The whole Walt Disney philosophy eats out of your hand with these pretty little sentimental creatures in grey fur coats. For my own part, I believe that behind these smiling eyes there lurks a cold, ferocious beast fearfully stalking us. –Philosopher Jean Baudrillard
Alright, so you know how I feel about the last installment of the Star Wars franchise. If not you can read up on it here. But if you have seen the movie it will not come as much of a surprise why the film fails on so many different levels. Now we have the latest Disneyfication (it’s a real word) coming up in less than two months, and quite honestly, I really don’t care where they take it from here.
Rian Johnson has potential, and his body of work, while small, shows that he can create a coherent plot and engage his characters in a story without making everything go boom. That might translate into a good movie or it might be a continuation of the disappointment that I felt from watching TFA. But no matter what it does for the franchise it will be useless, knowing that JJ will be at the helm of the last film of the new trilogy.
I will admit I was surprised to see the “new” trailer (they weren’t supposed to release a new on) during the World Series I have to look at it like any other movie because it is no longer my beloved franchise. And no matter how well RJ is able to pull the plane out the nose dive it will inevitably land, like the Millennium Falcon on some distant planet to quickly be forgotten like everything else that The Mouse produces theses days.
At least we have the extended universe (oh, I’m sorry, Legends) that was crafted before Disney got its hands on the property.
Alright, it just had to be said. The new Star Wars movie sucks. The Force Awakens sucks, it really does. And what is more surprising than that is the audience at large feels that it deserves a solid 9.0 on IMDB.
This number comes from a little over 23,500 reviewers. And as you might expect male viewers are slightly more represented than female viewers, in the scale of 12.4 to 1. Here are the figures.
Males
16,866
9.0
Females
1,363
9.0
And while you may or may not be surprised you shouldn’t wonder that J.J. Abrams took the best scenes from the original trilogy and duct taped them together to form what is dumbed, no wait duped, no that’s not it, ah, dubbed “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” and believe me it should have stayed in bed.
Star Wars The Force Awakens
So why does The Force Awakens suck? I’m glad you asked. And while I will only give you a couples of highlights. I don’t want to fill the post with spoilers in the event that you would want to watch it. After all this is a review, and not a recap, beat by beat of an uninspired 2 hours and 15 minutes.
And while I much of what happens in the film could be predicted long before it happens (either the audience was a group of fortune tellers, or it was bad writing on the part of J.J. and co.) there is little to prepare you for what turns out to be a weak, watered down version of “A New Hope” with more explosions.
I mentioned that I felt this movie was almost like a clone (pun intended) of “A New Hope” and that would even have been acceptable given the prequels. But that isn’t 100% accurate.
We knew that the character Kylo Ren was to be a Darth Vader replacement. But let’s take a closer look.
Or at least as far as I am willing to go.
Kylo Ren
A disappointing Darth Vader wanna be with a less than Darth name.
Han Solo
Bows out of the Star Wars franchise, giving his life needlessly all for the sake of playing our Obi Wan
Deathstar 3.0
Bigger, deadlier, and more fragile than a Faberge egg. I won’t tell you how it is destroyed. But, if you have seen the original films you would agree that the new planet killer is about as durable as wet toilette paper.
Rey
This is your Luke, and I have my suspicions that they will unveil here as his daughter. “Rey, I am … Your father.”
BB-8
😐
One of the things that grated on my nerves the most, however, is that you had a cast that felt more like adolescents than actual adults. And understand, Luke and Leia were adolescents, so this in itself isn’t out of place. But if you need an example all you need to do is look to Episode I, and you will have a good example.
This is a problem that J.J. often falls prey to. The casting decision in the “Star Trek” movies were similar, wait I mean bad.
If you have read this far then I will leave you with this.
While the movie is bad, you could even go as far as to say it sucks like the vacuum of space, the shiny look, its action aplenty, and a Deathstar 100x larger than the originals it gives you something the prequel trilogy wasn’t able to achieve.
That is the peace of mind in knowing that Star Wars is truly dead.
P.S. Let’s not even mention the oh so merchandise ready BB-8.
P.P.S. Now I understand why some people (one person?) were willing to purchase all of the tickets ($2,180) to the premier. They wanted to save us from ourselves.
P.P.P.S. The Deathstar shoots one beam which then splits into multiple beams and destroys multiple planets with a single shot. Really? Damn, those are level 8 upgrades for sure. Let’s also ignore that a planet is providing the shield generator and … oh, wait I just have to stop.
Finally it’s here – my new blog! I have been a citizen of the interwebs for the past 15+ years. This is the latest iteration of my blog. I have had multiple homes on the www before, but this one is here to last! I will be blogging about my personal interests, some pop culture here, a little politics there. I hope you will enjoy your stay. If you need to contact me, make sure to drop me a message through the contact page. 😀
