The Worst Movie Ever Made?

The previous review concluded the series covering Star Wars: The Force Awakens. During that series, I discussed the specific criteria I use when reviewing a film: suspension of disbelief and a movie’s effect on the films that follow it.

I spent a great deal of time going over the first criterion in detail, but I seldom mentioned the second. The reason was because, most of the time, reviewing the subjects covered in suspension of disbelief—stakes, character consistency and arcs, plot holes, etcetera—is enough to explain why a movie is either good or bad, and not every film has a number of movies surrounding it.

What made The Force Awakens interesting was that it was so successful it practically guaranteed the success of the next film, despite having a number of flaws and unresolved plot points.

Many people pointed these issues out, but the warnings mostly fell on deaf ears. Then the second film came out, and the criticism of Disney Star Wars really took off. But it wasn’t just complaints about the second film; the complaints surrounding the first film found a second wind.

I said unequivocally that The Last Jedi is the worst movie ever made, and I meant it. Despite its large budget and professional spectacle, this movie managed to quarantine a franchise that could’ve rivalled Marvel to a streaming service.

The long-term effects of The Last Jedi took time to manifest. People held out a lot of hope for Star Wars. One does not erase decades of goodwill and high hopes overnight. But in the end, this movie changed not only the shape of Star Wars but also entertainment media as a whole.

Careers were born and destroyed as a result of this film. J.J. Abrams is nowhere near as popular as he was. People spent a decade demanding that Kathleen Kennedy be removed from Disney. Those cries never ceased until she finally stepped down in January of 2026.

How effective those cries were is another question, but some were still happy to see her go over ten years after The Force Awakens entered theaters. A whole wave of YouTube channels rose to prominence as a result of the backlash against The Last Jedi. Many of them are still popular to this day.

There have been terrible movies in the past, but the lasting effect of The Last Jedi is unprecedented. No other film has garnered more attention and made such a lasting impact for all the wrong reasons. Based on my criteria, The Last Jedi is the worst movie ever made for this reason alone.

On top of that, the plot holes and writing issues in this movie—the items that destroy suspension of disbelief—are numerous. It’s hard to say if The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi has more issues.

Here, I’ll admit that the number of issues between the two was a lot closer than I remembered, but this is because The Force Awakens was a much worse film than I remembered. But there are three distinctions between these two films to consider.

First, The Force Awakens starts out strong, then unravels toward the end, whereas The Last Jedi has a particularly terrible setup, and the errors snowball from there.

Second, the errors relating to characters in The Last Jedi are very, very, obvious and glaring. Two characters in particular, Luke and Hux, are flat out contradictions of their previous characterizations.

Third, many of the issues in The Last Jedi share the same problem as Starkiller Base; that is to say, that they involve what’s possible regarding the technology in Star Wars. This opens the door to the “It’s just fantasy, relax,” defense.

But in part 14 of the Force Awakens reviews, I discussed the use of realism when it comes to aesthetics and function in a story. Most of these technical issues in The Last Jedi aren’t just equivalents to sound in space. The issues have major implications for the plot, and the audience will likely know just enough about space and how Star Wars has worked in the past to become confused.

There is also a fourth issue that will take some time to discuss. Brandon Sanderson has said that he believes the reason the Canto Bight sequence doesn’t work is because it acts as a major distraction from the core plot. I’m not sure if I agree with this idea; however, I plan to address the matter in some detail.

But what really went wrong here? Fundamentally, I believe Rian Johnson was determined to tell his own story, regardless of how his story interacted with everything else in the Star Wars universe. This was a serious problem because J.J. Abrams banked a lot on the next director working with everything he’d set up. To best explain how this works, I would like to give a brief analogy and story.

In theater improv, there is a fundamental rule: never say no. If one actor says the sky is blue, the other actor can say, “no, it’s green,” but he or she can never simply say, “no.” The reason for this is because it stalls the scene, and the rest of the cast has to scramble to set up something else.

When I was in high school, I experienced this very problem. One play I was a part of—a hybrid script that had a certain number of lines and an improv portion for audience participation—did quite well, and the cast began traveling around the county, performing in various venues.

However, during the final show, one of the girls, for reasons of her own, decided she was no longer going to go along with the scenario that had been set up. She began saying “no” to everything, and it took a considerable amount of time to conclude the production because the rest of the cast had to work around her.

This is what Rian Johnson did to J.J. Abrams. Abrams set up a number of plot threads that Rian could use as he pleased, but rather than taking Abrams’ various cues—his version of “the sky is blue”—Johnson just said no to everything. He ended the mystery of Rey’s parents. He killed Snoke. He left the next director nowhere to go by ignoring the initial continuity the first director had set up. Why he did this, who can say?

But if he did it on purpose, he’s one of the most spiteful creatures to have ever infected Hollywood. I plan to discuss all this and more in the following reviews.