Star wars is about perpetual war.

So I watched The Last Jedi. Here are a couple of thoughts.

Overall it was a great movie, definitely among the best of Star Wars, and I loved the way it subverts expectations over and over again (and how it hinted at the Galaxy's military-industrial complex and arms trade).
But I still have the same criticism of the new movies that I had after The Force Awakens. No matter how often the movie tries to shove hope in your face (it is literally mentioned again and again that there is still hope), the fact of the matter is that, objectively speaking, Star Wars is now a story about the Decline and Fall of Galactic Civilization and the heroes' failure to stop it.

The new movies retroactively imply that everything Luke, Leia and Han did in the original trilogy was for nothing. They failed. They lost. And sure, a new generation is ready to try again, but at this point the Galaxy has been at war for 50 years, and every victory (by either side) has proved temporary. Two generations have grown up without having ever known peace. The Star Wars saga is now a saga of War Without End. And there is no hope in a war without end. It doesn't matter if the heroes win a round, because the villains will return, the war will continue, planets will be reduced to ash and ruin, and the Galaxy will slip further and further into chaos.

A story about warfare that doesn't include an end to the warfare is a story where evil wins.