Part 1/3: https://www.reddit.com/saltierthancrait/comments/a7tzug/critics_criticisms_part_i_humo
Part 2/3: https://www.reddit.com/saltierthancrait/comments/a91mnv/critics_criticisms_part_ii_canto_bight/
Part 3/3: https://www.reddit.com/saltierthancrait/comments/aahmu6/critics_criticisms_part_iii_length/

Part 1/3

Critic's Criticisms Part I: Humor

A few months ago I completed a read through of all ~400 TLJ reviews on RT(now up to ~415). It was painfully boring at times, but that's salt mining for you. I wanted to get a handle on the critical reception which is commonly cited as universal praise. While it's generally true that critics loved TLJ, they also had some criticisms that would be right at home here at STC, and these come from super experienced and intellectual film critics, so they have to be valid, right? After all, these people know so much more about film than a layperson. They can fully evaluate a film on countless criteria that average fans don't comprehend. /s, but you see where I'm going here: many TLJ fans have put critics on a pedestal, as if their opinion is somehow more valuable as a baseline for TLJ's quality. So what about when critics are echoing our own criticisms of TLJ?
Almost every criticism we have lobbed at this movie was shared by at least a few critics, but there were three main criticisms that stood out as the most common. I'll start this series with humor in TLJ.
Peter Debruge, Variety -Fresh

Luke is funnier than we’ve ever seen him — a personality change that betrays how “Star Wars” has been influenced by industry trends. Though the series has always been self-aware enough to crack jokes, it now gives in to the same winking self-parody that is poisoning other franchises of late, from the Marvel movies to “Pirates of the Caribbean.” But it begs the question: If movies can’t take themselves seriously, why should audiences?
Harrison Ford was a good enough actor, and Han Solo an aloof enough character, that he could get away with it, but here, the laughs feel forced — as does the appearance of cuddly critters on each new planet.

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter -Fresh

General Hux, who's goofily played by Domhnall Gleeson as if he were acting in a Monty Pythonesque parody

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger -Fresh

humor is not only prevalent but often turned, mockingly, on the self-serious mythology of the whole saga. Sometimes there are too many jokes; certainly there's an overabundance of cutesy aliens.

Niall Browne, Movies in Focus -Fresh

It’s Finn’s mission which takes the film off on a diversion where it didn’t really need to go. There’s a lot of comedic hijinks involved in all of this which George Lucas would have excised from the first draft of anything he ever wrote.
There’s more humour in The Last Jedi than previous Star Wars movies; some of it hits, some of it doesn’t. The much publicised Porgs work for a moment or two, but they outstay their welcome. The film drew to a halt too many times to show-odd cute creatures. I didn’t care for the crystal wolves during the climatic battle and the aforementioned space Llamas feel like they belong in a Disney movie (wait, this is a Disney movie!)

Rendy Jones, Rendy Reviews -Fresh

"The Last Jedi" is a movie that follows elements of other Star Wars movies that works on its own but feels so similar to a Marvel film because the first half of this movie is a comedy. Seriously a lot of the first half of the movie has a silly vibe amongst all the death and destruction that surrounds it. It desperately tries to be a parody of itself by making serious situations comedic.

Ruben Rosario, MiamiArtZine -Fresh

Much has also been made of “Jedi's” jarring tonal shifts. Johnson inserts broad humor, then abruptly makes things serious, then back again to goofy content.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Film Festival Today -Fresh

[Kylo's] partner in evil, Domnhall Gleeson, as General Hux, is less fine, though much of the problem stems not so much from the actor as from the tonally strange, abusively co-dependent relationship between the two men; their jokey rapport feels like it belongs in a very different movie.

Alex Doenau, Trespass -Fresh

However, from the beginning there’s a discordant sense of humour that’s somewhat counter to the series’ ethos to date: rather than funny situations rising organically in the script, many of the characters openly seem to be making jokes. It’s how we introduce Poe this go-round, and it feels slightly off.

Owen Richards, The Arts Desk -Fresh

There’s a surprising amount of comedy in the film, quite a bit at the expense of beloved characters or series law; it’s funny, but not respectful.

Tim Brayton , Alternate Ending -Rotten

The Last Jedi has an impressively poor batting average for its jokes: it opens with a vengefully dumb "I have a bad phone connection" bit that put me on the movie's bad side basically as soon as it had a side to be on, and it's not exactly all uphill from there.

James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk -Fresh

Sometimes, however, his proclivities come at the film’s expense, such as his penchant for inserting quippy humor, sarcasm, and sight gags at odd times, which often undercuts the drama or simply smacks of too much effort.

Craig Takeuchi, Georgia Straight -Fresh

Weak points come with awkward humour that lacks comedic rhythm and an unnecessary casino escapade, where a disposable underworld character DJ (Benicio del Toro) is introduced, that subsequently soft lens into what is essentially a children's adventure tale about animals.

Rob Dean, Bullz-Eye.com -Fresh

Further pushing the disconnect is that the script is far too self-aware, constantly making the sort of jokes that nerds have been making about “Star Wars” for decades, as if it’s too cool to purely accept itself on its own merits. The comedy works about half the time, but there are a ton of jokes in this film that underscore all of the overly serious talk of hope that populates the movie.

Sonny Bunch, Washington Free Beacon - Rotten

Johnson tries too hard on the humor front. Just one, brief, example: The whole opening sequences involves Poe doing conference call shtick while trolling Admiral Hux (Domhnall Gleeson). It's weirdly un-Star-Wars in the sense that it feels like something you could see on any dreadful sitcom here on planet Earth; this sequence is more fit for The Big Bang Theory than a supposedly dark entry in the Star Wars canon. The Star Wars movies have always been funny, of course, and there are moments when Johnson makes it work in a Star-Wars-sort-of-way. On the whole, though, it feels desperate and forced.

Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru - Rotten

Johnson's screenplay awkwardly blend action and drama with comedy and little bit of tacked-on romance. One particular scene involving an image that's not what it initially appears to be comes out of nowhere and feels like it belongs in a parody of Star Wars even though it does generate laughter.

Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground -Fresh

With more gags, one-liners and quirky moments than all the other Star Wars films combined, The Last Jedi introduces a levity to the staid franchise in the vein of Roger Moore's turn as post-Connery Bond. At times it works, even to the point of guffaws, but ultimately the humour feels misplaced. In a story where loss abounds and crushing defeat looms large at every turn, the repeated cutaways to doe-eyed porgs purring like extras from a Pixar film distract more than they entertain. So, too, does Domhnall Gleeson, whose character General Hux plays more like a parody of a Star Wars villain. As a result, both the New Order and the film itself are robbed of their most enduring menace: the Empire.

Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com -Fresh

In “The Last Jedi,” we watch Poe poke at Hux, who’s been turned into a buffoon for the new film, teasing him by faking communication issues and sharing an opinion about his mother. It’s the first of many awkward attempts at humor from Johnson, who isn’t known for funny business

Kevin McCarthy, WTTG-TV -Fresh

The first act of the film features major pacing issues combined with unnecessary comedic moments that ultimately hurt the tone of the film. Unfortunately, a lot of this comes from Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker character.

Jonathan W. Hickman, Daily Film Fix -Fresh

I found myself frustrated that the tone was comedy and sometimes almost veered into parody.
Everything else is jokes and comedic references with a side of cheese. I found myself shaking my head more than laughing along.

Ray Greene, CineGods.com - Rotten

But it also doesn’t feel quite right — the language, the iconography, the weirdly campy humor at the beginning — it doesn’t feel a part of the Star Wars universe.

Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly -Fresh

The less said about the awkward attempts at comic relief, the better.

Matt Looker, TheShiznit.co.uk -Fresh

the comedy - and there is plenty of it - is spread out more evenly across the whole cast. In the case of Domhnall Gleeson's Hux, this becomes a good opportunity to poke fun at the horribly hammy performance he gave in The Force Awakens. But when he is playing those laughs off against his only foil - Kylo Ren - Johnson threatens to undermine their status as epic villains.

Christian Toto, HollywoodInToto.com - Rotten

Johnson drops plenty of cutesy comic moments into the mix, some of which would make even George Lucas blush. What was passable in 1977 no longer flies as easily today. And a franchise as esteemed as this one deserves richer comic relief.

