Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens REVIEW

Sod it. I have nothing insightful or important to say (do I ever?) so I might as well review a movie.

Well, the movie. It's all anyone's talked about for the past two years, and I imagine you're all probably sick of Star Wars by now the same way I'm sick of Christmas. It was a stroke of genius to release the film around Christmas, when merchandise sales are already strongest. Everyone is gripped in Star Wars fever, and all the people online writing articles about it are just fuelling the Disney fire that will soon engulf the world.

So...um...here's my review!

Like anything that was created just to provide a further boost to toy sales, The Force Awakens will never be anything to cherish as an artistic statement. No stable minded person could ever admit that this is a truly great film, because it's corporately sanctioned. There exist some clever and entertaining television advertisements, but they're still adverts. They were made to make money, and nothing else.

And that's Ep.7 summarised for your Rotten Tomatoes quote. It's clever and entertaining, but it never strives for anything beyond appeasing fans.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this. Well, there is. Creating art for the sake of money rather than the sake of art is abhorrent. Did Beethoven think: "Wow, this 9th symphony is gonna make me so much money!" Did Michelangelo carve David to sell miniature David toys? Did Shakespeare pen Hamlet to appease a paying audience?

OK, he did. He wrote plays to make a living. And we know Mozart mainly wrote music to fund his drinking, and Dickens charged by the word which is why he goes on so much, but...ALRIGHT! I'm being overly-cynical! I need to relax! I know! It's...it's just been a horrible year for me.

If you want a fun film to see, then yes: see The Force Awakens. As a spin-off, it's much better than it should be.

But...this movie has a serious pacing problem. The plot just goes through everything way too fast. The movie's over two and a half hours long yet it either needs to go on longer or else it needs to remove some plot. It got to the last ten mins and I thought "Oh, they're saving the next scene for the seque-wait! They're doing it now?!" And so the ending lacks the impact it should have because it feels so rushed.

It made sense for JJ Abrams to direct Star Wars, since his Star Trek movies were exactly like Star Wars. Star Trek is all about discovery and the understanding of unfamiliar cultures. Star Wars is about a big operatic story. It's 2001 meets James Bond in terms of scope vs pace. And so Star Trek 2009 kept up this great energy whilst also allowing time for humor and character.

But this is way too fast. A lot has happened in-between Ep.6 and Ep.7, but there's very little time to get a grip of where exactly the universe stands now. The Empire has returned, and seems very powerful already...but apparently there's a Republic in place. The Imperials say that the New Republic is lying and supporting the Rebel Alliance, which - WAIT - does that mean that The Empire has a seat in government? Is it an official political opposition, or an invading force? How much power does The First Order actually have?

The Empire also has a weapon about ten times the size of The Death Star II, but this fact is just thrown at us before we can fully appreciate this weapon. Remember when Ep.4 had that brief yet vital scene where the Imperial officers gathered to discuss The Death Star, and when our heroes first come across the space-station and take a moment to appreciate it's size? No time for any of that here.

Perhaps the worst part of the movie is just that stuff has changed...but it hasn't changed.

They look pretty powerful to me...

The plot itself is far too heavily based on Ep.4. We start with a shot of a Star Destroyer. The opening scene is an Imperial raid. A rebel hides a data-chip in a droid. The droid roams through the desert. The droid is found by an everyhero. The everyhero escapes the desert-planet via the Millenium Falcon. The Falcon gets tractor-beamed, and the heroes hide in the floor. The Falcon finds its way to the rebels, and the climax is a fleet of X-Wings blowing up a big base.

I know the original Star Wars lifted multiple scenes and tropes from previous sources, but it worked because it was in a new setting. This was years before Quentin Tarantino, and it's odd that snobs praise Tarantino whilst trashing Star Wars Ep.4 when they both do the exact same thing. Here though: this is a sequel. We're in the same setting with the same characters. Do something new, please.

Yet this brings me to the best part of the movie: the characters. Rey and Finn are two perfect leads. They're likeable, enjoyable, and have outstanding natural chemistry. Whilst this movie needed to have way more moments to stop and breathe, whenever it did stop - it was all for them. The plot frankly didn't hold my interest at all (because it's exactly the same as A New Hope), yet it's the characters that kept me invested and ultimately it's these characters that make me want to see more. I was disappointed when the movie ended the same way I'm disappointed when I go home after a reunion.

My favourite though is Kylo Ren, the new antagonist. Initially I rolled my eyes when I saw him. "Oh hello, Not-Darth Vader!" I would say as I walked past the film's poster. "Oh look, you're trying to lamely one-up the most iconic villan of all time. Awww, isn't that just cute."

I quickly realised whilst watching the film that this is exactly the point. Kylo is nothing but a frightened boy desperately trying to one-up Darth Vader and failing to do so. He's certainly an antagonist. He tortures people, he murders people, he doesn't have any regard for human life. But he's an antagonist with a deep internal torment as he has a goal that doesn't just involve taking over the galaxy. He's not as menacing as Vader, but he's at least ten times more complex.

It's really a shame that this is the only part of the movie that feels really daring. I thought that with Luke Skywalker missing then there would be this myth surrounding him. The Jedi would be an ancient, forgotten order that hardly any would believe in. Skywalker would be a prophet of some religion. The search for him would be a test of faith that few could follow. But nope.

And what of the rebellion? Since The Empire is back then obviously the rebellion didn't go so well? Did it perhaps turn out that overthrowing the Empire just threw the galaxy into chaos? We don't know - which is another reason why we needed more context. In fact, the whole plot has a habit of just throwing facts at us without either explaining or just showing what it's done to everyone. It turns out that a character has in their possession a relic from the previous movies that seems almost impossible to have obtained. When asked how this character got it, the character responds "I'll explain another time." Um, no. Now is the perfect time! How the hell did you get hold of that?!

Oh, and the CGI is horrid. The environments, spaceships, weapons, and explosions all look great; but the CG characters look appalling. None of them look like they're actually there. I know that in the original movies it's obvious that the aliens are just people in suits...but at least it appeared that you could actually touch them. The whole appeal of Chewbacca is that you can hug him. Whenever a computer generated character showed up, I would immediately think: "You're not real. The characters are just talking to air."

I think I like this movie more for what it promises than what it is. It's set up some great characters who I want to see more of, and whilst the plot's not there at all - at least it's set in motion events that could lead to interesting things. But I said the same thing about the Star Trek reboot, and all we got was Into Darkness...