Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Mario L — 06 Feb 2018

My primary gripe with TLJ is that the entire original trilogy is undermined. Granted, the foundation for this was laid in TFA, but with TLJ, Rian Johnson just ran as hard as he could with it. In the end of the original trilogy, we have a tremendous victory and a bright future ahead for all our heroes, and the galaxy as a whole. Luke has finally become a Jedi, and is destined to save the Jedi order. The new movies erase all of that. In TFA, we're right back to square one. It's just as if they hit the reset button. When I watch the original trilogy now, I won't feel any sense of victory, success, or hope when they win, because I know it's all for nothing. Luke will fail, the First Order arrives, and everything is back to the exact place it was.

Now, I didn't like that element of the story, but I did like TFA on the whole. I was eager to see how they were going to fulfill the destinies of the original characters, and pass the torch to the new characters. TLJ destroys that hope entirely. Luke isn't the hero, he's a failure and a coward (and his pulling it together at the last minute doesn't suffice as a redemption; his entire destiny is laid waste). Luke's character is assassinated (Luke wouldn't attempt to kill his own nephew in his sleep because he senses darkness in him; that is in itself darkside behavior, and Luke would know that. Furthermore, passing it off as a "moment of weakness" is ludicrous). The Skywalker prophecy is rejected outright.

Then, TLJ messes up all the other characters; Rey, who had so much potential, is reduced to a Mary Sue; Poe is turned from a heroic pilot into an idiot; and Finn is wasted. On top of that, the established Force canon is hosed up. I understand Disney de-canonizing the Expanded Universe (although I hated that decision), but I don't understand them not even keeping continuity with the elements that they decided to keep canon.

Aside from all that, TLJ is a just a terrible movie; poorly written, wasted screen time, wasted characters, ignorant behavior...it was a hot mess. I didn't want to see Rian Johnson trying to tell a twisting story of his own design. I wanted to see a new Star Wars story where the questions were answered, the original trilogy characters were respected and gracefully ended, and the new characters brought into the forefront; TLJ is not at all what I wanted to see. It is, in a word, wretched.