and leader in Episode VII to a short tempered and tactically inept moron in this movie.

The character I’m really looking forward to seeing them develop more in the future is Snoke because he was by far the best of the new.......oh, wait......he’s dead already.......never mind....

Of the other new characters, Vice Admiral Holdo is completely ineffectual as a leader and her actions actually cause more harm than good. Rose was as pointless a character as I have ever seen in a movie (and in fact the whole Canto Blight sub-plot was like something from a different movie and seems to have only been inserted to help push a political agenda) and DJ was......errrm......yeah.

Captain Phasma was also back in this instalment, but try not to blink after she appears on screen, because if you do she will be gone again.

The film criminally wasted the last (living at least) on screen appearance of Luke Skywalker, turned Leia into Mary Poppins and took 40 years of story and development and threw it all in the garbage in favour of a ‘bold new direction’, which was just Rian Johnson’s way of saying “If you are a long time Star Wars fan, tough cookies pal, Star Wars aint for you any more”.

The only positive thing I can find to say about this movie is that at times it was visually stunning. Too long, too boring, disrespectful to the material and lore that preceded it and full of plot holes so large you could fit another movie in them, ‘The Last Jedi’ is absolutely NOT worth your time and it should have stayed in a galaxy far far away......