Mark Hughes, Forbes -Fresh

The first act's humor is the shakiest, with some gags seeming more like something out of a Star Wars satire. The tone and irreverence of it was out of place, and a couple of bits went on one or two beats too long.

Scott Menzel, We Live Entertainment -Fresh

Speaking of laughs, the jokes and humor just fall flat. The jokes seemed out of place or were just so “on the nose” that I couldn’t help but be annoyed by them. I feel like the modern day humor didn’t feel the tone of the story and yet Johnson kept trying to lighten the mood by adding in cheesy jokes that weren’t even remotely amusing but instead were rather cringe-worthy.

Kevin Jagernauth The Playlist -Fresh

In the pursuit of providing some buoyancy to the picture, Johnson wields comedy like a sword, but it’s unfortunately the weakest element of the film. “Star Wars” has always been home to plenty of cornball one liners, and comedic passages, but there’s a delicacy to how they’re employed and delivered that allows them to land….or simply fall flat. Far too often, it’s the latter outcome in this picture, with some of the laughs feeling underwritten or simply shoehorned in. There’s a distinct lack of cleverness to the wit employed here — think something as seemingly spontaneous as BB-8’s “thumbs up” in ‘The Force Awakens’ — and while the gags don’t grind the picture to a halt, there are certainly some awkward patches where the expected laughs don’t materialize.

Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects -Fresh

The film is a series of points both high and low, and it’s nowhere more clear than in the humor. Several beats work well to bring a smile, but others fall tone deaf to the carnage and pain surrounding them. From the very beginning Hux’s scenes are made to feel like lost reels from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs, and poor Boyega can’t catch a break as Finn is saddled with lame one-liners at every turn.

Alex Godfrey, GQ Magazine [UK] -Fresh

It’s funny, though not always when you want it to be – perhaps fearing too much gravitas, Johnson undermines it a little too often.

Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth -Fresh

Rian Johnson has crafted an installment that largely defies saga standard narrative structure and tone. There is a quick comedic dialogue exchange in the beginning between Oscar Isaac’s fighter pilot Poe Dameron and Domhnall Gleeson’s First Order General Hux that falls in line with the brand of humor Disney and Marvel inject into that particular cinematic universe.

John Serba, MLive.com -Fresh

Some stabs at comedy feel overwrought and clunky, including a stint on a ritzy planet of war profiteers, an extended sequence of skillfully directed silliness destined to be beloved fodder for apologists only.

Up next is Part II: Canto Bight.

Part 2/3

Critic's Criticisms Part II: Canto Bight

This is the continuation of my series highlighting specific critic's criticisms of TLJ. Part I on Humor is here, which also details my reasoning for this mining operation. Here we are covering Canto Bight, and we have everything from run of the mill iodized stuff to hail-sized rock salt on display, so adjust your goggles accordingly.

Johnson overplays his hand occasionally — most notably an unnecessary sequence at the casino city of Canto Bight that goes straight from a political sermon into a plot hole

Ethan Sacks, New York Daily News - Fresh

The bad news is, this involves an unnecessary trip to a kind of casino planet that doesn’t really advance the story.

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic - Fresh

A scene in an opulent casino is easily the most painful yet in this new generation of Star Wars flicks, eliciting images of the green screen busy set pieces of the early-2000 franchise additions, enticing to the youngest members of the audience who need their stories overly padded with shiny spectacle.

Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot - Fresh

Boyega is a loveable hero, and his new compadre Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) is a nice addition. However, as much as it isn’t overbearing, their entire sub-plot is when the adventure loses steam. This moves the film away from where all the interest is – Luke. At this point, it becomes a little disjointed and unnecessary, never reaching a point of excitement required for a chunk of plot of this degree.

Cameron Frew, FrewFilm - Fresh

an extended digression with Finn and Rose that doesn’t end up counting for much plotwise

Bob Chipman, Moviebob Central - Fresh

Sadly, Boyega's Finn -- still an appealing character -- is saddled with a go-nowhere plot-line that has him and Resistance mechanic Rose show up at a space casino and cross paths with a rogue with a heart of a gold (or maybe just rogue?) played by Benicio Del Toro. There's the kernel of interesting idea there as we glimpse the socioeconomic underpinnings of this galaxy far, far away in a way we've never seen before, but it's a digression whose payoff doesn't warrant the build-up. And when you're already the longest Star Wars ever made (two and a half hours!), some snipping here and there might not have been a bad idea.

Zaki Hasan, Zaki's Corner - Fresh

I’m not a big fan of Finn and Rose’s side adventure, which has the air of a spinoff story being tacked onto the main narrative (probably to give Finn a purpose, since Rey is doing her own thing with Luke). Apart from showcasing the power of hope on a younger generation, it’s not as well integrated into the seams of the larger story as it could’ve been.

Tomas Trussow, The Lonely Film Critic - Fresh

It’s Finn’s mission which takes the film off on a diversion where it didn’t really need to go. There’s a lot of comedic hijinks involved in all of this which George Lucas would have excised from the first draft of anything he ever wrote.

Niall Browne, Movies in Focus - Fresh

Much of the Canto Bight sequence feels unnecessary

Molly Templeton, Eugene Weekly - Fresh

First, both prominent new characters Rose and DJ seemed shoe-horned in, and Rose especially doesn't seem to have a real place in this film nor does she add anything to be hopeful about in the future. And while both Rey and Poe fans will probably be pleased with where their characters go, Finn sort of takes a step back, as he is sent off on a side adventure that seems like second-tier Star Wars. It's a diversion that takes up a good portion of the film and really serves no purpose to the overall story...worse yet, it seems to contain some heavy-handed political messages not commonly found, at least not this blatantly, in the Star Wars universe. These are more than just quibbles too: Most fans will not be used to the slow, lumbering pace or the general unevenness of this film...especially coming on the heels of the action-packed pacing that JJ Abrams brought in Episode VII.

Tom Santilli, AXS.com - Fresh

There’s some stuff that feels extraneous (the whole Canto Bight sequence, which seems to exist to set up a new Lando-like character played by Benicio del Toro), and the cycle of attack and retreat — mostly retreat — gets a bit monotonous.

Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com - Fresh

Muchas de las situaciones se sienten forzadas e innecesarias (por ejemplo, la aventura de Finn y Rose, me parece innecesaria).

Ruben Peralta Rigaud, Cocalecas - Fresh

Their jaunt to the casino planet of Canto Bight serves little purpose besides introducing Del Toro, updating the cantina scene, and offering up a tired CGI chase scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Attack of the Clones. Kudos (maybe) to Johnson for introducing income inequality to the Star Wars universe, but the entire sequence feels rushed and shoehorned into an already long movie.

Pete Vonder Haar Houston Press - Fresh

The weakest of these is Finn's. It's briskly paced and full of action yes, but let's just say a casino is no cantina... Worse, it also sees him interacting with Prequel Trilogy levels of CGI critters.

Karl Puschmann, New Zealand Herald - Fresh

But the worst distraction “The Last Jedi” has to offer involves erstwhile Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and a Resistance maintenance worker named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a subplot every bit as visually and narratively inept as Lucas’ prequels were taken as.

J. Olson, Cinemixtape - Rotten

Finn’s entire storyline could be cut and the film would be better off. As Finn was one of the driving-force leads of The Force Awakens and also a charming character, this is a disappointing development. His adventure is such a low point that it would not seem out of place in one of George Lucas’ efforts from between 1999 and 2005, and it serves little purpose to the film’s overall plot.

Alex Doenau, Trespass - Fresh

there’s too much going on in The Last Jedi, and a lot of it feels like filler. Besides the aforementioned, stalled-out space battle, there’s a clunky sequence in a casino that goes on far too long, a lot of distracting cameos, and new characters inhabited by Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro, who bring close to nothing to the proceedings.

Bob Grimm, Reno News and Review - Fresh

Finn and Rose (a new addition to the principal cast) distract the audience with an overlong and ultimately unnecessary side plot.

