This is a bit late, and you’ve probably all seen it by now,
but let’s sum up our feelings. If you’ve
seen the first three films, you’ve functionally seen this movie. If you haven’t seen those films, you’d
certainly enjoy this, since those original films were pretty awesome. If you’re wondering how somebody hasn’t seen
the original three, I offer this. During
the scene where we see Darth Vader’s helmet, a little girl sitting in front of
me at movie asked one of her parents, “Who’s that?” No, really.
That actually happened. Any
Disney marketing executive reading this right now may be considering committing
ritual suicide. “What! Somebody doesn’t know who Darth Vader is,
after all the toys and commercials! I
must kill myself out of shame!”
I saw this a week after it had been out. I stayed away from every Internet
review. The people at work who’d seen it
wouldn’t say anything about it. A friend
said he didn’t want to spoil it for me.
As established above, given that I’d already seen this movie, I’m not
sure what there was to spoil. I
earnestly kept waiting for something
to happen that would surprise me. Some
twist in motivation. Some unexpected
action. Anything! Perhaps even this review is nothing more than
what would be expected of such a film.
Congratulations JJ Abrams.
This was the second best Star Wars fan film ever. (IMPS is still number one, even
uncompleted.) You’ve very accurately
aped the movies you loved as child.
Please don’t tell me that this film was just to establish the new
trilogy with some familiarity and that the next films will be really
ground-breaking and original. Remember
what happened the last time an overhyped Star Wars film made a bad first
impression? Phantom Menace basically wrecked the next two films in terms of
enthusiasm. At least you’ve successfully
lowered expectations for the next film to where you could do something
different and have it be welcomed.
Congratulations Disney.
After one of the most obnoxiously pervasive advertising campaigns of all
time, you lured a bunch of people in to see your movie, and it made a bunch of
money. All I’d heard about this movie
was the hype and how much money it had made.
The greater the promotion, the less the substance. That nobody said it was good, pretty much
tipped me off as to what to expect. At
least you still have your Marvel films to redeem yourselves with.
Lack of originality is my main complaint. After that, the story was not well
constructed, especially in the final act.
There’s a couple of dangling points that I suspect will be cleared up as
a Director’s Cut. What did I like? The film was well done for what it was, a
copy. The new Lightspeed effect was
cool. (Han explaining how they were
going to penetrate the Starkiller’s defense shield was a line right out of Star
Trek. Don’t mix your franchises, JJ.) The girl, Rey, had a very nice English
accent. Your star also looked like she
needed a bath and a change of clothes for the entire film. Shouldn’t you
have cleaned her up at some point? If
you wanted her to look unattractive, you succeeded. I just don’t know why. Thanks for having her meet Luke at the end
and not just teasing it for the next film.
That did actually surprise me a bit.
Suggestions? More Poe. He was genuinely cool. At least he had a cool name, unlike Snoak,
which sounds like a name for an elf character in a Prep and Landing cartoon. Finn
for a black guy? And couldn’t you have
gotten Donald Glover for the part? At
least he would have made something of it, more than just an ethno-casting
call. (That was a really pleasant surprise
for me to see him in The Martian.) Can we get like two minutes of backstory on
the galactic situation? I wasn’t sure
what was going on. Was the story that
weak, or do I have to read a bunch of novels, which may be de-cannonized at
anytime, in order to get it?
Well, it was as good a film as a fanboy and a corporate
marketing department could possibly make.
At least they haven’t irreparably damaged the franchise to this point. The video games based on this movie should be
good. Certainly some of the space-action
scenes were designed for that. Enjoy all
the action figures and other collectibles.
There should be plenty of them, and you can always make up your own
stories with them.
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