Here’s my take:

I found Rogue One to be enjoyable enough, but to me it played out as fan fiction. It doesn’t add anything – the whole plot is fleshed out from a couple of throw away lines at the start of A New Hope – the decision to kill off all it’s characters I’m sure they thought was edgy but considering the source was actually a very safe way to get back to Cannon. The whole movie just reads like fan fiction to me – it’s star destroyer porn, death star porn, here’s some classic young leia – oh and here’s vader being a total badass the kinda way we’d always wanted to see him go off. Mind you – it makes no sense – like he’s not that bad ass during the next ship assault 10 mins later in ANH, there’s way too many rebels into the force and acknowledging  it considering the lost ancient religion it is in the next movie.  It’s a fun film to watch but to me it didn’t add anything to the cannon and there’s a lot of problems one overlooks just cos its plain fun to see something new from that startwars era.

Then there’s Force Awakens. I know you guys didn’t like it but this to me was a far better film. I know if you map out the plot beat for beat it comes out kinda like a remake of ANH – but to me it worked for that purpose to set up a new trilogy for a new generation. They needed to reboot it to being in the next generation of kids – and it was a clever way of getting in a lot of the classic starwars elements – a sith, Stormtroopers and the rest – without outright doing a remake. To me the parallels also work because the saga has always played around with parallels and the same things happening to different characters across geneations – like the similarities between luke an Anakin and so  on. So to put a new group in those scenarios worked for me. Most importantly though – I felt it had the starwars feel – even more than the prequels really – the new characters felt at home. Like to me Finn and Poe sort of fit in and work in their universe the way the classic characters like Han and Chewie did originally. This film beautifully reset the mythology – it left interesting mysteries and backstory of a full world for us to think about – the same way ANH did.

Regarding Last Jedi. I’m torn on this. Basically I found this mixed. It’s good for a film to be surprising and not too safe I guess. But it was like the author of this movie either hadn’t seen TFA or was or was actively trying to dismantle it. Think of the mysteries of TFA:

Who is snoke?
Why is Rey so powerful?
Who are Rey’s parents?
Who are the Knights of Ren?
Who is Phasma?
Why did luke go to the temple yet leave a map?
How will snoke finish Kylo’s training.

Basically the movie pisses off all these answers. It either ignores them or gives super lame reasons why.

It leaves us with not much left to wonder about, yet none of the questions seemed to get a very satisfactory answer – and it doesn’t replace these mysteries with many of its own. So It’s a bit frustrating.

There’s also some annoying parts – it makes sense for Leia to have force abilities being a skywalker – but her Mary Poppins sequence was really a little bit much to believe. Another thing is the way this movie seems to set things up only to take them away. Luke’s trick on Kylo seemed like a huge twist at first – but then he immediately goes one with the force – which makes you question how it was advantageous to project himself at all – why not just go there physically and get struck down? There’s some pacing issues too. Some of it feels a bit like the prequels – especially the whole “arms dealers do both sides” stuff reminded me of the prequels “it’s the Iraq war” politics angle.

There’s stuff I like though. I like still like the new TFA characters. I like Kylo – I think he’s interesting in that rather than just be evil for the sake of it – he kinda thinks he’s in the right – which will allow him to do no end of evil – and I like that he’s conflicted about what to do at times. That said – transitioning him to being in charge fully makes that harder – while Snoke seemed to be an annoying emperor clone – Kylo was better as the middle man – where he can pick what to do to be the villain or hero – if he’s just fully bad that’s awkward for the story. Likewise I get they need to transition from the old characters to the new – but killing them off one per movie like this doesn’t seem the best way.

So basically I found last Jedi a bit frustrating in that it didn’t do what I wanted, and worse, it seemed to shut down huge parts of the story and their universe to do something more simplistic.

That said – its very entertaining – I watched it twice so far and really enjoyed both times – especially the second one because I was less shocked at its choices. Basically I like this generation of starwars and the new characters even when they’re not doing what I thought they would.

It will be interesting to see how this develops now. There’s the possibility that they surprise us more – maybe Kylo only told the truth from a certiain point of view so to speak.

Rian is going off to do an entirely new starwars saga – which I can see working – as I liked this film just not what he did to the characters – so playing in his own sandbox I’d be interested to see what he comes up with. Meanwhile JJ is back to finish this story – which I think is a very positive thing – I know people didn’t like The Force Awakens – but to me the problems with Last Jedi very much show how TFA actually really nailed the tone and mood of that universe better.

If JJ brings this home strong and creates a more satisfying conclusion for these characters then Last Jedi will have been just an interesting detour that created conflict and threw us on an unexpected curve ball. If he doesn’t then it’s going to be a mess. The best way I could put it is that when I watched Force Awakens I had the sense they had planned out a 3 movie arc for everyone. But when I watched Last Jedi It really felt more like there wasn’t an over arching plan and the current writer of each film just does whatever. It’s good to be surprised. But some of these surprises don’t really make narrative sense with how long aspects were built up then to be ignored.

So overall I liked it - but not as much as I should have.

All this can be fixed in Episode 9. Help us JJ. You're our only hope.