Starwars Episode 7 The Force Awakens Review

Starwars Episode 7 The Force Awakens - Not really

Megan, Chris, Dan, Jemma and myself went to see Star Wars.
Episode 7 "The Force Awakens"

Everyone is raving about this but I was a bit ho hum about it.  Had to postpone saying anything because there is so much hype.

Warning Spoiler alert



Lets start with the positives.  In a way vintage star wars.
Far fewer fluffy animals driving space ships and that was a relief.
Some good old fashioned space fight scenes.
A good looking girl hero.
Big crashed star ships.
And the more subtle - The mystery surrounding the girl hero Rey.  The apparent connection between Rey and Han Solo.  They finish each others sentences.  So we are left to imagine that they are Father and Daughter and in a way it is hinted but unexplained stuff that leads to good story telling.


Now the negatives.
The story line seemed to jump all over the universe.

The plot seemed small  - The story line revolves around a search for Luke who has run away.  So out of character.  Luke the hero.  The saver of the universe.  Run away.  Rather than saving the universe - big ticket objective  - we have find the old lost guy.

There should have been more use of the force.  "Those aren't the druids your looking for".  The film is titled "The force Awakens".  It seemed like it (the force) opened one eye, yawned and went back to sleep.

There does not seem to be any lead up planning to anything no any tension build up.
(Remember before the final fight in Episode 4 how they gathered round and looked at the plans and then had a briefing and we all knew that someone had to drop a bomb in a small hole.  Then the execution - after many fighters had been shot from behind (Why don't tie fighters have guns that face backwards) by none other than Darth Vader himself.  Luke, with Darth distracted at the last second by Han Solo, and of course help from the supernatural manages to get 2 in the hole. And all the while they are lining up their shot at the Rebel base and the beautiful princess)  In The force awakens they have a quick look at map, run around and blow it up. Next scene.

Why are storm troopers such bad shots?  (And the good guys such insanely good shots and all with no mention of the force)

So many bits seemed rehash of earlier scenes:-
Droid implanted with plans.
Girl on floating car echos early scenes of Luke on his floating car in EP4.
A death star - only bigger.  Big planet busting weapon.  Resistance find one small weakness.
Plan to maintain control through destroying a planet as a warning.
A grotty pub scene
Han Solo still owes people money (Ep 4 he owed Java the Hutt)
A hurried departure in the millennium falcon

In 1977 Darth Vader looked evil and sounded evil.  That guttural sound that sent shivers down my spine.  The new bad guy wears black but ...
he does not sound evil.
He takes off his mask and looks like a depressed emo male model.  Almost like he is about to cry.
Then Darth Vader had a degree of honour.  The new bad guy does not even have a fight to the death but instead hugs his father (Han Solo / Harrison Ford) & Pulls the trigger.  Truly nasty but without the class.



What they could have done:-
It seemed to me to be an opportunity to revitalise the franchise.  Write some new memorable music for instance.

It's set only 30 years on.  Rather than having the imperial army having rebuilt into a formal army, they could have had the imperial army still rebuilding.  More of an even fight.  

However even if they had wanted rebels vs the first order, the rebels still operate like a conventional army. They have a single base.  One base for the whole universe?  Surely a more realistic rebel architecture would be a distributed force of autonomous groups.  They could have made a political parallel with the US coalition vs the various middle east terrorist groups only reversed.  



The ghost of obi one and the ghost of Vader could have made a comeback.