Is it safe now to say I didn't really enjoy this movie all that much? When I saw it a month ago, it seemed that no one could criticize it without coming under intense attack. I remember reading one negative review with a heap of comments all suggesting that the only reason the guy wrote a negative review was get attention by being different. And I remember thinking: Maybe the guy just didn't like the movie.
But I'll brave it. Here goes.
There were a number of issues with
The Force Awakens that marred my enjoyment of the film. By the numbers:
Characters and creatures that looked/sounded out of place
- The dealer on Jakku reminded me too much of one of those accountant aliens from that awful Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie that came out a few years ago.
- The gangs on Han Solo's ship looked like they wandered in from the set of Firefly. I found them really jarring, almost as jarring as the silly CGI blob-like aliens that appeared seconds later.
- The not-Yoda alien. I actually liked the character but she looked like someone from Hellboy II. Maybe she could be Abe Sapien's mother. Now, I like the Hellboy movies. I think they're great. But I just like to keep Hellboy and Star Wars separate.
Homage vs rehash
I know this has been discussed a lot on the net already but what surprises me is the fact that most people are okay with it. Personally, I wasn't. I haven't even tried counting the copy and paste jobs in this movie but there sure are a lot of them:
- Someone hides plans in a droid and is captured, interrogated and then rescued by someone in a stormtrooper outfit.
- Someone emerges from a simple existence on a desert world and goes on to do great things.
- There's a bad force wielding guy in a mask who answers to another bad force wielding guy who appears through a giant hologram projector.
- There's another Death Star (that's three Death Stars in just four movies - There's a point for The Empire Strikes Back for not having a Death Star).
- One of the protagonists is related to one of the antagonists and tries to turn them to the good side.
- A mentor type is killed by a protagonist as his friends look on.
Actually, with the last one, I honestly thought I'd hear Handiana Ford Kenobi's voice going "Run, Chewie! Run!"
And this isn't the whole list. Maybe someone with enough time and patience can type out the whole list but I'm not the man for that job. Now, if there were just two or three of these, it might be cute but I think the movie sank under the weight of the sheer volume of these things.
Stupidity
- The Falcon goes to lightspeed in a hangar. And then, before I can forget that happened, it decelerates from lightspeed in an atmosphere. What happened to precise calculations and all that? And there is no way that anything could decelerate from the speed of light quickly enough in the second instance to avoid smashing into the ground.
- When the Starkiller base blows up the planets of the Republic (which is surprisingly small), it's visible from the planet the protagonists are on. Is this planet supposed to be in the same system or is the Star Wars galaxy smaller than our own inner solar system?
- Snoke. Stupid name. Stupid voice. Stupid character design. Looked like a poor man's Voldemort and didn't belong in the movie.
- People couldn't find Luke until the piece of map was put inside a hole in a larger map? Is that right? That seems a bit like being unable to recognize Canada until someone puts the bulk of the United States below it and Alaska on its side.
- I get that Poe died originally and was revived in rewrites but I would have liked some effort to explain his miraculous survival.
Pay-off without set-up
There were some big moments in the movie that fell flat for me because they weren't earned.
Rey, who I liked quite a lot by the way, more or less skips all this business of finding out about the supposedly big galaxy and learning how to use the force, trying, failing, learning and all of that messy story stuff and just beats the villain straight out of the box.
Han's death, likewise, didn't work for me. It seemed that I supposed to buy into that scene on the bridge because Ben was his son but there were no prior interactions between them and the movie didn't flesh out the history between them well enough for the scene to have the proper affect (at least for me).
Han derails the story and it abandons its own premise
When Rey and Finn were flying the Falcon out of Jakku, I was beginning to enjoy myself. I thought the film was going somewhere. Then, out of the blue, Han and Chewbacca show up and Rey and Finn are immediately sidelined. There's a bit of Han Solo worship and then the Han Solo show begins in earnest. This is no sleight on Mr. Ford. I thought he did a great job and considering the fact that he never liked the character anyway and that he probably didn't need the money, it was pretty decent of him to reprise the role for the fans. But Rey and Finn were set-up as the primary protagonists.
Also, mid-way through the film, apropos of nothing, some teenage stand-in for a proper commander unveils the Death Star v3.0, blows up three or four planets and then the storyline about looking for Luke is dropped, only to be resumed right at the very end.
It renders the entire original trilogy pointless and squanders the opportunities it had
It'd be interesting to see how the
Star Wars universe looked in the wake of what happened after
Return of the Jedi. Timothy Zahn's books from twenty years ago, while occasionally silly and somewhat flawed, showed some interesting possibilities. I liked having the Rebellion become the New Republic and how that meant they had to change their approach to fighting the Empire. It was then the Empire that was using guerrilla warfare and the good guys had to defend themselves against them.
I also liked how the main antagonist was not a force user but a military strategist. After the cartoonish Emperor, this was a welcome change.
The Force Awakens however has brought back an Emperor type that makes the
Return of the Jedi's main villain look like a character from Shakespeare by comparison and has reset the status quo.
So thirty years after
Return of the Jedi, we have another rebel organization fighting another Empire type organization with stand-ins for most of the original characters and kooky force users as the main villains. Color me unimpressed.
That's not an ending. And it's not a cliffhanger.
Say something, Luke! Don't just stand there.
I dislike this trend of movies existing solely as trailers for future installments. Movies used to tell self-contained stories that could leave you with the feeling you got your money's worth.
Now, some people think this is a cliffhanger and say it's like the ending of
The Empire Strikes Back but I beg to differ.
The Empire Strikes Back was all about setting up that duel with Darth Vader. And because we had the duel and saw the aftermath of it, the story feels complete. We know we'll have to tune in again to find out if the good guys rescue Han but this story's done.
However, if the movie took the same approach
The Force Awakens did, this is what you would get: Luke would walk into Vader's trap. He'd look up and see Vader and then, with an abrupt cut, the credits would roll.
....
Closing thoughts:
Now I didn't hate it entirely. In fact, there were many things I enjoyed about the movie. I liked Kylo Ren as a villain. I thought Rey was fantastic and I'd like to see more of Finn and Poe. BB-8 was great too.
If the makers of
Episode VIII ditch Snoke, General Hux, any plans to remake
The Empire Strikes Back and C-3P0 (please ditch C-3P0)... and if they properly retire the legacy characters so they can focus on the new ones, then I think they might be onto something.
And finally, I have no problem with other people enjoying
The Force Awakens. If you loved it, then all power to you. I mean it. It's nice to have a big fun popcorn movie that most people can enjoy and there's something... innocent... about
Star Wars that's a rarity in the age of gritty reboots and cynicism. I just wish I could feel the same way.
