The Last Jedi

HERE BE SPOILERS.

In lieu of any sort of structure for this post, I will be using (and abusing) Ye Olde Bullete Pointes.

• I could not stand Poe's "banter" with Hux. The movie just stops dead as we watch Hux act like an idiot who's being prank-called in a teen comedy. If Johnson wants to see how to do a similar scene correctly, I recommend that he watch a little-known movie called Star Wars and pay attention to the scene where Han Solo tries to bullshit Death Star security over the radio.
• What is the deal with Hux anyway? He's obviously completely incompetent; how in the nine Corellian hells did he become a general? This was tolerable in The Force Awakens, where he and Kylo Ren seem intended to be interpreted as fantastical puffed-up neo-Nazis strutting around in too-large SS uniforms. I liked the dynamic of Ren and Hux as "brothers" competing for favor with Daddy Snoke. However, Ren takes a level in Competence before and during The Last Jedi, and Hux notably does not. (Headcanon: Hux is a descendant of Admiral Ozzel.)
• I did quite like Captain Canady of the Fulminatrix. (He seemed to share my opinion of Hux.) I'd be interested in reading any Expanded Universe material dealing with him.
• Speaking of the EU, I know almost nothing about the new canon. (I have only read A New Dawn and Tarkin, and haven't seen any of The Clone Wars or Rebels. The only information of substance I learned was Palpatine's first name.) I don't bemoan the decision to wipe the slate clean. The EU had a good run, but was increasingly hamstrung by the need for a continuing series of crises without the ability to kill off Luke, Han, or Leia. I'm just thankful that Mercy Kill made it out the door.
• Leia's demotion of Poe makes sense, but the film might not have sufficiently clarified his mistake. Poe is thinking like a military officer instead of a Resistance fighter. For a regular military, sacrificing a bomber squadron to take out a dreadnought is the obviously correct strategy, but those bombers are the only ones the Resistance is ever going to have. The First Order can just build another dreadnought.
• A new Mon Calamari cruiser! Apparently, this one is called the Raddus and is named after the admiral in Rogue One. I love these ships and I'm glad Lucasfilm made a new one rather than reusing Home One, which would have been easy.
• I think the movie would have been significantly better if about half of the jokes had been cut. (Obviously, the Poe/Hux dialogue should have been the first to go.) Rey making the Lanais miserable was very jarring in what was really a quite dark movie. Chewbacca and the porgs can stay, though!
• I liked Rose, but wonder how much of her character was a reaction to the realities of 21st-century film-making. Specifically, the creators have to be aware of the fan shipping community and are making writing decisions downstream from that knowledge. Introducing Rose was a slap across the face to the Finn/Rey and Finn/Poe shippers. Lucas himself canonized the Han/Leia ship, but he couldn't see how his fans would react in real time.
• In further shipping news, Rey/Kylo appears to have hit a mine and sunk for good. Rey appears to have been wrong in exactly the opposite of the way Yoda was wrong in Return of the Jedi. Turning Ren to the light side has been tried and failed; killing him is all that's left.
• Ultimately, Rey only seems to need Luke so she can learn that she doesn't need Luke. She doesn't need Luke, she doesn't need the sacred Jedi texts, and she doesn't need her parents. Similarly, Poe and the Resistance don't need the Raddus, and Kylo Ren doesn't need Snoke. The Last Jedi's ethos seems to be the past is better off dead and buried, and there's nothing worth learning from it. A rebuff to the fandom's old guard in the same vein as Rose's character?
• I'm pleased that none of the lightsaber fights in The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi had any of the Force-assisted acrobatics featured in the prequel trilogy. The emphasis on flashy moves was evidence of the Jedi order's decadence. Who would spend time practicing pointless backflips when there are real enemies to fight?
• Canto Bight was...OK. The class-warfare angle threatened to upset the film's essential "Star Wars-iness," (contrast the treatment of slavery in The Phantom Menace) but this plot thread was rescued by DJ revealing that the gamblers are also supplying the Resistance. I received Canto Bight (the anthology) for Christmas, and no doubt a more complete picture is found within.
• For the love of Mace Windu, why didn't Holdo just explain the plan to Poe? It's not like Poe is an OPSEC risk. Because Holdo can't be bothered  to say, "We're going to use the Raddus as a decoy while our cloaked transports escape to our nearby base, then call for reinforcements," critical information gets leaked to DJ (thus violating OPSEC!), and the First Order vaporizes most of the transports and necessitates Luke's Force projection. You heard it here, folks: Holdo killed Luke Skywalker. Of course, the plan is fatally flawed since the Resistance has no allies, but maybe they have no allies because they put people like Holdo in charge!
• Be that as it may, the Raddus ramming the Supremacy and pulverizing all those Star Destroyers was fantastic to watch. It's unfortunate that Johnson missed this golden opportunity to kill off Leia. I predict that Episode IX will open with Leia's Last Stand and a brief shot of a CGI Carrie Fisher (or maybe just a silhouette). Shades of The Dark Knight Rises?
• Snoke and Phasma both die like chumps with no new information on either character's backstory. Phasma doesn't even get a full face reveal! This does keep with the new theme of the past being unimportant compared to the present. Rey's parentage is irrelevant, whereas Luke's relationship with his father is the foundation of the entire setting. Out with the old and in with the new!
• Returning to the subject of our villains, why doesn't Kylo Ren just kill Hux? Hux has just spectacularly failed yet again! What exactly does Hux bring to the First Order? (Alternate headcanon: Hux owns stock in whatever corporation manufactures the First Order's dreadnoughts, thus explaining why Snoke and Ren keep him around and why Hux contrives for the First Order to be continually in need of new dreadnoughts.)
• Luke pulls an Obi-Wan, surprising absolutely nobody.
• I could have sworn Frank Oz was dead, but I must have confused him with Jim Henson.
• If the child slaves in Canto Bight are supposed to be an important plot point, the series is going to need a 10-year time skip for them to be old enough to fight. Possible solution: Rey kills Kylo Ren in Episode IX, but the First Order maintains control over the Galaxy Far Far Away long enough for a new generation to join the fight in Episode X.

May the Force be with you!