Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Gustavo A — 13 Jun 2018

This film will only become more reviled more as it ages. I gave the film 1 star for competent cinematography/establishing shots and Mark Hamill turning in a respectable acting performance in spite of fundamentally disagreeing with his character treatment.

Simply put, this film delivered an extremely story with dead end sub-plots (Canto Bight), disregarded previously established character tenets in order to tell it's story, and retroactively tainted Episodes 4-6 with it's treatment of Luke.

I do not know what possessed Rian Johnson to write Luke, the man who was able to turn the far more convincingly evil Dark Vader back to the light, to attempt to kill his nephew in his sleep simply because he was being tempted by the dark side.

Luke was able to turn Vader (a known tyrant, known Jedi killer, and right hand of the Emperor who for decades who subjugated and destroyed entire worlds) but he felt the temptation to kill Ben Solo in his sleep? A teenage Ben Solo who wasn't even yet committed to the Dark Side?

Luke's dealings with Vader should have made him more confident when faced with the Dark Side, not less so as Rian Johnson illogically seemed to conclude.

The Last Jedi story fails on virtually every level of storytelling, and the way it taints the legacy of Luke Skywalker and the promise of the original trilogy is simply unforgivable.

This film wasn't fun, it abused and misused Bathos blatantly, and it mistreated and mis-characterized Luke Skywaker. There's a reason this film had such a negative audience reaction, returned only 61% of The Force Awakens box office tally, and subsequently sunk Solo. The reason is because it was a fundamentally bad movie.