Two years ago, I felt like I was one of the few detractors to The Force Awakens, which is so mired in homage to A New Hope that it fails to be its own movie, so I've watched with interest all the fan negativity being hurled at The Last Jedi. The truth lies somewhere between the critical 91 and the audience 51 scores bestowed upon this very long movie at Rotten Tomatoes … I find myself settling around a 3.5 out of 5. I left the theater feeling fairly conflicted … not outright disliking this one, but also thinking the whole franchise might be due for another good rest (which we know isn't happening), and I've never before felt that way.Some things I know for sure:
• We do all expect a dose of humor in our Star Wars movies. "Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way," etc. Here, however, we have one after another painfully lame attempts at getting chuckles, starting right from the opening with the terribly awkward "on hold" for General Hux bit. It pulled me out of the movie. Along these lines, I also found myself becoming annoyed with the antics of BB-8.
• The Princess Leia moments in this movie are, sadly, not especially exciting.
• The homage problem is not as pronounced in this movie, but it's still there, as in the big fight scene in the imperial throne room, or whatever it is, when Rey is shown the attack in progress by Snoke on a handy little TV screen.
• Speaking of Snoke, who the hell is this guy?
• The absence of characters like Han Solo hurts. These movies generally have better casting than did the prequels, but the gravitas of character is lacking in The Last Jedi.
• After seeing them stand around in previous movies, it was cool to see the red-draped imperial guards engage in a major throwdown.
• Rogue One easily remains my favorite of the new films.
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