What could have saved The Last Jedi

Sounds better. There would've still been shock as no one expected Luke to die (as Han did in the last film and no main character has before in the second episode) its just he would've had a more epic death instead of blown away by the wind after overexerting himself using the Force.

Obviously it was sort of set up for audiences to think that Luke would come flying to the rescue in his water logged Xwing ESB style but Rian wanted to subvert that expectation/play with it I guess

Spielberg could have saved it. But he wouldn't have accepted the SJW agenda in the new trilogy.

In the end Luke would still be a scumbag who tries to murder people in their sleep.

Casting Pee Wee Herman as Luke.


😎

For me, the problems of The Last Jedi are the story and the characters. It needs a total re-write. The major beats were fine, but the execution was rotten.

I like the themes (failure, subversion of expectation, etc.), but they weren't implemented well. With the casino planet, Rose's character, Holdo's tight-lippedness, and easily three-quarters of the redundant scenes between Luke and Rey, there are a lot of scenes and sequences that are just dead weight.

Luke only said a couple of profound things, I would have liked to have seen him as more of a Jedi master. It was wrong to have him sulk for thirty years. They kicked it off wrong with his flip response to being handed the lightsaber, then had him and Rey repeat the same scene ("Help us!" "Go away!") over and over again.

So, for me, it's the writing. The script was overlong and poorly plotted. It has too many digressions, superfluous distractions, etc. That's 3/4 of the film's big problems.

I do have one, big, glaring problem with the film, though. As I said, I like the themes. I like that the heroes fail, blurring lines, stripping away expectations and vanity is all good. But the film doesn't support those themes. Right? If Johnson really wanted the film to be about "this isn't going to go the way you think", Finn should have died (one of the two main characters of the new series dead by the second installment), Luke shouldn't have shown up at the end, and the rebels should have been capture and/or killed instead of running away.

SPOILERS FOR WATCHMEN BELOW:

Watchmen is to superheroes what Johnson wanted Last Jedi to be for Star Wars. The difference, though, is that Johnson didn't (or wasn't allowed) to end his movie properly to bring home the theme. Watchmen ends with Ozymandias accomplishing his plot for the good of the world, and we're left uncertain if he's a villain or a hero, and he wins, and the people we thought were heroes and villains aren't what we thought. The Last Jedi doesn't back up its themes.