Richard Dove, International Business Times - Rotten

And this plotline feeds right into the absolutely unforgivably terrible subplot, which is the adventures of Finn (John Boyega) the cowardly ex-storm trooper, and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), the class-conscious engineer, who go on a fetch quest that is every bit as pointless as the whole matter of the military nonsense, only even worse, because it hinges on terrible comedy, bad CGI, and a spectacularly horrible moment when Johnson stops the film in its tracks to provide a ruthlessly on-the-nose lesson about economic inequality and the military-industrial complex.

Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending - Rotten

Some of what happens on the casino planet — called Canto Bight, and sure to figure in the next film — is goofy on a level as cringe-inducing as things we saw in the prequel trilogy; like, Jar-Jar Binks–awful.

MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher - Fresh

Johnson does his best to hustle from one location to the next, but the narrative has a tendency from time to time to drag. The biggest example of this are the scenes on Canto Bight. Which is a shame, because a huge chunk of the film’s message is established on these scenes. But the very nature of the story, with its many moving parts, inadvertently makes this section of the film feel like a diversion.

Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm - Fresh

The humour is kind of sour in other places, too, such as the silly neo-cantina scene as Finn and Rose track the whereabouts of a mysterious encrypter, who might be the rebellion’s last hope, into a sort of galactic Monte Carlo. The abundance of slapstick there and in other parts of the film doesn’t click and feels forced.

Diva Velez, TheDivaReview.com - Fresh

In an unnecessary and quite frankly preposterous third subplot, Finn (John Boyega) and a new character, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), race against the clock to locate an underworld figure who can help them neutralise the First Order’s tracking device, thus allowing the diminished rebel fleet to escape.

Vicky Roach, Daily Telegraph (Australia) - Rotten

Weak points come with awkward humour that lacks comedic rhythm and an unnecessary casino escapade, where a disposable underworld character DJ (Benicio del Toro) is introduced, that subsequently soft lens into what is essentially a children's adventure tale about animals

Craig Takeuchi, Georgia Straight - Fresh

Unfortunately, we keep getting dragged away from the only emotionally resonant portion of the film to watch Finn and Rose engage in sub-prequel hijinks on the casino planet. Everything here is forced and awful, visually uninteresting and often dark to the point of unwatchability, lousy with mawkish little kids making bug eyes at the camera as we marvel at the horror of economic inequality, and drowned in an atrocious patina of truly terrible CGI. It calls to mind the droid factory in Attack of the Clones and the pre-podrace sequence in The Phantom Menace. Most offensively, the whole Finn/Rose diversion has absolutely no importance to the forward momentum of the plot—it's utterly irrelevant, even nonsensical.

Sonny Bunch, Washington Free Beacon - Rotten

Not everything in the film works: a few of the goofier comic moments fail to land and true to the legacy of Lucas there’s a fair amount of eye-wincing dialogue. More importantly, the second act bows under the weight of too many narrative strands; Finn’s away mission comes off as a bit superfluous, as does Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo, and both Rose and the beloved Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) are sadly underwritten. In a trade-off that brings scope and complexity, Johnson has sacrificed narrative efficiency.

Christopher Machell, CineVue - Fresh

I didn't like the sequence in a casino--a callback to the Star Wars Cantina, of course, but also a chance to discuss the evils of war profiteers and the 1%. There are creatures there, there's slapstick, there's a heist of sorts, and it all harks back to my favourite of Johnson's films, The Brothers Bloom, in the interplay between the characters, in the lightness and clarity of the scheme. But it's tonally disruptive, and it introduces a trio of children who seem like part of a different film.

Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central - Fresh

Finn and Rose’s trip to a gambling planet – basically a space Monaco – flits between light fun and on-the-nose political narrative.

Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle - Fresh

It also begs the question why the space casino sequence, arguably the least relevant to the core story, wasn’t dramatically trimmed back. Aside from a throwaway final shot, this section of the film is the weakest – designed to depict profiteering space-capitalism run rampant (ironically, also depicting a stable of space-horses also running rampant).

Patrick Kolan, Shotgun Cinema - Fresh

But as ingenious as this setup may be, it also gives rise to the film's most pointless subplot. After waking from his coma, Finn (John Boyega) contrives a means by which he can disable the New Order's tracking device, albeit one that requires him to sneak off the fleeing vessel, travel to a Monaco-styled casino planet, track down a master codebreaker and infiltrate the enemy's warship undetected. This enormous MacGuffin sees Boyega partnered with the charming Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, a Resistance engineer low in status but high in pluck. The problem is that their side adventure does absolutely nothing to advance the actual story.

Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground - Fresh

Unfortunately, John Boyega’s Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe and Kelly Marie Tran—as Finn’s new partner-in-rebellion Rose—are given the equivalent of busywork while the rest of the cast moves the plot along.

Simon Miraudo, Student Edge - Fresh

A detour to a casino planet where Finn and a resistance mechanic named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) search for a codebreaker to help them disrupt the First Order's tracking of the retreating resistance ships feels like a trip into another movie. The stakes here seem far lower than the live-or-die scenario facing Poe, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) and the others trying to make their getaway.

Greg Maki Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) Fresh

The only characters not doing a huge amount of growing are Finn (John Boyega) and mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), and not for nothing, their subplot opens up a momentum drain that is the only weakness in The Last Jedi. Boyega and Tran are perfectly enjoyable, and their subplot isn’t a complete waste of time, but you start to feel the length of The Last Jedi when it veers off with them, and Finn’s arc is a pale echo of Poe’s so it’s not like much is being accomplished.

Sarah Marrs Lainey Gossip Fresh

Rey’s journey toward learning the ways of the Jedi is far more entertaining than Finn’s convoluted (and ultimately pointless) storyline

Josh Bell Las Vegas Weekly Fresh

Rose’s character is front and center in the film’s weakest sequences. We’re diverted to a city where the worst of the worst frolic. No, not the usual hives of scum and villainy. It’s a casino where the very, very rich cavort. The evil One Percenters! If you’re not immediately yanked out of the story here you deserve a prize. The accompanying dialogue is equally clunky, as is the reason all these vapid souls gained their fortunes.

Christian Toto, HollywoodInToto.com - Rotten

Far less successful is the time spent with the rebels on the run from Hux and the First Order. Not only is it centered on the slowest space chase in sci-fi history, but subplots featuring Poe, Finn (John Boyega), and Rose (newcomer Kelly Marie Tran) go absolutely nowhere. Sure we get introduced to DJ (Benicio Del Toro) and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), but it’s with actions that fail to connect either through sheer stupidity or the simple truth that their absence wouldn’t change the story in the slightest. They’re obvious filler, and as is the Disney way (witness their Marvel films) the studio’s never met a character that couldn’t be jammed into a movie for no reason other than the misguided belief that more is better. Finn and Rose’s adventure in particular offers some additional action beats and a visit to a casino — think the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from Star Wars, but for the 1% — but it is meaningless noise.

Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects - Fresh

Meanwhile, what feels too much like the “B plot” side adventure has Finn and Rose on a mission that takes them into another film entirely, a sort of intergalactic James Bond-meets-Free Willy. It’s hard not to feel that their entire subplot could be axed in order to make The Last Jedi stronger and tighter, which is unfortunate.

Kaila Hale-Stern, The Mary Sue - Fresh

There is a whole section that feels out of kilter and harks back to the CGI naffness of the prequels — and is also virtually pointless to the plot.

Jamie East, The Sun (UK) - Fresh

The film’s epic 150-minute runtime allows plenty of room for Johnson’s inventiveness, but there’s also a tiny bit of fat in the middle of the movie, specifically in the Canto Bight scenes with Finn and Rose. The casino city itself is gorgeous and has some crazy-cool characters, plus Finn and Rose’s presence there shines a light on some new, worthwhile themes for the Star Wars franchise. However, in terms of the overall story, the whole escapade feels a little pointless and small. It doesn’t help that Benicio del Toro’s new character, DJ, who is part of the same storyline, is largely insignificant.

Germain Lussier, io9.com - Fresh

Star Wars: The Last Jedi does have a clear weak spot -- specifically the side plot that develops between Finn (John Boyega) and newly-introduced Resistance member Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran). Following a genuinely funny meet-up between the two characters, they are given their own special mission searching for a codebreaker who can assist in the battle against the First Order. But this storyline never feels particularly inspired or impactful as everything else going down in the movie. While it is constructed to fit with the larger themes of the film, features its own interesting expectation-flipping turns, and does eventually have a key impact on the macro scale, it's also the only part of the feature that ever feels expendable, and not helping anything is that it features the weakest visual effects of the blockbuster (especially during a second-act chase sequence).

