Talking About 'Star Wars': Was The Last Jedi too far, far away from being like a Star Wars movie?

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© 2017 Dolby Labs and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)
Was The Last Jedi too far, far away from being like a Star Wars movie?
Despite what many of its vocal “Disney ruined Star Wars” detractors claim, Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi was not much different from any of the other Skywalker Saga films.
It follows the basic format of the previous seven Saga films and has the same basic visual and aural Star Wars-y features, including:
  1. The Lucasfilm logo (yes, I miss the 20th Century Fox logo and fanfare that preceded the movies made before 2008, but let’s get over that)
  2. The Main Title, with the receding Star Wars titles and crawl, accompanied by John Williams’ score
  3. John Williams’ score
  4. Transitions accompanied by “wipes” and “dissolves”
  5. A basic three-act structure
  6. Intertwined plots that converge at the end
  7. Lessons about the Force
  8. Jedi stuff
  9. Dark Side of the Force stuff
  10. Lightsaber duels
  11. Mix of comedy and drama
  12. Space battles
  13. Enemy superweapons
  14. Unexpected plot twists
  15. A cliffhanger ending for the second film of a trilogy
  16. End credits done in the same style as the other Star Wars films
The only atypical feature of The Last Jedi was, in my view, it’s longer-than-average running time. It’s not as long as Lawrence of Arabia, but it’s almost two and a half hours long. Most of the other films clock in at just over two hours’ worth of running time.
I am not going to get into the whole tiresome business of arguing about whether or not The Last Jedi is the best (or worst) movie in the history of the franchise, or whether it has too much “SJW” stuff in it. That BS I’ll leave for others to do in their own answers.
But, yeah, other than running time ….to me The Last Jedi looks, sounds, and feels like a Star Wars movie.

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