Okay, someone asked me why I don't like The Last Jedi, so here it is. Be careful what you wish for? Maybe, I don't know.
In general, I don't think movies need to work as sequels to movies that they're a sequel of as long as they work in their own right. I didn't think The Force Awakens was a good sequel to the original trilogy because they separated Han and Leia for years and had Han killed by his son, and it's just not where I would have wanted those characters to end up based on how things ended in Return of the Jedi. However, The Force Awakens was a good movie with good characters of its own, and even to the extent that it used Han, he worked within that movie as this old pilot guy who Rey bonds with who's tied to Kylo without needing to depend upon my attachment to his appearances from the older movies. That movie generally held up as its own thing.
So The Last Jedi was in no position to be a good follow-up to Return of the Jedi, but it didn't have to be. At least in terms of grading it, I didn't expect it to do right by Luke or any of the other original trilogy characters. However, I do think that when you have a story told over multiple films, like A New Hope-The Empire Strikes Back-Return of the Jedi or Fellowship of the Ring-The Two Towers-Return of the King, a sequel within that arc doesn't have the luxury of being judged as its own thing and ignoring the previous movies in the same arc. The Two Towers can't just say that the ring isn't actually that big of a deal and have the characters all go back to the Prancing Pony and get drunk. It's The Last Jedi's job as a movie to continue what The Force Awakens started, so what was good about The Force Awakens matters.
I liked Rey and Finn together in The Force Awakens and wanted the movies to continue on that path, so separating them in The Last Jedi, all but ignoring it, and having Rey fall for Kylo, not so good. Rey's parents being nobody, not so good. Not exploring Snoke at all, not so good. Making a joke out of the final moment of The Force Awakens, not so good. Even if I was judging The Last Jedi all on its own, I wouldn't like it, but instead of being a self-contained movie that's bleh all on its own, it takes something that I already really like, messes it all up, and kills any momentum it has. It doesn't do its job as a middle chapter whatsoever.
Kylo in the first movie was this kind of pathetic, self-doubting Vader wannabe who gets his a** handed to him by this new force user. There also seems to be some thinly veiled sexual symbolism, where he's got this really big lightsaber, like maybe he's over-compensating for something, and he finally gets his chance with a girl, and he wants her to be into him, but he can't seem to perform. With his lightsaber, I mean. He wants to stab her with his big lightsaber, but it's just not going according to plan.
So okay, he gets humilated by this girl who's never picked up a lightsaber before, and that worked for me because that's Kylo's whole thing. Yeah, okay, Rey is awesome, but he also comes off as just not very good at this Sith thing, certainly not where he's any sort of competition for her. But then in The Last Jedi, that's not how it is, because according to Snoke it was actually because he was distracted that night from killing his father. Even though Snoke is criticizing Kylo in this scene for being emotional, he wants it to be clear that normally Kylo is really good at performing with his lightsaber, and he just had a bad night. They might have forgetten to mention in the previous movie that he's a cool, brooding antihero who's just as good at this force thing as Rey is, but he totally is, and if she rejected his interest in the last movie it's only because she didn't know yet how totally awesome and hot she thinks he is.
But here's the thing. Not only did I not know any of this while I was watching The Force Awakens, but Adam Driver didn't know it while acting in The Force Awakens, because that isn't the role he was tasked to play. So after he plays Kylo as this uncool guy with an inferiority complex, they have him play that same guy but sell him as cool and hot and whatever, and it just doesn't work because Kylo wasn't designed to be suited to that. I don't see how he's cool or intimidating or romantic lead potential. It isn't Adam Driver's fault, they just flipped Kylo's characterization on him. What I think they should have done is have him be angry and embarrassed after being defeated by Rey and fixated on proving he's as good as her. Maybe he trains more. Maybe he starts getting reckless in his attempts to beat her at any cost. Maybe he takes a page from Vader and starts adding artificial parts to himself that are supposed to make him stronger, pushing his body as far as it can go, losing more and more of himself because he can't accept that he's not the best. That could have been interesting. Instead, he's a pale, lifeless imitation of a brooding antihero. The romance between them is terrible.
Rey in The Force Awakens is the best Jedi ever, and I'm cool with that, but if you're going to do that, you should own it. Don't retroactively undercut her victories to prop up villains, just scale the action to her abilities. Have her face five Sith at once if you need to. Have her face twenty Sith. Have her take down a Star Destroyer bare-handed, I don't care, but just don't b******t me and tell me she isn't the best. I figured she was supposed to be the chosen one, and that's why she's so awesome. I know, they said it was Anakin, but Anakin didn't balance the force, because he didn't take out Snoke.
If you do present a Sith as being more powerful than Rey, then I would hope it's for a good reason, like presenting her with a challenge that she has to grow in her abilities to overcome. So naturally, they had Snoke toss Rey around like a rag doll to demonstrate how much more powerful he is (at this time, she'll be more powerful later, because she's the best), only to then kill him off minutes later by having him also conveniently be a moron. So...yeah, The Last Jedi killed off the most powerful Sith we've ever seen quickly and through his own stupidity, leaving boring-a** Kylo with his stone-faced angst and his newfound unremarkable-in-any-way competence.
I don't think the movie should have spent so much time on Luke (or Leia). Like I said, I wasn't looking for this to be a good sequel to the original trilogy, so Luke is basically this movie's Yoda, except less charming and amusing and honestly kind of creepy, especially where alien milk is involved. It seems like this movie's as much about Luke as anyone, and I'm here for a continuation of the characters I was following in The Force Awakens. To me, it's like if The Empire Strikes Back was largely about Yoda dealing with his issues from Revenge of the Sith. Rey doesn't get much to do here except for the sucky romance. I think if they weren't going to do more with her training, they should have gotten her in and out of there more quickly and moved on with things. I will say that Mark Hamill's acting has improved a lot since the early movies.
I think Poe and Finn and Rose (who wasn't an interesting character) can fail, but I don't think they should have been the direct cause of the rebellion being decimated, and Holdo's behavior there didn't make sense, I'll leave it at that. The hacker guy they got was sleazy and seemingly bad from the start, so his turning out bad was not a good twist. Leia flying was kind of over the top. When I first heard it described, it didn't sound that bad, and then I saw it and it was pretty bad. The Chewbacca and Porgs scene was...weird, I don't get the point of it. The Porgs didn't seem as cute in the movie as it seemed they would be beforehand. I don't think Rian Johnson's style is well suited to cute mascots, because BB-8 didn't seem as cute here as in The Force Awakens, either, and him controlling the AT-ST was...not needed. For a movie that aims for humor more than the other Star Wars movies, it wasn't very funny. I liked the part about Jaaku being nowhere, that's the only joke I remember that stands out.
On a more positive note, my favorite scene was the battle with Snoke's guards. Aside from how much I think it contributed to the movie as a cool action scene, well shot, varied weapons, good tension, I always thought the imperial guards in Return of the Jedi were cool, and they never did anything, so it was nice seeing something like that play out in a movie. That's the one thing I'll really look back on fondly from The Last Jedi. There were good visuals and good action. I thought the fight between Rey and Luke was well done, it was just that she was fighting over something stupid. When the vehicles skated over the surface of Crait, and it showed red because the dust was cleared away, I thought that was neat. It was nice that Phasma got a better death scene. I liked Rose's sister while she was there. I didn't have a problem with the acting in general, they worked with what they were given. It's just...a really bad movie. There's a big jump in quality from all the other Star Wars movies (not counting the Ewok movies or the animated one, which I haven't seen) down to this one. Everything else I give a 7 out of 10 or higher, but this is a 2 out of 10.