Eric Eisenberg, CinemaBlend - Fresh

Finn and Rose’s mission takes them to Canto Bight, a kind of Monte Carlo peopled by extras from Babylon 5, and feels like it is just ticking the Weird Alien Bar box started by the Cantina. A ride on space horses also feels like a needless diversion, as does Benicio Del Toro’s space rogue, whose strange, laconic presence never really makes its mark.

Ian Freer, Empire Magazine - Fresh

It’s a shame, then, that the righteousness of Finn and Rose’s place in the film is undermined slightly by the limpness of their mission. Perhaps feeling there had to be some kind of Mos Eisley–esque sequence in the film, Johnson sends the pair to a casino city full of all kinds of creatures. It’s fun, sure, but the whole operation ultimately turns out to be a red herring. At least there’s some nice musing on liberation during this stretch, reminding us of the real stakes of this long story—freedom is, after all, what the Empire denies and the Rebel Alliance promises. And in a gorgeous third-act sequence—which includes the film’s true Empire Strikes Back homage—Finn and Rose finally get the emboldened moments they deserve. I just wish they fit more integrally into the central thesis of the film, that they were just as special, in their way, as Rey is, glinting with messianic power as she ascends.

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair - Fresh

Of the three simultaneous plots, it’s Finn’s that sometimes drags down the energy, particularly with an introduction of a shady thief played by Benicio del Toro, the only new addition to the cast that doesn’t quite work; he seems to be acting in his own private movie, and it’s not as good as this one.

Will Leitch Paste Magazine - Fresh

Where the film struggles the most is on Canto Bight. Taken on her own, Rose isn’t a bad addition to the Star Wars mythos, and the movie definitely needs someone to play against Finn. Unfortunately, they lack the electric chemistry we saw between Finn and Rey in The Force Awakens, and their secret mission in a casino feels like it should be far more entertaining than it actually is.

Matt Goldberg, Collider - Fresh

Some action sequences are superfluous and unengaging. Benicio del Toro all but cameos as a sort of hobo hustler, while John Boyega’s Finn is sidelined, relegated to relatively inconsequential hi-jinx.

Alex Godfrey, GQ Magazine [UK] - Fresh

Finn (John Boyega) and newcomer Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) attempt an espionage mission that takes them to what is the Star Wars equivalent of the French Riviera. It’s a casino city named Canto Bight, and their adventures here push the Rick’s Café sensibilities from the original Star Wars’ cantina sequence to their limit. Nevertheless, this entire subplot amounts to a whole lot of padding while the real tough and revelatory decisions are made on Ahch-To.

David Crow, Den of Geek - Fresh

Plot-wise, I felt the entire side story at the casino world of Canto Bight was unnecessary. If you cut the entire sequence out of the film, it would have little impact on the core narrative.

Scott Chitwood ComingSoon.net - Fresh

Finn (John Boyega) wakes up, meets a admiring fan down in maintenance named Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and they head off on their own adventure, a detour that somehow combines the louche slickness of Cloud City and moralizing at its most Disney.

Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman - Fresh

But The Last Jedi’s two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn (John Boyega) and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).

Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine - Rotten

There are a couple of big names that fail to deliver much aside from, perhaps, realizing their childhood dreams of being in a “Star Wars” movie. A trip to a city that might as well be called Space Macau also fails to pay many dividends.

Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal - Fresh

Case in point is the plot involving Finn (John Boyega) and new hero Rose's (Kelly Marie Tran) McGuffinesque mission to Canto Bight, which is of the ashtray-on-a-speederbike variety, and takes away from the tension cranked up elsewhere.

Harry Guerin, RTÉ (Ireland) - Fresh

The remaining 20% is made up of two different locales, one of which is entirely superfluous to the story. Essentially, there is a subplot that introduces Benicio del Toro’s mysterious work of eccentricity, except it doesn’t really do much of interest with him. Admittedly, it feels as if the character could be destined for bigger things in the final chapter, but I can only go off of what I watched, and well, the middle portion of The Last Jedi is stuck in the furthest setting from lightspeed. The journey expands to a space-Vegas full of various alien life forms and inhabitants, but it’s not as visually striking as previously explored planets. Additionally, by design, there seems to be filler injected simply because the other characters need things to do while Rey accomplishes what she needs to with Luke.

Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth - Fresh

The scenes on Canto Bight seemed like an unnecessary divert for Rose (a new character I actually really like) and Finn. This “casino planet” was like a scene right out of a low-budget Sy-Fy channel movie shot in Vancouver. It felt too familiar and earthbound to be a scene in an other-worldly scene in a Star Wars movie. The Rose/Finn alien horse race through the casino that ruined the galactic one-percenters good time and did some property damage was just ridiculous and should have been cut. Rose and Finn flopping around on the alien horse just looked like a bad theme park ride.

Chris Gore, Film Threat - Fresh

There’s a lengthy diversion to the casino planet of Canto Bight that feels pointless and tacked on just for the sake of giving us a cool new corner of the galaxy to feast our eyes on.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly - Fresh
And that's it for Part II. Happy Holidays to all my fellow fans and miners! Next week I will conclude with Part III, which will cover- well, let's just say it's the longest of this series by far. Heh.

Critic's Criticisms Part II: Canto Bight

Johnson overplays his hand occasionally — most notably an unnecessary sequence at the casino city of Canto Bight that goes straight from a political sermon into a plot hole

Ethan Sacks, New York Daily News - Fresh

The bad news is, this involves an unnecessary trip to a kind of casino planet that doesn’t really advance the story.

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic - Fresh

A scene in an opulent casino is easily the most painful yet in this new generation of Star Wars flicks, eliciting images of the green screen busy set pieces of the early-2000 franchise additions, enticing to the youngest members of the audience who need their stories overly padded with shiny spectacle.

Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot - Fresh

Boyega is a loveable hero, and his new compadre Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) is a nice addition. However, as much as it isn’t overbearing, their entire sub-plot is when the adventure loses steam. This moves the film away from where all the interest is – Luke. At this point, it becomes a little disjointed and unnecessary, never reaching a point of excitement required for a chunk of plot of this degree.

Cameron Frew, FrewFilm - Fresh

an extended digression with Finn and Rose that doesn’t end up counting for much plotwise

Bob Chipman, Moviebob Central - Fresh

Sadly, Boyega's Finn -- still an appealing character -- is saddled with a go-nowhere plot-line that has him and Resistance mechanic Rose show up at a space casino and cross paths with a rogue with a heart of a gold (or maybe just rogue?) played by Benicio Del Toro. There's the kernel of interesting idea there as we glimpse the socioeconomic underpinnings of this galaxy far, far away in a way we've never seen before, but it's a digression whose payoff doesn't warrant the build-up. And when you're already the longest Star Wars ever made (two and a half hours!), some snipping here and there might not have been a bad idea.

Zaki Hasan, Zaki's Corner - Fresh

I’m not a big fan of Finn and Rose’s side adventure, which has the air of a spinoff story being tacked onto the main narrative (probably to give Finn a purpose, since Rey is doing her own thing with Luke). Apart from showcasing the power of hope on a younger generation, it’s not as well integrated into the seams of the larger story as it could’ve been.

Tomas Trussow, The Lonely Film Critic - Fresh

It’s Finn’s mission which takes the film off on a diversion where it didn’t really need to go. There’s a lot of comedic hijinks involved in all of this which George Lucas would have excised from the first draft of anything he ever wrote.

Niall Browne, Movies in Focus - Fresh

Much of the Canto Bight sequence feels unnecessary

Molly Templeton, Eugene Weekly - Fresh

First, both prominent new characters Rose and DJ seemed shoe-horned in, and Rose especially doesn't seem to have a real place in this film nor does she add anything to be hopeful about in the future. And while both Rey and Poe fans will probably be pleased with where their characters go, Finn sort of takes a step back, as he is sent off on a side adventure that seems like second-tier Star Wars. It's a diversion that takes up a good portion of the film and really serves no purpose to the overall story...worse yet, it seems to contain some heavy-handed political messages not commonly found, at least not this blatantly, in the Star Wars universe. These are more than just quibbles too: Most fans will not be used to the slow, lumbering pace or the general unevenness of this film...especially coming on the heels of the action-packed pacing that JJ Abrams brought in Episode VII.

