Review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens

MINIMUM SPOILER ALERT






As a movie in its own right, it is not good at all. Perhaps it is just me, perhaps this is modern movie making for a Vine generation, where characters don't have time to be fully developed and motivations do not need to make sense, as attention spans simply aren't long enough. But for a mature viewer, such as myself, the film had three major faults. Firstly it is as if someone had asked all Star Wars fans 'What is your favourite clip' and that is what you are now watching, a well linked clip show of all your favourite bits. You liked the rebel leader putting data into a droid before being captured? Done. Liked when the droids argued about which way to go? Done, but we'll make one human so it's not too similar. Who is your favourite character? Boba Fett?! Right, we'll cram in a cool looking character, with very little dialogue, short screen time and give them a similar ending. You liked how the Jawas captured the Droids? We'll have a droid captured for you. And so it continues thought-out the entire movie. It even goes as far as backgrounds, there is sand [A New Hope], snow [Empire Strikes Back], space station [Star Wars/Return of the Jedi] and forest [Return of the Jedi], just like the best locations in all the first three Star Wars movies. Then there is poor character development, take the story of Finn, one of the lead characters. He is a stormtrooper who doesn't want to kill, and the death of his fellow Stormtrooper moves him to get as far away from the fighting as possible, so how does he escape? By killing all those those fellow Stormtroopers he grew-up with, trained with and probably knew very well. The ending of the movie is also equally disappointing, simply a Sir David Attenborough film about wild birds on Skellig Michael, in Ireland. I think they turned the voice-levels off so that all speech is inaudible, but you can still imagine Sir David's voice whispering about the nesting habits of the birds here. And that is how it ends, setting up a long series of Star Wars movies to come.