I saw The Last Jedi day one. A couple years previous, I had seen The Force Awakens within the first week of release. In fact, if we were to rewind the clock a bit, I've seen every Star Wars film (including the prequels) multiple times. I love them with all of my heart and soul. They have their flaws and their plot holes, but in spite of these, they are endearing movies that just so happen to be part of an enduring franchise, one that continues going strong even today.
The Last Jedi is not a perfect film. It's also not a perfect Star Wars film. It will go down as the most divisive in the series since Empire Strikes Back (initial response to that entry was mixed at best, until later when everyone realized it was essentially a masterpiece). I won't spoil anything for those who have not seen it, but I will go over some key points, and will try to contain the anger that's been building up in me since mid-December.
This anger, mind you, is not toward the movie itself. I absolutely loved it. My rage is reserved for so-called fans, who feel that The Last Jedi is so incomprehensibly terrible, that it's worse than the infamous prequel trilogy. In this review, I'm going to go over reasons as to why it's not nearly as bad as recent iMDB user reviews make it out to be, both from a writer's perspective and a critic's. Strap in your seat belt. It's likely to be a bumpy ride.
A Lesson in Subversion
The film opens with a humorous exchange, one that many fans have deemed to be on the level of Marvel's cinematic universe. Though I can't for the life of me imagine why: the whole theater erupted in laughter, and I, along with them, thought it was great. Cut forward a few minutes, and we're back on the island with Rey and Luke, just as she's handing him his lightsaber.
What Luke does next tells you everything you need to know about the movie as a whole: it will not go as you expect.
Luke is seemingly a shell of his former self: hopeless, choosing isolation over helping his friends, and abandoning all the things he once held dear. This is what fans seem to have the most problem with: Rian Johnson's handling of the highly-revered Luke Skywalker. Before I continue moving forward, I want to address why Luke acts the way he does, and it's fairly simple.
Imagine you grow up to realize your father is the one and only Darth Vader, the man that had helped carry out order 66 and obliterate the Jedi. Imagine then, watching that same father die in your arms after he finally redeems himself. And beyond that, imagine what happens when you start your own Jedi school with every good intention in mind, only to have it supplanted by one of your own apprentices, and burned to ashes.
Luke had come to the realization that the Jedi way doesn't work. Their rules do not work. It's why Anakin fell, and it's why Kylo sought to betray him (more on that later). Characters do not remain static; they change and evolve in accordance to their experiences and the circumstances surrounding them. Rian Johnson depicts this perfectly in Luke, and I applaud him for it.
Like Empire Strikes Back, this film does not have a Death Star. It has a chase: the last of the Resistance are fleeing from First Order pursuit, on their last vestiges of fuel. It then switches back and forth between Rey and Luke, and the Resistance and their choices.
Some Bumps in an Otherwise Smooth Road
As I said before, this film is not perfect. One of its biggest drawbacks is the pacing, most of it throttled down by the scenes between Finn and new-character Rose. Their adventure ends up being entirely inconsequential, to the point where you wonder why it was there in the first place. There might be an argument for it, but I don't see it being very convincing.
In tangent to that, Finn's treatment in this film saddens me. While he was integral in The Force Awakens, he is treated much like a side character in The Last Jedi. Not a huge issue, but one that got to me regardless.
The next flaw is...well... what's being dubbed as Superman Leia. I won't get into the details, but the scene looks like it was rushed together with some rather poor (or unfinished) CGI effects that make me question as to whether or not Rian Johnson actually wanted it there in the first place. Judging by some recent interviews, this is what happens when a producer tries to screw around with a mostly well-written script.
Camera Work and Action Sequences
This film is beautifully shot, with a gorgeous score by John Williams to boot. No absurd jump cuts, no overuse of CGI (mostly). Rian Johnson has crafted an extremely visually-appealing Star Wars film, probably the best to date. The Last Jedi also has the best lightsaber battle put to the silver screen: emotional, gritty, without the fancy over-choreographed nonsense present in the prequels. Johnson clearly knows what he's doing behind the camera, as well as his friend Steve Yedlin.
Storytelling
One of the biggest detractors according to fans is the story itself. Aside from the Finn and Rose scenes, and some of the scenes with Leia, the characterization is incredible, especially between Kylo Ren and Rey. Kylo develops into a likeable character, one that you understand and empathize with, while Rey charts her course to becoming a Jedi, but dealing with the struggle of not knowing her own parentage, and not really knowing her place in the world.
Johnson touches on some dark themes, the most profound of which is trying to figure out who we are. Are we good? Are we evil? What choices or actions define such things, and how blurred does that line become? He does this masterfully, and just when you think a character is who they are, they do something else that seems out of the normal. Why? Because they all believe they are in the right, and that they are making the right decisions, whether it's for themselves or for the people they care for most.
There's also a story told within the film described from two different perspectives, and it's wonderfully done, adding further characterization in a way that had not been done in Star Wars before.
A Rant on Fandoms
I'll end my review with this. Ardent fans will harp on this film all the live long day because they think they know all there is to know about the Force. The Force is a mysterious entity, never fully explained. The Force can flow through a user and control their actions (in part) but it will also obey their commands. This is also trotted out in the movie, hearkening back to how the Original Trilogy explained the Force (brushing aside the unnecessary scientific explanation in the prequels).
There are some callbacks to the original trilogy in The Last Jedi that will make you crack the widest smile. Not only for nostaligia's sake, but because it solidifies the story even more. Makes it more coherent and well-rounded.
Fans hate this film because it's not what they expected, and certainly not a film they deserved. To say this is the worst in the franchise just tells me that a vast majority of them don't understand the saga itself. They invest too heavily in the expanded universe media (which George Lucas himself has said is not cannon and never will be). Or they think characters need to be the same, no matter how much time has passed or what they have experienced.
Do yourself a favor: see this movie. It has its flaws, like any other Star Wars entry, but Johnson did such a fantastic job overall, and if I were to score this out of ten, I'd give it a hefty eight.