Tom Santilli, AXS.com - Fresh

There’s some stuff that feels extraneous (the whole Canto Bight sequence, which seems to exist to set up a new Lando-like character played by Benicio del Toro), and the cycle of attack and retreat — mostly retreat — gets a bit monotonous.

Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com - Fresh

Muchas de las situaciones se sienten forzadas e innecesarias (por ejemplo, la aventura de Finn y Rose, me parece innecesaria).

Ruben Peralta Rigaud, Cocalecas - Fresh

Their jaunt to the casino planet of Canto Bight serves little purpose besides introducing Del Toro, updating the cantina scene, and offering up a tired CGI chase scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Attack of the Clones. Kudos (maybe) to Johnson for introducing income inequality to the Star Wars universe, but the entire sequence feels rushed and shoehorned into an already long movie.

Pete Vonder Haar Houston Press - Fresh

The weakest of these is Finn's. It's briskly paced and full of action yes, but let's just say a casino is no cantina... Worse, it also sees him interacting with Prequel Trilogy levels of CGI critters.

Karl Puschmann, New Zealand Herald - Fresh

But the worst distraction “The Last Jedi” has to offer involves erstwhile Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and a Resistance maintenance worker named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a subplot every bit as visually and narratively inept as Lucas’ prequels were taken as.

J. Olson, Cinemixtape - Rotten

Finn’s entire storyline could be cut and the film would be better off. As Finn was one of the driving-force leads of The Force Awakens and also a charming character, this is a disappointing development. His adventure is such a low point that it would not seem out of place in one of George Lucas’ efforts from between 1999 and 2005, and it serves little purpose to the film’s overall plot.

Alex Doenau, Trespass - Fresh

there’s too much going on in The Last Jedi, and a lot of it feels like filler. Besides the aforementioned, stalled-out space battle, there’s a clunky sequence in a casino that goes on far too long, a lot of distracting cameos, and new characters inhabited by Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro, who bring close to nothing to the proceedings.

Bob Grimm, Reno News and Review - Fresh

Finn and Rose (a new addition to the principal cast) distract the audience with an overlong and ultimately unnecessary side plot.

Richard Dove, International Business Times - Rotten

And this plotline feeds right into the absolutely unforgivably terrible subplot, which is the adventures of Finn (John Boyega) the cowardly ex-storm trooper, and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), the class-conscious engineer, who go on a fetch quest that is every bit as pointless as the whole matter of the military nonsense, only even worse, because it hinges on terrible comedy, bad CGI, and a spectacularly horrible moment when Johnson stops the film in its tracks to provide a ruthlessly on-the-nose lesson about economic inequality and the military-industrial complex.

Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending - Rotten

Some of what happens on the casino planet — called Canto Bight, and sure to figure in the next film — is goofy on a level as cringe-inducing as things we saw in the prequel trilogy; like, Jar-Jar Binks–awful.

MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher - Fresh

Johnson does his best to hustle from one location to the next, but the narrative has a tendency from time to time to drag. The biggest example of this are the scenes on Canto Bight. Which is a shame, because a huge chunk of the film’s message is established on these scenes. But the very nature of the story, with its many moving parts, inadvertently makes this section of the film feel like a diversion.

Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm - Fresh

The humour is kind of sour in other places, too, such as the silly neo-cantina scene as Finn and Rose track the whereabouts of a mysterious encrypter, who might be the rebellion’s last hope, into a sort of galactic Monte Carlo. The abundance of slapstick there and in other parts of the film doesn’t click and feels forced.

Diva Velez, TheDivaReview.com - Fresh

In an unnecessary and quite frankly preposterous third subplot, Finn (John Boyega) and a new character, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), race against the clock to locate an underworld figure who can help them neutralise the First Order’s tracking device, thus allowing the diminished rebel fleet to escape.

Vicky Roach, Daily Telegraph (Australia) - Rotten

Weak points come with awkward humour that lacks comedic rhythm and an unnecessary casino escapade, where a disposable underworld character DJ (Benicio del Toro) is introduced, that subsequently soft lens into what is essentially a children's adventure tale about animals

Craig Takeuchi, Georgia Straight - Fresh

Unfortunately, we keep getting dragged away from the only emotionally resonant portion of the film to watch Finn and Rose engage in sub-prequel hijinks on the casino planet. Everything here is forced and awful, visually uninteresting and often dark to the point of unwatchability, lousy with mawkish little kids making bug eyes at the camera as we marvel at the horror of economic inequality, and drowned in an atrocious patina of truly terrible CGI. It calls to mind the droid factory in Attack of the Clones and the pre-podrace sequence in The Phantom Menace. Most offensively, the whole Finn/Rose diversion has absolutely no importance to the forward momentum of the plot—it's utterly irrelevant, even nonsensical.

Sonny Bunch, Washington Free Beacon - Rotten

Not everything in the film works: a few of the goofier comic moments fail to land and true to the legacy of Lucas there’s a fair amount of eye-wincing dialogue. More importantly, the second act bows under the weight of too many narrative strands; Finn’s away mission comes off as a bit superfluous, as does Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo, and both Rose and the beloved Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) are sadly underwritten. In a trade-off that brings scope and complexity, Johnson has sacrificed narrative efficiency.

Christopher Machell, CineVue - Fresh

I didn't like the sequence in a casino--a callback to the Star Wars Cantina, of course, but also a chance to discuss the evils of war profiteers and the 1%. There are creatures there, there's slapstick, there's a heist of sorts, and it all harks back to my favourite of Johnson's films, The Brothers Bloom, in the interplay between the characters, in the lightness and clarity of the scheme. But it's tonally disruptive, and it introduces a trio of children who seem like part of a different film.

Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central - Fresh

Finn and Rose’s trip to a gambling planet – basically a space Monaco – flits between light fun and on-the-nose political narrative.

Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle - Fresh

It also begs the question why the space casino sequence, arguably the least relevant to the core story, wasn’t dramatically trimmed back. Aside from a throwaway final shot, this section of the film is the weakest – designed to depict profiteering space-capitalism run rampant (ironically, also depicting a stable of space-horses also running rampant).

Patrick Kolan, Shotgun Cinema - Fresh

But as ingenious as this setup may be, it also gives rise to the film's most pointless subplot. After waking from his coma, Finn (John Boyega) contrives a means by which he can disable the New Order's tracking device, albeit one that requires him to sneak off the fleeing vessel, travel to a Monaco-styled casino planet, track down a master codebreaker and infiltrate the enemy's warship undetected. This enormous MacGuffin sees Boyega partnered with the charming Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, a Resistance engineer low in status but high in pluck. The problem is that their side adventure does absolutely nothing to advance the actual story.

Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground - Fresh

Unfortunately, John Boyega’s Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe and Kelly Marie Tran—as Finn’s new partner-in-rebellion Rose—are given the equivalent of busywork while the rest of the cast moves the plot along.

Simon Miraudo, Student Edge - Fresh

A detour to a casino planet where Finn and a resistance mechanic named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) search for a codebreaker to help them disrupt the First Order's tracking of the retreating resistance ships feels like a trip into another movie. The stakes here seem far lower than the live-or-die scenario facing Poe, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) and the others trying to make their getaway.

Greg Maki Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) Fresh

The only characters not doing a huge amount of growing are Finn (John Boyega) and mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), and not for nothing, their subplot opens up a momentum drain that is the only weakness in The Last Jedi. Boyega and Tran are perfectly enjoyable, and their subplot isn’t a complete waste of time, but you start to feel the length of The Last Jedi when it veers off with them, and Finn’s arc is a pale echo of Poe’s so it’s not like much is being accomplished.

Sarah Marrs Lainey Gossip Fresh

Rey’s journey toward learning the ways of the Jedi is far more entertaining than Finn’s convoluted (and ultimately pointless) storyline

Josh Bell Las Vegas Weekly Fresh

Rose’s character is front and center in the film’s weakest sequences. We’re diverted to a city where the worst of the worst frolic. No, not the usual hives of scum and villainy. It’s a casino where the very, very rich cavort. The evil One Percenters! If you’re not immediately yanked out of the story here you deserve a prize. The accompanying dialogue is equally clunky, as is the reason all these vapid souls gained their fortunes.

