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JarJarAbrams is the Sith who destroyed the Star Wars franchise
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I had high hopes for "Star Wars : The Force Awakens" (SW7). Unfortunately, JarJarAbrams did was he often does, namely "adopt, disrespect and destroy the work of others".
SW7 was absolutely horrible. No wonder Disney super-hyped the film and let nobody review in advance.
Anyone who cares about story, originality, coherence and consistency will find SW7 horrible. SW7 feels like it was written and directed by a simple-minded high-school student.
The good news: JarJarBinks wasn't a character in SW7.
The bad news: Someone with a JarJarBinks mindset wrote and directed SW7.
SW7 is an incoherent ripoff, reboot, remake mishmash of the original trilogy (OT), namely SW4, SW5, SW6.
SW7 is stunning in its lack of creativity and originality. The writers forgot the classic phrase is "history never repeats, but often rhymes". It would be fine for SW7 to rhyme with the OT, but instead SW7 simply repeats with minor irrelevant tweaks.
Most action in SW7 is simply action for action sake. Not because story, characters or the universe of StarWars demands the action, but because someone thought "this action should be cool". Much action wasn't set up or explained, and made no sense.
Some infantile mind (almost certainly JJA) wanted his DeathStar to be bigger and badder than those created by George Lucas. So the new DeathStar is 10 times larger... and explodes 7 planets at a time. Were those 7 planets established? Nope. Were their significance established? Nope. The new DeathStar weapon is charged by sucking all the energy from the nearest sun, then blasts 7 planets. This sure didn't make the new DeathStar more difficult to blow up. Sigh. Plus, why bother? Once you extinguish the sun, everyone on every planet in the solar system would freeze to death.
After two DeathStars were blown up in the OT, you'd think the empire would realize investing so much time, effort and resources into huge spherical space-stations was a bad idea. But no... that would require the writers actually imagine something creative and original, and dare I say "fresh and new". Nope. SW7 did exactly what a simple-minded child with no creative ability would do - create another DeathStar, only much more cumbersome and absurd.
BTW, why explode 7 planets simultaneously? Especially since the one planet that didn't get exploded the first time was the only planet that mattered. Made no sense whatsoever. Most planets in most solar systems cannot support life anyway, so the whole notion is completely absurd. But a simple-minded child only thinks "bigger and badder is better", and never wonders whether their idea makes any sense. Cue JarJarAbrams... brainless child in an adult body.
An enormous percentage of the SW7 story made no sense, contradicted what we know of the StarWars universe, or was completely unexplained and thus seemed like complete nonsense. I'll mention just one of dozens of examples to illustrate.
Rey is a compelling 20-ish tomboy without background (grew up alone on a desert planet, never knowing her parents). She gets caught up in the action of the story and flies off with Finn (a storm-trooper turned good) in an "old junker" spaceship (Han Solo's old spaceship). Amazingly, minutes later, after years of searching Han and Chewie find his ship and "steal it back". How convenient was that?
Later, Rey yanks Luke's lost light-saber out of the snow 30 meters away with the force (that she doesn't know she has, and while a Sith is also trying to grab it from much closer). Rey then handily beats the Sith in a light saber fight... with zero prior training or experience. So much for Jedi needing years of training. Even worse, Rey pulls the classic "Jedi mind trick" on a StormTrooper to escape from the new DeathStar... even though she never heard of "Jedi mind tricks" before.
Anyone who knows the StarWars universe has to think, "Are you kidding me"? How does this girl become stronger with the force than any Jedi who ever existed... with no training or prior connection to the force? This is beyond absurd, as is the entire story.
After a day reflecting, I speculated, "Maybe Rey is Luke's daughter, maybe Luke trained her, then maybe Luke stranded her on a desert planet much like Tatooine after erasing her memory". Such pure speculation could at least explain some of these absurdities, but nothing in the movie provided us any insight or reason to believe her abilities made any sense whatsoever. In fact, it directly contradicts what we know from previous films.
