SPOILER ALERT – DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE.Here are my reasons after 1 viewing of it in IMAX 3D why I don’t think the movie can be considered great. Good, fun and entertaining yes, but not great.
As monkumonku called it, “pick the movie apart audiophile style.” General ImpressionsThe story isn’t much more than A New Hope reboot. The storyline is WAY too similar, and it happens almost all the way through. Start on a remote desert planet with the bad guys looking for a cute little droid and away we go. It totally lacks originality.
The music is typical good John Williams but it’s not “special” John Williams. There isn’t anything particularly memorable about it. By today’s standards, it’s just average movie fair music with the original Star Wars A New Hope music intertwined.
Characters just didn’t have good chemistry together. Ren and Fin were okay but not great. Even Han and Leia didn’t jive well. I’m not an expert on how to make chemistry happen on screen, but I do know when it’s not there. It lacked new characters that you really like or love to hate, and the old characters didn’t “sing”. For me Rey, Maz, and General Hux did the best job. Fin was okay but not great. Kylo didn’t impress me much. Poe was an afterthought sort of character. Leia was mostly lame with no grit of old. Han was just okay. Chewy was the best of the old.
I liked the buildup of the movie, but the beginning was just too slow for too long. They spent too much time in some areas (like the desert & the mountain climb at the end), and not others (like the death of Han and the grieving of Han).
More Specific ExamplesAs an example of a big story line why and a lack of originality, when entering Maz Kanata’s place, you get the impression from Han that it’s a super bad sort of place. So why then does it end up just being a Cantina Bar look alike with almost everything the same? Totally unoriginal. Could they have not made it a major gambling den with “fuzzy creature fighting” or something? Something other than the same bar from A New Hope. Lame.
It’s very “movie coincidence” how Han and Chewy just happen to find the Falcon so quickly. I understand they may have had a tracker on it or something, but to show up in like 2 minutes? They could have at least made up something like those Rathtars they were hunting and catching were only found on a limited number of desert planets like Jaaku. Speaking of the Rathtars, their look was fairly unoriginal. The basic original look (idea) came from Return of the Jedi and the Sarlacc that ate Boba Fett, to which they are supposedly share common ancestry. And what, are Rathtars racist? I mean they kill and eat the other bad guys without any hesitation, like they haven’t eaten in years. But when it gets to Fin it grabs him and runs away, like it’s embarrassed to have people see it eat a black guy. They should have just filmed it grabbing Fin and had Rey quickly hit the door latch button.
There were just dumb chemistry events. Fin and Poe know each other for all of like 10 minutes in a space battle and crash landing. Then 3/4s of the way through the movie they meet up and Poe gives his beloved Droid BB8 the shove off to hug Fin like a long lost brother? Stupid.
The scene where Kylo has the troopers shoot the villagers was not menacing or sad at all. I would compare it directly to when Anakin kills the sand people. That was MUCH more sad and disheartening.
Personal Nit PicksSand, droid with secret plan, little ship gets captured by big ship, bar, big weapon, big weapon gets figured out, big weapon has shields that must be turned off. Big weapon is destroyed by small inferior group, everyone goes home. How original.
It was over the top obvious they were trying to make BB8 the new R2, but it didn’t work that great. Okay, but not great.
They have this crazy new killer device (that of course is bigger than the Death Star), and the only name they came up with for it was “The Weapon.” Really? What about “Sun Seeker” or “Sun Blaster” of “SunofaBitch”, or from Bugs Bunny, “Intergalactic Destruction Device?” “The Weapon?” Totally boring and unoriginal.
Was anyone really surprised when Kylo kills Han? Everyone I have spoken to in person said they saw it coming. It was too obvious and did not come across as big loss, heart felt, or even heartless from a Sith point of view. It lacked emotion.
Why did the old man on Jaaku totally resemble and old Jedi, but then turn out not to be one? They should have given him a different look.
People rag on the Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith for a lot of various reasons, but the music in those 3 movies BLOWS AWAY the music from The Force Awakens. They all have very memorable scores and create great emotion even when it may lack some on the screen. So it’s not just that the original 4-5-6 music had to be used, because 1-2-3 proved it could be bettered. This movie’s music is on cruise control at 50%.
They brought back the second most annoying character in all Star Wars, C-3PO. I hated him when I was 7 years old and I still find him annoying as hell. He’s the original Jar Jar, and I say even more annoying. Why couldn’t they have killed him off instead of Han?
It takes Luke years of serious dedicated training to become a Jedi, a lot of which comes from the best Jedi trainer of all time. But Ren gets her mind sucked and all of a sudden she can use totally unknown powers with control? How convenient.
Luke doesn’t even speak? Not a single word?
The lead woman gets interrogated much like in A New Hope. And A New Hope showed that sometimes NOT showing the actual event can be more ominous than actually seeing it occur. It was a better scene.
The super bad guy’s (Supreme Leader, aka new Emperor) name is Snoke. Snoke? Sounds’ like a name you might give a dog. “Here Snokey Snokey!” It rhymes too much with Joke. Smaug, the dragon in the Hobbit, even has a better name, and it’s hard to pronounce for many people.
Kylo Ren comes across as the least bad asss of all the bad guys in Star Wars. He’s below Darth Vader, Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, and Count Dooku. In other words he comes in 5th place, or last in terms of Siths. I’d personally even put him behind Grand Moff Tarkin, General Grievous, and even General Hux in terms of badness and scariness.
I personally couldn’t get over how much Kylo Ren reminded me of Gene Simmon’s son Nick Simmons. It actually made me laugh out loud in the movie. I feel Kylo could have been better cast. Hell, at 6’ 7” tall Nick Simmons may have been a better choice.
What’s the point of Kylo wearing a totally unnecessary helmet / mask? What purpose did it achieve? Looks? The power seeking bad guy is vein? They could have at least showed it had some special feature, like how the Predator’s in Predator 2 could change the way he could see. Something other than a disguise and to talk funny. Stupid.
A 3/4 trained Sith can’t easily beat 2 people with little or no “force power” who have never used a light saber in their lives? Why did he even bother with the light saber? He should of just “whooshed” them into a tree a few more times or something and been done with them.
2 Things I Would Have Changed About The Story Line To Make The Released Movie, BASICALLY AS IS, More Dramatic.It would have been much more dramatic if Kylo Ren would have taken his helmet off only once, when Han told him to, not before in the torture chamber. There wasn’t much point to him removing the mask in the torture chamber other than to show surprise when he couldn’t suck the info from Rey’s head (surprise could have been filmed another way with other motions or even dialog). On the contrary, I feel it weakened his stature as truly evil, and it certainly made removing it for Han much less dramatic and meaningful.
The movie should have ended when they returned from destroying “the weapon.”. They should have taken more time creating a very sad heart felt down turn mood, especially with Chewy and Leia. Then the credits should have rolled. Then, only AFTER all the credits were done rolling, then they should have come back with the Falcon landing on the planet (skip the take off and flying through space part) and Rey climbing the steps to see Luke. The END. I know it’s sort of a modern movie fad to do this sort of thing, but in this case, it would have made for a better movie. As it is the death of Han isn’t overly sad and the ending is totally disjointed.
