Why Episode VII is the worst Star Wars film

 
I think Disney managed to hide all the bad reviews of episode 7 off the internet so it won’t surprise me if this one magically disappears too.

Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

I have been a SW fan my entire life, and when I heard about The Force Awakens I was both excited and skeptical. I enjoyed Episode 1 when it first came out but as time went on I realized more and more of the flaws. 

However, when initially viewing this starting episode of a Star Wars trilogy I found that there was much more I didn’t like than what I did. So I’ll start with what I did:

THE STORY:

Story-wise – I’m actually really struggling to think of one thing I liked about the story… maybe the Wolverine-esc mysterious past of Rey.

CHARACTERS:

Rey is really the only one I cared for. She’s well performed, likable, cute and surely has parents who are rooted in the history of Star Wars, probably one of the Skywalker twins, perhaps even Obi Wan.

The acting was pretty decent by Star Wars standards, but let’s be honest; that’s not a huge accomplishment.

THE LOOK:

Some of the cinematography (more on that later) – the hand-held action shots and much of the action was really well shot and looked stunning.

Okay now for the stuff I didn’t like (second warning, tons of spoilers here):

Visually I almost pulled my hair out when I saw all those bloody lens flairs that Abrams apologized for after the second Star Trek movie.

But I could’ve forgiven those, except that story-wise it was so bad in so many ways…

In the first scene the main baddie, Kylo Stimpy – er – Ren menacingly approached an old man very Vaderishly, and he says that he is aware that he is in possession of secret plans – er – “information” which were hidden on a cute gibberish-speaking droid.

So what does he do? The obvious thing a master of interrogation does to the one person he knows had the information he wants – he kills him with a lightsaber that looks seems it was made to look different just for the sake of looking different.

As luck would have it for the dark lord, there is another person who has this information; an extremely unlikable and bland character called Poe. So evil lord Ren captures and imprisons Poe despite his tendency to kill useful assets. To be honest I was kind of hoping this would spell the end for Poe.

The inevitable meeting between beautiful Rey and the cute droid is perhaps a little bit “Disney” but it is okay up until the point where we see extremely fake looking CGI characters, which is an immediate red flag – sidebar here: for all the flaws the prequels had, they can at least boast that they were cutting edge technologically as were the originals, so poor effects by today’s standards don’t cut it in a Star Wars film.

Amid these stories is the ridiculous tale of Fin. This is character who was kidnapped as an infant, brainwashed his entire life while being trained as a soldier up until the point where he was deemed fit to be put on the front-line as a storm trooper, but then he suddenly realizes that the storm trooper life isn’t nice so he decides to help Poe escape from the empire – er – first order.

When we next see Kylo Ren he’s either using said interrogation skills, throwing a temper tantrum or cracking wise. All of this adds up to an interesting if not threatening villain… but later on, he takes off his helmet at will demonstrating that it is about as necessary and absurd as Dark Helmet’s lid on Spaceballs. The fact that we actually see Ren whimpering does not help his villainous facade.

Back to the prequels – they were of course overly political, but here it is the exact opposite. There is the “First Order”, who seem to be the modern-day Empire and in control of everything including the troopers; then there’s the “Resistance” which is the equivalent of the rebellion, and also led by Princess Leia. And then there is the “Republic”, which serves no purpose except to be blown up. So it is as if the entire rebellion overthrowing the empire in the original trilogy was pointless and we’re back to where we began. It’s like a slap in the face to the original trilogy.

At several moments throughout the film it feels like we are watching a Star Wars film made for Trekkies. There are countless blatant plot devices and gimmicks, culminating in the height of what makes this film infuriating: Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber!

Not the green one he had at the end of Return of the Jedi, but the lightsaber that was in Luke’s hand when it was cut off in “Empire” somehow appears here as a major plot point. So either it was a huge oversight or it was purposely stuck in there for the sole reason of making up a convoluted back story as to how it got pried from his severed hand. Either way it’s extremely annoying.

There is a brief appearance by C-3P0 which feels like it was done out of necessity, and he is given a red arm – which seems like it was either done once again as a change for the sake of change, or for the stupid joke he makes about it.

The end of the movie sees a hibernating R2-D2 magically (and conveniently) come back to life for no explained reason, Poe magically (and conveniently) coming back, a death-starish space battle ending in a planetary implosion which seems to warn of the dangers of trying to harness solar energy, a lightsaber battle that can only rival the duel in episode IV for lameness, and Leia sending a virtual stranger off on the search for Spock – er – Luke. And then it concludes with two characters staring back and forth at one another shot in a way that is reminiscent of that brings to mind the sarlacc scene in the Family Guy spoof of Return of the Jedi – you know, the one with those goofy brass hits and the Caddy Shack line “well… We’re waiting!”

The bottom line is, as much as the prequels were hated, this feels like a cheap ripoff done by someone who hates the prequels, thinks the audience is too stupid to notice the similarities to the originals and was then marketed so as to (try to) fool the dimwits who can’t see the “twists” a mile away into being surprised. I do believe this will go down in the history books as being the worst of the films up to this point.