Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Mark Hamill is still awesome.

Continuing on from The Force Awakens, the majority of this film sees the rebels on the run from the Empire First Order while Rey attempts to convince the retired Luke Skywalker to come back into action. Once more, the acting and CGI are good but this time around I do have to question some decisions made about the plot.

New cute critter to market - check.

Rey's arc - I quite liked everything there from the island and almost everything with Kylo. The rebels running is fine and drives most of the movie. Luke is great. There's just one "side quest" which is mainly moving pawns across the board in a very round about way. This is completely useless. COMPLETELY.

Why? (spoilers ahead - highlight to read) I am talking about Finn's role here. Without the thief's info, more rebels would have made it to their destination resulting in a bigger final battle like Hoth, than what seems to be a final "skirmish". Alternatively, they could have played the "not everyone is good/evil card" better by making a rebel traitor (the thief) because his family/friend is held hostage by the enemy, giving him the same motivation as Finn. 

The mechanic girl could have been introduced the same way and had her major role finding and stopping him. Rey might have rescued said people, and the thief could have had a redeeming bit. No Finn required - they could have made a stronger movie by killing him. No odd phone call to the glasses alien who was clearly too busy to take a call either.

On things are more complicated than good and evil note, I wish they ballsed up and actually made Kylo not evil, but nope. After the epic co-op part of the movie someone just put their foot down and said they needed him as a villain. Shame. I'd love it if they can make Kylo the Jedi and Rey the Sith in the next flick but I doubt they will deviate much further from their stock standard formula.

An entertaining action film and one I'd probably watch again eventually. The thing is my wife and I just watched LEGO Batman the day before and guess what? LEGO Batman is better. I give this 2.5 Jedi mind tricks out of 5.