Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) by Gregory W — 17 Jan 2018

As a huge fan of Star Wars, it saddens me to write a review like this about a Star Wars movie. But the Last Jedi was a horrendous mess undeserving of the title Star Wars. Superficially, it looks great. The special effects are like no other. However, once you take away all the fancy visuals, explosions, and pretty lights, all you're left with is a boring plot, little to no character development, a lack of emotion, oh and the SJW theme constantly shoved down your throat.

Spoilers now: The main plot is a slow chase through space while being low on gas. It reminded me of OJ in his white Bronco with the police slowly following behind. Rose, the new Jar Jar of the series, is super annoying and pointless to the story. She ruins Finn, who really had no contribution to this movie so far, from finally having a true character moment when he's about to sacrifice himself to save everyone. She stops him and condemns the Rebels to die because apparently she loves him and wanted to give him an awkward kiss? Honestly, I felt no chemistry between the two that whole movie. And do I even need to talk about Mary Poppins Leia? or the pointless Casino subplot?

The movie, though, doesn't seem to be content just making itself look bad. It felt the need to make the Force Awakens a pretty worthless movie too. Numerous story-line plots dropped and characters now pointless. Why did Luke leave a map for the Resistance to find(that's the main plot of Force Awakens) if he didn't want to be found in the first place and just went there to die. I had loved the emotional scene at the end of Force Awakens when Rey hands Luke his lightsaber, the one that for some reason "called out to her" in the movie even though she is now apparently nobody special. The Force Theme music is playing in the background and we see what we believe is a look of 'hope' in his face, only to find out Luke's expression is really 'Why are you here? Get the heck out of here." Emotion gone.

To top it all off, the movie takes a giant steaming pile of crap over anything related to the original movies. You know, the movies that so many of us fell in love with and is really the only reason why so many people went to see Rian Johnson's movie to begin with. Training in order to be a Jedi is apparently optional now. Why train when you can just do it all for no reason whatsoever? Luke's character is basically eviscerated giving Star Wars fans everywhere big gut-punch. And fan-favorite Admiral Ackbar's character is just thrown out the window (literally). Why? Just so that Purple-Hair lady can have an SJW moment and save everyone? You know, that Purple-Hair lady that audience members don't really know or care anything about. Bye Purple-hair lady....nice knowing you for 30 minutes. Let's have her make the heroic sacrifice. Visually a beautiful scene, but with ZERO emotion. That should have been Ackbar's moment.

I could keep going on, but I'll cut it here. It is mind-boggling that so many 'professional critics' loved this movie. I thought they were supposed to be able to see beyond special effects and flashy colors. JJ Abrams is going to have to pull a miracle to salvage anything out of this trilogy when he does the third movie. He definitely needs to somehow redeem Luke's character,and even make Mary Sue, uh I mean Rey, have some true character growth. I'm not holding my breath, though.