Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Andrew V — 01 Feb 2018

This movie is terrible for a variety of reasons:

Character storylines: completely inconsistent and pointless. Rey, Finn, and Poe are each given plots that in the end turn out to be meaningless:

O Rey's search to find Luke and learn from him: this was the crux at the end of The Force Awakens and many people were looking forward to seeing Rey trained by the great Master Skywalker himself. Instead she pointlessly follows him around on some desolate island, receives almost no training from him, and then eventually after realizing that her pursuit is pointless, she leaves.

O Finn's entire storyline of finding the Codebreaker is absolutely pointless and a complete waste of time. In the end, he fails, and it's even rubbed into the audience's faces that his entire mission was pointless because the Resistance already found another way to escape from the First Order.

O Poe's entire presence in the film is useless. Where he was a daring pilot in Force Awakens, in this movie he is reduced to a narcissistic blowhard. When he attempts to throw a mutiny (WTF?) against the leadership of the Resistance, he discovers that it was useless because there was already a plan in place to escape the First Order (notice a trend here?).

Force Awakens: the Last Jedi completely takes any good faith and plot/character development that JJ Abrams built in the Force Awakens and ignores them completely:

O The major objective in the Force Awakens was to find the map to Luke Skywalker. Why? Who knows, because Last Jedi could care less about the importance of that. In this new movie, Kylo Ren and the First Order seem to care less about the whereabouts of Luke (when they obsessed about it in the last movie). Then, once we meet Luke, we soon realize that he is no threat to the First Order at all. Why all the hullabaloo in the last movie when this movie pays no attention to that.

O Luke's lightsaber: for some reason, it calls to Rey and comes to her in the Force Awakens. Why? Who knows, because Last Jedi could care less about the importance of that. It's barely mentioned in this movie, if at all, and we are never told why the lightsaber called to her.

O The Resistance: where in the Force Awakens you get a sense that the Resistance is a strong army, in this movie you discover they are a small band of stragglers. By the end of the movie, the entire Resistance is reduced to a small handful of people who can all fit on the Millennium Falcon.

O Rey's parents: for some odd reason, critics are raving at the reveal that Rey's parents are nobody. Their reasoning (and the director's) is that it shows that anyone can be a strong with the Force and you don't need to be a Skywalker or Kenobi to be a Jedi. This is bullshit. Reason why is because the secrecy behind Rey's parents was BUILT UP SO MUCH IN FORCE AWAKENS that the audience deserved a better reveal. It's unfair to the audience to tease the identity of her parents for two years and then to reveal that they are two drunks who sold her for drinking money. Completely unfair to everyone. If Disney wanted to portray that anyone can be a Jedi, then they should have revealed her parents identity at the start, instead of waving it like a carrot in front of the fans for two years.

O Snoke: another useless plot device. The secrecy behind his history was also built up since the release of Force Awakens, only to see him die midway through the Last Jedi. It's a disservice to the audience to do away with him without revealing who he is or how he (and the First Order) rose to power.

O Captain Phasma: same as Snoke. Another useless character who is teased in the first movie, only to be killed in Last Jedi.

O How Maz Kanata obtained Luke's lightsaber: in Force Awakens, she said it is a story for another time, but I am not holding my breath that this story will ever be revealed.

O Han Solo and Leia's estranged relationship: It was mentioned in the Force Awakens a bit (Ben's fall to the dark side), but it would have been nice if the story went into a bit more about what happened to drive them apart.

The treatment of Luke Skywalker: this is probably one of the most controversial points of the movie, and rightfully so. When we last see Luke Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi, he is the hero of heroes, rightfully taking place in mythology alongside Hercules, Achilles, and every other great hero. In this movie, he is reduced to a cantankerous, self-pitying curmudgeon. Such a disservice to such a great character. Yes, he's allowed to be upset that he failed at training his nephew and he's allowed to take responsibility for what happened, but to see him reduced to such a shallow, hateful (and creepy!) bitter old man is terrible. Sure, Obi Wan and Yoda can take responsibility for the failure of Anakin Skywalker and the death of all of the Jedi, but were they walking around in their old age feeling sorry for themselves? No, they weren't, and this portrayal of Luke Skywalker will forever be a stain on his heroic history.

Many people will argue that Star Wars superfans are just salty because Rian Johnson shook things up and turned Star Wars on its head. They will say that we can't rely on the old way of telling Star Wars and "to let the past die." That is incorrect. There is certainly nothing wrong with trying new things and adding a new way to tell a film. Christopher Nolan did it brilliantly in his Dark Knight trilogy: he found a new and successful way to tell the Batman story. However, there is a major problem in telling a new kind of story if it is a disservice to the fundamentals of a character. Zack Snyder learned it the hard way with his approach to Batman and Superman. Rian Johnson is doing the same with the Star Wars universe. He took a legend and miscomprehended it, resulting in telling a story that is wrong and insulting to a faithful audience.