The people who don't like this movie are wrong.
Sit yo ass down'. We gon' do you some learning. I've had to break this post into 2 different posts because I exceeded the character limit. Get yourself a coffee and be ready for some high-level nerd stuff from a film teacher.
First of all: There will be no mentioning of the prequels from this moment on. Jesus Christ people. Those movies are appalling. Super quick: Here's a few questions for you:
1) Who is the main character in Episode 1? (Trick question: There isn't one)
2) Without referring to their job title or what they look like, describe one of the characters from the prequel.
3) Who were the Trade Federation? Who were the Seperatists? Why were they doing anything?
I could go on. However the amount of appalling plot holes, atrocious acting, the love story, the complete lack of characterisation, the fact that every dialogue scene in all 3 films were shot the exact same way with almost no emotion or urgency put into the lines...all of it is an unmitigated disaster of film.
Now that the filth is out of the way, let's get to what makes The Last Jedi amazing. It certainly isn't perfect but the things it does right, it knocks out of the fucking park.
Let's look at the context of this film. No piece of art exists in a vacuum and everything always needs to be taken into context. For a series, we don't have to look at the political climate as such, moreso we have to look at the public perception of the series.
Since the prequels were that bad and the fact that Disney had bought Star Wars, they needed to restore faith in the franchise to repair the damage done by the prequels. The very first line of The Force Awakens was: "This will begin to make things right." On top of that, Disney needed to prove that it can play with Star Wars without fucking things up. They needed to convince the hardcore crowd that they could make a typical Star Wars movie without fucking it up.
And that's what Episode 7 was. It was effectively a clone of A New Hope but that's what it needed to be. That was Disney and the new guys convincing the old guard that it can play with Star Wars without ruining your childhood. Episode 7 has a few misses as well, but the overall point of the movie was that they can do all the Star Wars stuff that you love like X-Wings and The Force and Lightsabers and scary bad guys and superweapons and huge "WHAT THE FUCK" moments without fucking it all up.
So what was the deal with Episode 8?
Well in case you haven't noticed: Mark Hamill is old. Harrison Ford is old and aaaaaaalways hated Star Wars. Carrie Fischer...has become one with The Force. No matter how much the old guard and the audience in general would have loved to see it, if they are going to continue the saga of Star Wars, they can't keep rolling out the old characters. At some point in time, we need to let go of Han, Luke and Leia. They can't just drop those legendary characters and move on without some sort of transition.
And that's what this movie was all about: Transition.
BIG ASS SPOILERS FROM HERE. I ASSUME YOU HAVE SEEN THE FILM.
This movie can be summarised with Luke's very first moment in this movie. He looks at his old Lightsaber, something which every human being on the planet thinks is cool as shit. And he just throws it away.
That's what this movie is doing.
It's acknowledging your cool stuff, but then getting rid of it in order to open the door to new and exciting things.
What Luke, Ren and Yoda are trying to do in this movie is kill the past, destroy the mythos and deal with reality. Deal with what's right in front of your nose rather than getting swept up in old legends and stuff. That was all meant for the audience as much as it was the characters. Star Wars is legendary, everybody has romantacised ideas about what it is in their heads. This movie is asking you to let go of the mythos so that the series can continue. Otherwise Star Wars couldn't do anything except be a rehash of 1950s adventure movies with pure good vs pure evil and nothing in between. Then you would all complain that the New Star Wars movies are just a rehash of the old ones which is what everybody did with Episode 7 anyway. Even though that's exactly what Episode 7 had to be.
So this movie (as flat-out stated by several characters) was about is letting go of the past and creating something new. As stated, it's impossible to continuously roll out Luke, Han and Leia for other films, so this is the transition movie.
And what they did to make that happen is that they forced you to focus on all the flaws of our favourite characters and idealogies and even conventions set up by the old Star Wars movies. People complain that Luke was a grumpy old fart instead of Space Jesus. Luke Skywalker was (is?) my childhood hero. Even I was confused by his lack of Jesusness. However all the "negative" traits we saw in him were things that we saw in previous films.
Let's have a look at what they did with Luke, because it's my favourite part of the film (almost)
In terms of his lack of jesus-ness, let's look at his personality. In Empire Strikes Back, he runs off to save Leia and Han and get his hand chopped off on the strength of a Force vision. He trusts these things explicitly. Thus when he gets a Force vision about Ben Solo, yet I believe he would act on it and trust it explicitly. Luke has shown himself to be impulsive and flipping his shit. In Return of The Jedi, he flipped out and nearly killed his Dad. Luke had been shown to be impatient, but also easily crushed when his ideas failed (As in most of his training with Yoda in Empire Strikes Back).
SO. Let's have a look at his actions now. BIG BASTARD OF A SPOILER. LAST WARNING YA JERK. For a moment, Luke goes to kill Ben based on a Force vision. This is his trust, his impulsiveness and kinda his insecurity coming through which we have seen in previous movies.
However it's also because at that stage, Luke was aware of the "Legend of Luke Skywalker" (add delay\reverb). Luke Skywalker was Jedi Jesus! The bringer of light and destroyer of darkness in the galaxy wherever it may be found. Not only was he going to kill Ben due to the negative character traits which we've seen in the other movies, he was doing it TO LIVE UP TO HIS MYTHOS.
Until he realises that it's all bullshit.
Ben wakes up and the next sequence of events is fairly straightforward as to how\why Ben became Kylo etc. However this is also the moment that Luke came to the conclusions which he "taught" Rey during the movie. This is when he deemed the Jedi a failure. Luke explained that to regard the Jedi as the sole guardians of light is vanity, and that for balance to exist, there must be great light AND great darkness. It wasn't JUST his character which made him try to kill Ben, but it was also due to the ideas about WHAT the Jedi were and WHAT Luke Skywalker was which made him try to kill Ben. There was a TONNE of complex motivation going on as to why he was going to kill Ben and a lot of forces to push him to do it...
Until he realised that living up to legends and mythos is bollocks.
Since Luke is convinced that mythos\legends are bollocks, he decides to do the polar opposite of what his mythos dictates. He becomes a grouchy old hermit who doesn't interfere with the galaxy. He wants to get as far away from his legend as humanly possible.
Which is why he doesn't want a thing to do with training Rey. It's also why when he DOES train Rey, it's all: "There's no ultimate light\dark" (which was a mindset that he had until it was broken by him murdering Ben), "The Jedi are a failure" (created Sidious, Killed his Dad, destroyed his family and the galaxy a few times over). Everything in his character was well accounted for.
However you were too busy wanting Luke Skywalker to be Space Jesus weren't you? YOU the audience member had to let go of the past, let go of the old legends and mythos and deal with what was right in front of you. DO YOU SEE WHAT THE MOVIE WAS DOING YET?
Most of the genius in this movie is the callbacks to stuff from the old movies which it then reverses and flips on its head. Many of the scenes had similar setups and followed conventions of the old Star Wars movies (Throne Room confrontation, battle on Hoth, being trained by an old wise master, Luke being Jesus etc.) but pretty much every scene played out with an opposite result. Finn's mission was a total failure. Snoke got slaughtered in his Throne room before we had a chance to find out who\what the fuck he is (how ballsy and awesome is that!? That right there just screams "Fuck your Star Wars conventions!"), Poe could blow shit up awesomely, but he was a freaking liability, Rey's parents were NOT some member of the Skywalker lineage they were nobodies (the hall of mirrors scene where she was "shown" who her parents were? She was shown an image of herself because she looked after herself, hence she was her parents), Ren was being set up to be a Vader character who turns at the last second, but instead he BECOMES Vader at the last second. The balls this movie had were unbelievable.
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