Some people might consider Star Wars Episode VII the best movie of the year. Others try to not get caught in the hype and provide a serious review. And then there are those, for whom Episode VII felt like Disney burned their childhood home and urinated into the ashes. The latter probably goes for every Star Wars fan that is able to read a book.
A rewiev on a movie that looks like Star Wars but isn’t.

When thinking about how to structure this critique, I first considered copypasting someone’s review of the original first Star Wars movie. But that seemed wrong. Not because of the attempt at plagiarism, but because it would be an insult to the classic. Especially as the new „evil villain“ appears like a Jon Snow in deep puberty that ranks below Rick Moranis as „Dark Helmet“ from „Spaceballs“ in terms of being imposing and scary.

Of course, the new Disney space movie has nice effects, has mostly well casted main characters and cute droids. And lightsabers. It is true, the Star Destroyer graveyard looks impressive. But Star Wars should be more than landscape shots and pointless lightsaber-duels.
Instead they added all the old actors, ships and droids, hoping that they hype would turn into cash and no one would notice how bad the movie actually is.

Recycling a la Disney

After an initial confrontation between good and evil (led by a masked villain), a droid bearing a secret encounters a child that lost it’s parents (and which is Force Sensitive) on a desert planet. Hunted by the forces of evil, said child escapes the planet in the Millenium Falcon.
After some trials and tribulations a woman gets saved from an evil base, the evil ones use their planet destroying weapon and a father figure dies. Then the superweapon gets destroyed by the good guys and the rebel faction they joined up with.

This plot summary actually works both for Star Wars IV and the new Disney space movie. It might be the world’s first movie script devoid of any original thought. Sounds like an achievement.

And yet I would be inclined to forgive the whole recycling thing, if the story of the movie were not mind-numbingly stupid as well.

A plot that has the dumb

The real Star Wars always took pride in at least trying to be scientifically accurate. But before I tackle the issue of the most overcompensating penis enlargement that is the new death star, I just want to pose the question of how an out of control spinning, severely damaged TIE-Fighter is capable to survive athmospheric re-entry when crash-landing on Jakku without burning to a very tiny crisp?

But there are way bigger issues: It is not exactly original to give the bad guys a planet destroyer for the third time. Of course, the new one is even bigger, capable of hitting several widely apart planetary objects from one muzzle and powered by a sun. Which actually poses the question: If that thing absorbs the entire energy of a sun – wouldn’t the star system die out anyways? And wouldn’t that also be kinda self-destructive, given that the station, too, orbits that sun? Or is the First Order now magically capable of entering hyperspace with an entire planet?

How did the „First Order“ actually manage to create such a station? Wouldn’t – at some point during the decade long construction effort – someone have noticed that not only are the bad guys are not only AGAIN building a planet-destroying station, but they also managed to do so without anyone noticing and despite the fact that the First Order by no means owns the infrastructure the galaxy-spanning Galactic Empire had. Maybe some unexplained pandemic killed of all the Bothan spies.
Luckily, the architects of the new death star are just as dumb as the old ones and included a design flaw that takes down the entire thing – AGAIN.

Which brings me to the part on why the Republic needs to fund a „Resistance“ against the First Order that was born from what was left of the Empire in the first place? The Rebellion reinstated the Republic as the governing body of the Galaxy at the End of „Return of the Jedi“.

But even though that means it now also again owns the Kuat Drive Yards (to those who don’t know squat about StarWars: That’s where the Star Destroyers were built), and even before that, it was able to field a rather impressive spacefleet at the Battle of Endor. But now all they send against what is obviously the biggest menace since Palpatine took a dive down the shaft is a few crappy X-Wings?
You might think that building a billion-killing-planet-destroyer-weapon warrants the use of some more ships, at least if the Republic cares about the well-being of it’s populace at all.

The next thing is: Luke Skywalker, first of the new Jedi and saviour of a galaxy builds a new jedi order, then allows one student to kill all the others and then decides to just abandon everything and mope – while at the same time remaining the galaxy’s last hope against the First Order. Congratulations.
And of course, mopey-Luke also does nothing to save his former padawan, son of his sister and best friend, but instead abandons them all and allows yet another evil menace rise and kill billions once again. High-five, hero-bro. Way to distort a character.

Then we have the guy who could advertise either Clearasil or Herbal Essences shampoo, but sadly is supposed to be the guy replacing enigmatic and menacing Darth Vader: Kylo Ren (Solo). Incidentally, that’s our new supervillain’s biggest idol and he „wants to finish what Darth Vader started”. Though Darth Vader actually didn’t start anything. First, he saved the galaxy in the Clone Wars, then he killed (almost) all the old Jedi, then he got his limbs cut off and then he threw the evil Emperor down the shaft, saving his Son, Luke (Kylo Ren’s teacher) and turned to the light side. So the only thing left unfinsihed by Darth Vader is to turn to the light again. Mostly because he died soon after walking down that road again.

But instead of adopting the class and style of the ever calm Lord Vader, Kylo Ren behaves like the classic angry teenager who cares too much about his hair, has no friends, wears emo/gothy stuff and goes on a furious rampage with his dorky lightsaber whenever he doesn’t get his will – or that hologram ubervillain sends him to bed without dinner.
And for some reason, Kylo Ren wears a rather dorky, trunk-resembling mask. As he doesn’t need it for medical breathing issues, he probably does it because he is a poor little fanboy.
Oh, and of course he kills his father, Han Solo, granting the coolest guy in Star Wars the most pathetic death in what is either the cheesiest dumb scene or the dumbest cheesy scene ever. Finishing off the great Han Solo could only have been made more pathetic if a pink flying unicorn accidentally pushed him off a rainbow.

And finally, there’s the “mystery” of the „Map to Skywalker“ which allegedly everyone wants to fight over, but forgets halfway through the movie. Unfortunately, favorite beep-boop-box Artoo decided to go sleeping beauty and they have to find the map piece lodged in cute BB-8 mechanical innards first. And all of that even though the BB-8 map piece is big enough that every moron that looks at a map of the galaxy could put it in the right spot, we have to wait for Artoo to rise from slumber. Apparently with the end of the Empire, cartography in the galaxy went bye-bye.

Compared to the previous movies, I have to say that the Disney space movie undercuts even Episode I with little 9-year-old Annie Skywalker hitting on the 14-year-old princess Amidala.
Yes, you can heap a lot of criticism on the Star Wars prequels and rightfully so. But at least they made some sense. When looking at Kylo Ren and his Nazi-General sidekick, meesa be actually starting to missa Jar-Jar Binks.

Welcome to the Shrunken Universe

To anyone who reads, Star Wars was much bigger than the first three movies and their prequels. Over hundred books, games, even comics were published after the release of the original trilogy. All of them in one big contituity that is called the „Expanded Universe“. When Disney bought Star Wars, they announced soon after that the „Expanded Universe“ was canceled in favor of their own new vision (or rather drug induced hallucinations) of the new movies. Essentially, this is like suddenly declaring that the Cold War did not happen and instead, Kiribati and Vanuatu were engaged in perlonged hostilities while Russia was ruled by some Igor Vodka and the US by the Marx Brothers. In a single decision, Disney killed of hundreds of Characters and Ideas. And no, Rey is neither the coolest, nor first female main character. Go and google Mara Jade.

Essentially, Disney created a movie that everyone likes, except actual Star Wars fans. Or anyone above 30.

So, sure if you are either illiterate, or reduce Star Wars to lightsabers, chirpy droids and things that go boom, I suppose you can call „The Force Awakens“ a Star Wars movie. But if you go beyond that, it sadly, is not. And probably will never be again.