I’m very worried about writing this post because so many people are angry at “The Last Jedi” and angry at anybody who criticizes “The Last Jedi”.  Hopefully I’m just relaying my thoughts to the few people who follow my Twitter and therefore I won’t receive any destructive comments.

Anyhow, here it goes. There were moments in “The Last Jedi” that I absolutely loved only to see the possibilities presented in those moments thrown away by the end of the movie. Just to get it out of the way, I loved the parts of the movie that did not include the space battles and the casino. I thought the casino was a great concept that should have been a separate side movie like “Rogue One”.

Here’s what I love:

1. Cranky Luke training Rey while hearing the story of what happened with Kylo Ren.
2. Rey and Kylo Ren secretly building a relationship through force chatting.
3. Rey exploring both the dark and light side of herself with Luke as her guide and mentor.
4. Rey and Kylo Ren coming together to take down Snoke and then Kylo suggesting that he and Rey team up to destroy the First Order and the Resistance.
5. Finn and Rose finding out that arms dealers were supplying both the First Order and the Resistance for profit. (Just that understanding, but it didn’t need a 30 minute casino detour to get there.)

I wanted more of all of this. These parts of the story showed the possibility for a wonderful episode 8 leading into an episode 9 that wouldn’t have been about the First Order versus the Resistance, but instead a story that could have gotten to the root of why there’s a galactic war in the first place and an explanation for the demise of both the Jedi and the Sith.

Now to outline my hopes being crushed. When Kylo and Rey finally get together, I thought the story was going to go sword and sheathe when Kylo suggested, after doing glorious battle together, that they team up and destroy the past. Rey should have gone with Ben (since he would have dropped that Sith BS) to rein in Kylo’s power and shape his ambitions, and Finn should have come along to support Rey and temper her expectations for Kylo. (King, Queen, and the Queen’s Knight — I love that shit!) I was in love with the idea of throwing away the First Order and the Resistance, especially after Finn and Rose found out arms dealers were supplying both sides. I thought at that moment in the Red Room, episode 9 would be about the force-pair taking down the true evil behind the perpetual galactic war. This would have led to the real reason for the demise of the Jedi and Sith — technology. The Jedi and Sith were yen and yang (peace makers and enforcers) to keep order in the galaxy until some folks decided to pit them against each other and against non-force users for profit. Technology, which leveled the field for non-force users, arose to replace the force users as the galactic power and peace broker. The bones were there for that story and it would have tied in the prequels while leaving plenty of room for stories before episode 1 and after episode 9. But all of that was thrown away. That is why I have no interest in episode 9. I don’t know what Kylo Ren and Rey’s motivations are now. No one answered the call of the Resistance, so now what? The First Order won. Game over.

Ultimately, this leaves me on the side of the people who want this movie removed from canon. Yes, the good parts were good, but as a complete movie, it killed Star Wars. There’s no where left to go and nothing that happens before episode 8 matters, because it was all thrown away in episode 8.