Christian Toto, HollywoodInToto.com - Rotten

Far less successful is the time spent with the rebels on the run from Hux and the First Order. Not only is it centered on the slowest space chase in sci-fi history, but subplots featuring Poe, Finn (John Boyega), and Rose (newcomer Kelly Marie Tran) go absolutely nowhere. Sure we get introduced to DJ (Benicio Del Toro) and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), but it’s with actions that fail to connect either through sheer stupidity or the simple truth that their absence wouldn’t change the story in the slightest. They’re obvious filler, and as is the Disney way (witness their Marvel films) the studio’s never met a character that couldn’t be jammed into a movie for no reason other than the misguided belief that more is better. Finn and Rose’s adventure in particular offers some additional action beats and a visit to a casino — think the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from Star Wars, but for the 1% — but it is meaningless noise.

Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects - Fresh

Meanwhile, what feels too much like the “B plot” side adventure has Finn and Rose on a mission that takes them into another film entirely, a sort of intergalactic James Bond-meets-Free Willy. It’s hard not to feel that their entire subplot could be axed in order to make The Last Jedi stronger and tighter, which is unfortunate.

Kaila Hale-Stern, The Mary Sue - Fresh

There is a whole section that feels out of kilter and harks back to the CGI naffness of the prequels — and is also virtually pointless to the plot.

Jamie East, The Sun (UK) - Fresh

The film’s epic 150-minute runtime allows plenty of room for Johnson’s inventiveness, but there’s also a tiny bit of fat in the middle of the movie, specifically in the Canto Bight scenes with Finn and Rose. The casino city itself is gorgeous and has some crazy-cool characters, plus Finn and Rose’s presence there shines a light on some new, worthwhile themes for the Star Wars franchise. However, in terms of the overall story, the whole escapade feels a little pointless and small. It doesn’t help that Benicio del Toro’s new character, DJ, who is part of the same storyline, is largely insignificant.

Germain Lussier, io9.com - Fresh

Star Wars: The Last Jedi does have a clear weak spot -- specifically the side plot that develops between Finn (John Boyega) and newly-introduced Resistance member Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran). Following a genuinely funny meet-up between the two characters, they are given their own special mission searching for a codebreaker who can assist in the battle against the First Order. But this storyline never feels particularly inspired or impactful as everything else going down in the movie. While it is constructed to fit with the larger themes of the film, features its own interesting expectation-flipping turns, and does eventually have a key impact on the macro scale, it's also the only part of the feature that ever feels expendable, and not helping anything is that it features the weakest visual effects of the blockbuster (especially during a second-act chase sequence).

Eric Eisenberg, CinemaBlend - Fresh

Finn and Rose’s mission takes them to Canto Bight, a kind of Monte Carlo peopled by extras from Babylon 5, and feels like it is just ticking the Weird Alien Bar box started by the Cantina. A ride on space horses also feels like a needless diversion, as does Benicio Del Toro’s space rogue, whose strange, laconic presence never really makes its mark.

Ian Freer, Empire Magazine - Fresh

It’s a shame, then, that the righteousness of Finn and Rose’s place in the film is undermined slightly by the limpness of their mission. Perhaps feeling there had to be some kind of Mos Eisley–esque sequence in the film, Johnson sends the pair to a casino city full of all kinds of creatures. It’s fun, sure, but the whole operation ultimately turns out to be a red herring. At least there’s some nice musing on liberation during this stretch, reminding us of the real stakes of this long story—freedom is, after all, what the Empire denies and the Rebel Alliance promises. And in a gorgeous third-act sequence—which includes the film’s true Empire Strikes Back homage—Finn and Rose finally get the emboldened moments they deserve. I just wish they fit more integrally into the central thesis of the film, that they were just as special, in their way, as Rey is, glinting with messianic power as she ascends.

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair - Fresh

Of the three simultaneous plots, it’s Finn’s that sometimes drags down the energy, particularly with an introduction of a shady thief played by Benicio del Toro, the only new addition to the cast that doesn’t quite work; he seems to be acting in his own private movie, and it’s not as good as this one.

Will Leitch Paste Magazine - Fresh

Where the film struggles the most is on Canto Bight. Taken on her own, Rose isn’t a bad addition to the Star Wars mythos, and the movie definitely needs someone to play against Finn. Unfortunately, they lack the electric chemistry we saw between Finn and Rey in The Force Awakens, and their secret mission in a casino feels like it should be far more entertaining than it actually is.

Matt Goldberg, Collider - Fresh

Some action sequences are superfluous and unengaging. Benicio del Toro all but cameos as a sort of hobo hustler, while John Boyega’s Finn is sidelined, relegated to relatively inconsequential hi-jinx.

Alex Godfrey, GQ Magazine [UK] - Fresh

Finn (John Boyega) and newcomer Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) attempt an espionage mission that takes them to what is the Star Wars equivalent of the French Riviera. It’s a casino city named Canto Bight, and their adventures here push the Rick’s Café sensibilities from the original Star Wars’ cantina sequence to their limit. Nevertheless, this entire subplot amounts to a whole lot of padding while the real tough and revelatory decisions are made on Ahch-To.

David Crow, Den of Geek - Fresh

Plot-wise, I felt the entire side story at the casino world of Canto Bight was unnecessary. If you cut the entire sequence out of the film, it would have little impact on the core narrative.

Scott Chitwood ComingSoon.net - Fresh

Finn (John Boyega) wakes up, meets a admiring fan down in maintenance named Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and they head off on their own adventure, a detour that somehow combines the louche slickness of Cloud City and moralizing at its most Disney.

Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman - Fresh

But The Last Jedi’s two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn (John Boyega) and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).

Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine - Rotten

There are a couple of big names that fail to deliver much aside from, perhaps, realizing their childhood dreams of being in a “Star Wars” movie. A trip to a city that might as well be called Space Macau also fails to pay many dividends.

Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal - Fresh

Case in point is the plot involving Finn (John Boyega) and new hero Rose's (Kelly Marie Tran) McGuffinesque mission to Canto Bight, which is of the ashtray-on-a-speederbike variety, and takes away from the tension cranked up elsewhere.

Harry Guerin, RTÉ (Ireland) - Fresh

The remaining 20% is made up of two different locales, one of which is entirely superfluous to the story. Essentially, there is a subplot that introduces Benicio del Toro’s mysterious work of eccentricity, except it doesn’t really do much of interest with him. Admittedly, it feels as if the character could be destined for bigger things in the final chapter, but I can only go off of what I watched, and well, the middle portion of The Last Jedi is stuck in the furthest setting from lightspeed. The journey expands to a space-Vegas full of various alien life forms and inhabitants, but it’s not as visually striking as previously explored planets. Additionally, by design, there seems to be filler injected simply because the other characters need things to do while Rey accomplishes what she needs to with Luke.

Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth - Fresh

The scenes on Canto Bight seemed like an unnecessary divert for Rose (a new character I actually really like) and Finn. This “casino planet” was like a scene right out of a low-budget Sy-Fy channel movie shot in Vancouver. It felt too familiar and earthbound to be a scene in an other-worldly scene in a Star Wars movie. The Rose/Finn alien horse race through the casino that ruined the galactic one-percenters good time and did some property damage was just ridiculous and should have been cut. Rose and Finn flopping around on the alien horse just looked like a bad theme park ride.

Chris Gore, Film Threat - Fresh

There’s a lengthy diversion to the casino planet of Canto Bight that feels pointless and tacked on just for the sake of giving us a cool new corner of the galaxy to feast our eyes on.

