The Last Jedi Is Too Terrible to be Good and Too Well Done to Be Awful

The latest installment of Star Wars juggles many themes, such as sacrifice, trust, legacy, inner turmoil, letting go of the past, and hope for the future, but I think the grander lesson can be summed up as this: screwing up someone's plan will have short term consequences, but everything will turn out alright in the end. This is reflected both in the characters' actions, and by Writer/Director Rian Johnson's decision to apparently throw out whatever plan, if any, was in place from The Force Awakens.

Many of the film's defenders describe it as bold and/or ballsy for digging into the characters' consistent failures and for scrapping any respect for their expectations. And they're right. It is bold for telling the audiences that what they were expecting to see doesn't matter to him, but those defenders don't get to take umbrage when some interpret that as a giant middle finger. The films succeeds in doing the unexpected in a familiar way, but I hesitate to give it credit for choices that weaken the narrative. For simplicity's sake, I'm saving my nitpicky Star Wars Fan criticisms for another post.

SPOILERS AHEAD.