Incessant action and motion made locations seem small, contained, largely meaningless. All previous StarWars films, especially the prequels, presented the awesome grandeur and scope of the locations (cities, moons, planets, galaxy) the story and action were set within. Except for the empty desert where Rey lived, SW7 did none of this. Even when we quickly fly into the huge hanger in the new DeathStar we barely see anything (no establishing shots). SW7 doesn't feel set "in a galaxy", but "a few spots on 3 planets and the DeathStar", and logical connections between locations are rarely established.
The story has endless holes and lapses of consistency and continuity, not to mention utter absurdities (like huge dog leashes attached to tie-fighters inside the DeathStar).
The new characters were fine, and most acting was solid, even excellent sometimes (Han). However, the way Han Solo dies is utterly absurd and totally meaningless. Plus, he and Leia had ZERO chemistry (apparently they were long divorced, plus Leia ends up getting Han killed). The special effects were mostly competent, but were TOTALLY WRONG in style for StarWars.
SW7 does provide setups that could lead to good SW8 and SW9 stories. JarJarAbrams isn't writing or directing SW8 or SW9 apparently, so at least we might have "a new hope" for SW8 and SW9. Convince George Lucas to write the stories for all future Star Wars films.
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You thought prequels were bad? That Star Wars cant get any worse? You. Were. WRONG!
****************THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ********************** The plot copies the original episode IV to the letter. There is even the same environment of the desert planet, literally the same ship and almost-the-same droid with secret but vital information. Which is actually alright - yes, it is reboot rather than a sequel. Yes, it was as unoriginal as possible. But that would alright.... if it wasn't for the main cast.
The fact that the movie copied the story of episode IV made it impossible to not directly compare the cast. In short, instead of the serious and focused old cast, we got teenagers with mental problems. So lets check:
Rey - I actually felt bad about watching her in the movie, because it felt like watching a child being abused. The way the character was made and acted in the movie was befitting a 14-16 year old. With not only looks, but also all the indecisiveness, attitude imbalance and childishness that would fit a confused high schooler. I guess I'm just too old for this. Hopefully, the directors will let her grow up for the next episode so she may start giving the feel of a heroine she was supposed to be.
Finn - If this was supposed to be the new Jar-Jar Binks, then it was a partial success. Partial, because even Jar-Jar wasn't this pathetic. Finn is cowardly, ever-confused, lying and just... useless. The feeling this character left me with was that he was useless, from the first scene to the last. It almost looked like he will build up to doing something useful, but nope. That didn't happen. He had a last chance for redemption by dying at the end to be replaced for the next movie, but even that seems to have not happened. Was this seriously supposed to be the new Han Solo?
Kylo Ren - This one started well. Heartless, capable.. a true sith. But then through the movie he was continually forgetting about the powers he had in the first scene, to the point where was easily defeated by the above-mentioned teenage girl in a way that was actually believable (two kids clumsily waving lightsabers at each-other). During the process of forgetting about his powers, he also managed to lose his cool looking mask and showcase that we were wrong thinking he is an actual villain as he turned out to be a childish young man with serious anger issues. See the difference - when Darth Vader was unsatisfied with the progress, he killed the soldiers in a cool and threatening manner. This kid destroyed his own computer instead...
cpt. Phasma - The Boba Fett 2.0 also started well. But then got demolished in a 1 on 1 ship fight against the ancient millennium falcon piloted by a high school girl who had never done it before. Right. While one could have thought that it was the end to the humiliation of the character, it wasn't. Later she got captured by Chewbakka, betrayed her First Order without even needing to be threatened and was thrown into a dumpster. At least somebody met a fitting end.
The new sith lord - The cool thing about the old emperor Palpatino was his secret identity, masked face and general feeling of power. Now we got a villain whose name is both completely forgettable and generally known... so much for secrecy. On top of that, he uses a giant hologram to overcompensate the clear lack of actual influence and has a twisted face that looks a lot like muts from the last hunger games. Seriously? On the plus side, the soundtrack was amazing and scenes were really well set up and made. At least until the new protagonists entered them.
Originally Posted by slikrapid
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