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Ronaldo to AS Monaco rumor: the conclusion and confession

From: http://www.asm-vizu.net/showthread.php?19068-Infos-provenant-du-cousin-de-la-belle-s%9Cur-du-voisin/page123
In the name of all three of us, i want to honestly apologize to everyone who's feelings are hurt, the majority of our story is true, but of course there are certain parts that you can call "alternative truth"...we did all of this on our own, nobody from the club told us to do it and nobody else influenced our decision, from the start we were aware that sooner or later we'll have to explain ourselves, no matter what happens before the end of August...would we do this all over again, yes we absolutey would, it sounds cold-blooded but at that point we thought it was the best solution and we still think that is was the right move...i will break down the whole story to the smallests details and i will explain what was the real truth and what was the "alternative truth", hopefully some of you will understand us, and for others who are most definitely insulting us while they are reading this, it's alright, we don't mind it at all, we knew the risk and we accept the responsibility...
There are so many private messages and too many replys in this topic, so i really can't answer you all, i'm writing this first without knowing what you asked or commented while i was gone, if this huge post doesn't provide answers for your questions that you might asked, feel free to ask me again, either here or through private messages...please, i know that there are plenty of questions about our family and hopefully you will understand that i won't provide you certain answers for various reasons, most things about our familly are true, especially about father, while both son's education is purposely misleading for the reasons that i won't get into...also, nobody from our family has permission to meet in person with people who aren't in their inner circles, we are heavily protected and everybody new must go through tough security check, it sounds super shady, but that's the case with most similair families who are in our position, safety is always our priority...we are best friends with Fedorychev and we have good relationship with Rybolovlev and Vasilyev, we are also very good with Prince Albert, so don't worry about us, we know what we are doing and our motivation was very clear, so please avoid questions about our family and concentrate only on the questions about our football club...
Did you ever watch some movie that's based on a true story, but while you're watching you notice that certain things are added for dramatic effect, well that's exactly what we did, we needed to hype the story so that it has stronger effect...Ronaldo is not a done deal, that was the biggest "alternative truth", but there are resonable chances that we can get him this summer, i'll start from the beginning and i'll explain you his case...he indeed reached out to Rybo with desire to join Monaco in the near future, that has happened few months ago, but the chances of that actually happening were slim at best, until the whole tax fraud case in Spain, after that he became more and more unhappy in Madrid and his agent started sending signals to us that we should keep all our options on the table if the deal can be done, but still nobody really believed that it's possible to get Ronaldo this summer...then, on July 10 there was conversation between Vadim and Perez about possible Mbappe's transfer to Real, during that talk Florentino suggested that maybe we can give them €50M along with Mbappe if he receives transfer request from Ronaldo, but he didn't promise anything...after that meeting, we took number 7 from Rony Lopes just in case if something concrete happens before the transfer window ends, also Tielemans will get number 10 once Mbappe leaves, while Ghezzal will take number 17, meanwhile he will wear number 12...this is the absolute truth, but it wasn't bombastic enough, so we had to add special effects, there are 50% chances of Ronaldo coming to Monaco before the transfer deadline, it's still much better than 0%, but it's far from a done deal...we took the risk and predicted ahead that the deal will be made, we are still very optimistic that everything will be exactly how is planned, of course it's a huge gamble, it's like going to casino and putting all your chips on color red, hoping that everything will end perfectly...in either scenario we would come clean, if transfer happened or not, we planned to explain our actions and to apologize to all Monaco fans, this wasn't about creating something that doesn't exist, it was just getting ahead of everybody and putting things in proper context, sooner or later we would explain everything, no matter the outcome...
Why we did this in the first place...we wanted to pressure Rybolovlev to buy Ronaldo, it sounds stupid doesn't it, but don't jump to conclusions, there is a method behind the madness, we are doing very similar stuff in the business world, so we just applied the same approach here...in most cases leaking about something while the work is still in progress behind the scenes doesn't lead to the positive outcome, but this case is much different and here we needed to give a little extra push...when i say we wanted to "pressure" Rybo, don't take the meaning of the word literally, we wanted to "use" our fans and create enough excitement and hype, so that all this negativity about everything that is happening disappears, and that our fans start spreading positive messages to our club in all forms online, both on message boards and on various social media platforms, we wanted to reverse their negative feelings into positive vibes, we wanted to redirect their attention from probable departures to possible arrivals...
Now, listen to this carefully...everything that we said about Rybo and Vadim is completely true, but we left out one thing in order to present that everything was always perfect, so let's get back to the summer of 2014 and Falcao's exit, that was the only time when our President started rethinking about his future with our football club...when some of our fans started demanding that club gives them back money that they spent for season tickets, because we lost both James and Falcao, without bringing anyone of significance to replace them, when people were basically laughing at arrival of unknown Bernardo Silva who played for Benfica B, that was the moment when Rybolovev took all of that very personally and he was incredibly disappointed at out fans reaction after everything he did in order to save our club from going down to third league...everything that has happened that summer was a result of Financial Fair Play, because once Rybo saw the punishment that City and PSG received, he knew that we will be hitted even harder next year if we don't start cleaning our books...Vadim did everything humanly possible to balance our books and to still keep all other players even though Moutinho and some other guys started receiving offers, that summer totally redefined our initial project, and as i said it before, if there wasn't FFP, then Rybo would invest three times more money during the first couple of seasons, just like Abramovich did when he took over Chelsea, but rules are much different today than they were 14 years ago...also, when some of our fans wrote "Mendes Mafia" and when they started talking all over the place how our Russians only came to the club for financial reasons, without any real sports ambitions, and that they will very soon sell everything that we have, fill their pockets with cash and quickly disappear, well both Rybo and Vadim took that to their heart and they couldn't believe how all of a sudden our fans are so spoiled and how come their memory is so short...we always had PR problem, that summer was also the time when our President's name was in various tabloids with bombastic headlines, so pretty much the whole world started believing that he lost half of his fortune overnight and that he and Prince had terrible relationship, and none of that was true, but even today pretty much all of football fans who don't follow Monaco closely think that those things were true...again, the only reason why he had to dramatically changed our project was FFP and nothing else, in the end we were successful during that transition, even though there was strict monitoring of our books by UEFA, Rybo couldn't pump more of his personal money because of the rules and we were basically limited in how much money we can offer to our own players, so other rich clubs were able to offer bigger salaries to our players and we had to sell them in order to clear our books as soon as possible...that summer was the only time when Rybolovev had doubts about continuing as our President and majority owner, and the main reason were our own fans who got used too quickly on overnight succeess after Ligue 2, that they couldn't accept anything less than being on the same level as PSG...
Let's fast-forward to this summer, because something very similar started happening when the transfer window opened, all of a sudden our fans forgot that we won title after 17 years and that we dethroned our rivals from Paris even though our budget seemed laughable compared to their that's backed by the whole foreign state...from the day that Silva was sold to City and until the day that we signed Ghezzal, there was so much negativity towards our club from our own fans all over the Internet, soon all of that quickly reached the highest levels and once again, Rybo started to take it personally, not as bad as three years ago, but bad enough that he started rethinking about going after Ronaldo seriously, because if our fans are acting like that, after we had the best season in the history of our club, then what's the point of breaking the bank for Ronaldo if nobody really appreciates everything that he and Vadim did for us, during good days and during less successful days, why going all-in and making big financial risk to get one of the best players in the history of football, if our fans will quickly turned their back if things become a little more challenging for whatever reason, the level of negativity was like we have fallen to Ligue 2 once again and there's no light at the end of the tunnel...instead of having more confidence in the people who saved us from misery, fans get caught in the moment and they take every single rumour so personally and literally like the world is ending tomorrow if we sell player A and buy player B, of course football is all about business and fans are all driven by their emotions, well people who run the club also have emotions and Russians have tendency to take things too personally if they feel that their work isn't appreciated enough, so every bad word that reaches Rybo and Vadim can have certain effect, and this summer there's almost nothing else than bad words about how we are handling transfer window and pretty much everybody forgot how much obstacles we had in the past and how much successful we were last season...people were bashing Silva and Lemar because they were unknown, but now they can't live without them, they were bashing Mendy because OM fans were making fun of us for signing someone who can't even walk correctly, but overnight he became fan favorite, pretty much majority of young players that came in the past were welcomed with over-the-top scepticism, but in a year or two they became untouchable in the eyes of our fans...so instead of having more faith in our scouting departement and in our coaching stuff, everybody wants only confirmed superstars and everything else is disaster in advance, so instead of giving a chance to new players to prove themselves, fans already know that Mboula has low football IQ, that Diakhaby is average at best, that Lopes isn't even for Ligue 2, that Ghezzal only played two good games in his life, both against Monaco, that Imbula should retire because he lost all his talent overnight, that Jorge is too soft for french league, that Kongolo better switch to basketball, that Carrillo should change career to became construction worker, that Sylla is more suited for 100m sprint than football pitch, and so on and on...
