The Last Jedi

First of all, let me make a comparison: 

The Force Awakens (2015) -- 2 hours, 18 minutes

The Last Jedi (2017) -- 2 hours, 32 minutes

The Rise of Skywalker  (2019) -- 2 hours, 21 minutes

All of those movies are long. The Last Jedi is, in fact, the longest, but the actual time difference is not as long as it feels.

When I thought about how long it felt, I would generally focus on the casino scene. Finn and Rose wander around a place that feels "alien" to all we have seen of Star Wars so far (though there was a casino on the star cruiser in the 1979 Brian Daley book, Han Solo's Revenge), with a lot of nonsense about how to look for a guy they never find, getting arrested over parking, and I cannot even remember whether they successfully disabled the tracking device. The way other things went, I am not sure that mattered. It gave them a chance to work in Maz Kanata, but it felt pretty forced.

When I think more, I remember other scenes that took too long and were not worth it:

• Poe continually restarting the message to annoy the First Order ship
• A newly-revived Finn walking around naked in something that appears to be a bacta suit (completely impractical), instead of a tank like Luke in The Empire Strikes Back
•  Rey and Kylo Ren's telepathic talks where she keeps asking him to put on a shirt

The scenes with Poe and Kylo Ren have to do with some other flaws that will be treated in other posts.

For Finn, that may have been partly a way of trying to draw similarities between him and Luke Skywalker. It did show that he is recovering from his severe injuries from the previous film, and it gives him a chance to reconnect with Poe, but mainly is played for laughs. 

It's not funny enough for the time involved.

Hearkening back to The Empire Strikes Back, there was humor, but generally just quick quips that played into the existing points.

• "Laugh it up, Fuzzball."
• "I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee!" "I can arrange that."

Those scenes didn't break the dramatic tension.

Rian Johnson might not specialize in dramatic tension.

I like the Knives Out films a lot, but despite there always being a mystery and at least two murders, they are not action or suspense films. They explore things with humor.

They explore important things, too, and I sympathize with what the Canto Bight scenes are trying to do.

They are establishing that there are people whose wealth allows them to lead glamorous lives, without having to worry about what's going on in the rest of the galaxy or the welfare of those who serve them. 

That is reasonable, but it doesn't connect. While a lot of that situation could lead to a French Revolution-style uprising or a Bolshevik to Soviet path, the First Order seems more fascist; it would have different roots. If you can establish the roots maybe there is a point there, but it feels disconnected when it should be connected.

Then, with the children, they are also trying to establish that force prodigies can come from anywhere; you shouldn't overlook anyone. 

That is also not connected enough. If Rey being a nobody from nowhere and having the force strong in her does not show that; seeing the kid with the broom for a moment won't.

Then they had to decide that Rey was not that either.