Spreading story ahead of time about possible transfer where Ronaldo ends up in Monaco was the only way to stop negativity, of course some people are always negative no matter what, but good number of fans are driven by current events and their mood goes up and down depending on current rumours, in one hour they can go through all stages of human emotions, so it was very important to deliver really big and powerful rumour that will immediately change their mood and hopefully keep them in more positive state no matter what else is circulating in the rumour mill..saying the real truth that we have solid chances to get Ronaldo, but that many factors are in play, simply isn't powerful enough, you could say that about any given player, we needed clear and defined message that Ronaldo is a done deal and that everything else are just small details to be solved...the reality is that Ronaldo indeed has desire to come and that Monaco will do everything in their power to make that transfer, also it's true that Mendes and Perez have verbal agreement that Ronaldo's real release clause is at least five times smaller than the number in the contract that serves only for marketing purposes, so Monaco is willing to talk and Real is willing to listen, chances of getting Ronaldo are 50%...numbers concerning his transfer and his future salary are fabricated, we came up ourselves with those calculations, it's true that Perez said to Vadim how Ronaldo is worth at least Mbappe and additional €50M, so we used common sense and knowing the price of Neymar's transfer and various sums demanded by Monaco for Mbappe, we thought that €230M is the right numbers, just like we thought that Ronaldo's salary has to be bigger than what he's getting now, plus it would be logical that he wants bigger number than what Messi or Neymar are earning, so we came up with more than €30M...also, Ronaldo wasn't in the Principality few nights ago, but he had meetings with Bernard Arnault during his summer break and we heard strong whispers about LVMH thinking to invest more than €200M in CR7 luxury brand for 49% of ownership stake, so when Bernard Arnault popped up in Monaco few days ago, it was perfect to mixed up real and alternative truths, even though we were perfectly aware that everybody will be suspicious how come nobody saw Ronaldo in Hotel De Paris, we wanted that strong dramatic effect...also, of course he didn't had any dinner, but he had multiple meetings with both Falcao and Jardim in the previous months on various locations, it was more friendly oriented, but they did exchanged few words about potentially being on the same team...everything that was said about friendship between Rybolovlev and Ronaldo is also absolutely true, just like everything that was said about Rybo and Mendes and their various business and personal ties, the desire to bring Ronaldo is stronger than ever, but with such a big transfer there are much more complications than casually presented by us how it's a done deal...his 007 presentation is of course nothing but big "alternative truth" and those things can't be arranged until the contract gets signed, but we added up for dramatic effect because people can easily picture Ronaldo in elegant suit entering Monte Carlo Casino, doing few James Bond things and then changing into red-and white uniform and getting presented to all our fans gathered around Place Du Casino, we knew that this details will also raise eyebrows when people read it, but Ronaldo already had numerous marketing campaigns where he was dressed like Agent 007 while promoting various luxury brands...
We knew that many people won't belive in our story, even in real truth that getting Ronaldo this summer is more achievable than people think, and that dose of scepticism was enough for us to go all-in and pump the story throught the roof, so even if they don't believe, it will raise some doubts inside them that it's so crazy it might actually be true...of course, we knew that there will be people who will believe in every single word and that they will be hurt if nothing happens or if our story gets uncovered ahead of time, so once again, in the name of all three of us, i'm deeply sorry if we caused you some harm, we were aware that stepping on people's feelings will come back to haunt us, so we fully accept any responsability for what we did, any harsh words or insults are totally understandable and hopefully in the end you will find the way to forgive us, as i said it before, we are all Monaco fans and everyone with red and white blood in their veins is part of one big Monaco family that will stand for their beloved club both during good and bad times...for others who never believed anything that we said, and who don't believe in what is written in this big post, we just want to tell you that no matter what you think about us and about our intention, and no matter what you say about us now and in the future, we won't hold it against you and we perfectly understand your animosity after everything we did, but we are offering you hand of friendship and hopefully you can also forgive us one day, because we all have one thing in common that keeps us awake during long nights and that puts us throught emotional rollercoaster every weekend, and that thing is called love for AS Monaco...
Our main goal of creating enough buzz for Ronaldo to Monaco rumours wasn't intended for journalists, we couldn't care less if they will pick up something or find out on their own that there is reasonable chance of that deal coming to fruition...we wanted to get our own fans excited so that every time our club posts something on social media, they get flouded with positive comments and with Ronaldo mentions, just like how fans negativity quickly reaches to Rybo and Vadim, the same applies for positivity, if there is enough buzz from our fans, then Rybo will get even more motivated to do everything possible and bring Ronaldo now when many things are playing in our advantage, we had to stop negative comments from our fans and all Ghezzal trash talk that was talking place when he signed, so that people can concentrate on Ronaldo and his possible arrival...our little story lasted four full days and we knew that we can't last more than a week because we left enough breadcrumbs behind while creating all of this, plus ever since day one there was much bigger interest than we expected and suddenly the story started circulating all over the place, so more and more people were determined to haunt us down and i'm glad it came from our own fans, rather than from journalists who where working their sources like crazy in order to find out is there any credibility to all of this...as i said, we know how wrong it was to play with other people's feelings, but we felt that is was the right move to make and we would do it all over again, we feel that only something so dramatic can change the overall conversation that's dominating this summer among our fans, which is mostly highly negative, so by risking to hurt some people along the way, we decided to carefully craft our story, using mostly true facts, but decorating it with spicy details and other bombastic stuff so that there is enough of buzz created...
This should be enough, hopefully i explained our motivation and you can see what in our story was true and what was added like special effects, everything that was said about Mbappe, Lemar, Fabinho and the reasons about selling our players was true, except that if we can't get Ronaldo, we will try our best to strengthen our team with other proven talent that becomes available on the market...everything about Mbappe's father was true and while club wanted to keep him after season ended, more and more teams where chasing him while proposing much bigger salary than what we were prepared to offer him, so very soon it became clear that he won't extend and that it's better to sell him now while his price is incredibly high, instead of risking of losing him for peanuts or some potential injury that would dramatically decrease his market value...when we created this story, we wanted to protect Mbappe and tell everyone how he's willing to stay one more year, but that club is determined to sell him, we did this knowing that otherwise our fans will start harassing him online, just like what is happening right now, his father should receive all the blame, while Kylian should get a pass...chances of going to Real are still sky high, while City and PSG are very unlikely options, our club will try everything to use him like the main tool for getting Ronaldo, but things are complicated and hopefully our fans can remain a little bit more patient in the next three weeks, please show more support to Rybo and Vadim, because they didn't came to make money, they are here only because of their true passion for Monaco and they are planning big things for the future, your positive energy and words of support on message boards and social media platforms will give them more reasons to make us all happy...there are plenty of journalists and insiders with their special "sources" that are in 90% of situations just false, either planted on purpose by some agent or by some club, or completely made up in order to sell more newspapers and to get more clicks on the Web...so don't take every word literally, wait until something really happens, wait until it becomes official, don't jump the gun and don't get caught up in the moment, re-evalute every information that you hear, things are not always black or white like they seem, this is all one big grey area and multiple sides have multiple interests to do or say something during transfer window that might be true or not...
All in all, hopefully you understand better the whole story and why we did this and what was our motivation, wait until the transfer deadline and after that we can all togheter see how everything was handled and what was the final result...i don't have time to read private messages now or to read your replys before this post was made, but please feel free to post your questions if you have them, either here or throught private messages, and when i come back tomorrow morning i'll give my best to provide you more answers...we feel good that we did this and we think that it was needed at that moment, people can belive us or not, they can insult us or not, but we are the least important thing, as long as our fans are showing enough respect for our beloved club, and especially for Rybo and Vadim, we are perfectly fine with taking all the blame if something doesn't go according to the plan...AS Monaco will never be on the same level as the biggest clubs in the world, looking at all things combined, both on and off the court, but it can be the sexiest club on the planet and with everything that our President has planned for the future, from new traning center to fixing Stade Lous II, there are so many reasons for all of you to stay optimistic, and no matter what happens until the end of this transer window, we will always be one big red and white family...

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