Review 386: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I don't think I have ever seen a film as souless, joyless, cynical, uninventive and just plain lazy that got released to theatres as Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This is a movie with no life, no new ideas, no sense of identity and a clear sign that this saga should have stopped at III.

Set 30 years after Return of the Jedi, scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridely) ex-stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and ace fighter pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Issac) embarke on a seemingly "perilous" search for the last remaining Jedi Luke Skywalker who has disappeared since the formation of The First Order, led by the "sinister" Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), which has risen from the ashes of the Galactic Empire, and is now at war with the newly formed New Republic and the Ressistance.

And if that synopsis sounds dull, boring, uninspired, unimaginative, uncreative, generic as well as overly familiar, then good job, you've been paying attention!
The plot as a whole is just hollow, shallow and non existent and that's to say there is literally NO plot to this film. It's just a string of scenes that feel sellotaped together to remind us of the Original Trilogy. Almost every single scene/shot of this film is littered with J. J. Abrams' love for the aforementioned trilogy.
Walt Disney Pictures attempts to cash in on ungratefull Star Wars fans memories of those films as well as pander to the lowest common denominator Star Wars fan who just want more of the same and don't care about taking chances or pushing this tired franchise in new and exciting directions - and don't tell me it does because this film so obviously doesn't.

To show how much this film panders to the lowest common denominator Star Wars fan,
Initially when I started watching this film, my mind was as open at about 60%-that is about 60% as one can get...  for about five seconds, at which point I realised that The Force Awakens isn't just bad.
It's intergalactically, stupidly unimaginative in a way that I never imagined a J. J. Abrams directed film to be.
This is a film with no imagination, no creativity, no joy in any of the way scenes are crafted, no ambitions, no sense of it's own identity and that never asspires to be anything more than a cheap, unnecessary trip down nostalgia lane.
How bad is The Force Awakens you may ask? It's a film that makes you from start to finish want to drop off or leave the room where it's being played, but sadly you can't because it's so lazy, so uninspired and so fantastically, irritatingly dull, that it's impossible to do so.

I confess that for the majority of the runtime, I had not idea why anything was happening.

The entire set up feels contrived, Luke Skywalker (the OG Star Wars character and the one who redeemed Darth Vader) has basically disappeared offscreen with no explanation, Kylo Ren being Han and Leia's son 

the fact that this film relies too much on recycling plot points from the original trilogy and even copying the storyline of A New Hope.

As someone who admired the freshness and energy of the earlier films, I was dissapointed that the filmmakers didn't try anything new and instead fell back on familiar asthetics, concepts, characters and conflicts to carry this film.

This film is incredibly self-referencial to point of grating. It thinks it's really fresh and new but the longer you look at it, the more it falls apart. For instance:

• How did Poe Dameron (Oscar Issac) survive the Tie Fighter that got swallowed up by Quick-sand on Jakku? That's never explained.
• Why is Rey highly force-sensitive, so amazingly skilled and able to wield a Lightsaber without any training? That's also never explained.
• What was it that made Luke go into exile? That's also never explained.
• How did Maz Kanata get hold of Luke's Lightsaber after it was lost on Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back? That's also glossed over.
• How did Han, Chewie and Leia loose and the Millennium Falcon and how did it end up in a junkyard on Jaku? That's also never explained.
• Why does R2-D2 suddenly spontaneously come back to life? That's also never explained.
• What happened to Lando in between movies? That's never explained

Almost every single one of these questions is dealt with the same "Yeah it's a Disney movie - and a Star Wars, the fans don't want to be challenged, we'll just gloss over it" approach.

To quote film critic, Roger Ebert: Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an utterly meaningless waste of time. There was no reason for Disney to make so much as green light a Star Wars Sequel Trilogy except to make money and there is no reason to see it except nostalgia and to spend money.
It's a death trap for every single cast and crew member involved, a film without wit, intelligence, interest, imagination, creativity or even entertaining lightsaber fights and special effects.
Parents: if you encounter teenagers who say they enjoyed or even loved this film, don't let them date your children.

J. J. Abrams' direction is amazing, painfully stolid, unimaginative, bland and impersonal. He directs this film with no style of flair, or sole or passion, instead opting to craft scenes with so little luster, life and emotion and in such a by-the-numbers fashion that you don't get the sense your watching a film directed by J. J. Abrams.

Now I know it may sound petty of me to critisize a film for a lack of style, but what I mean is the Auteur theory or a lack of it e.g. Tarantino has a very design style, so does Nolan to name a couple, so I expect higher standards from Star Wars and J. J. Abrams and here The Force Awakens just feels like it was directed by a film student as opposed to a professional film maker who decided to direct this film in the most basic, by-the-numbers fashion and quite frankly anyone could do that. This is a lesson I want all aspiring director to take away from this film: It's the Director that directs the iconography, not the iconography that directs the director.

The overall visual style of this movie is dull, dated, safe, risk free and unimaginative. This sticks so close to the visual artistry of the Original Trilogy that it looks like a Sci-Fi film from the 1970's, it's so dated that there's no life in it, no flare. It could have been shot 40 years ago and might I say looked a lot better.
Almost every single shot in this film looks like it shot on location, on a set/soundstage, or in a studio. That's not to say I'm criticising it for those reasons. What I means is it doesn't emerge you in this world and make you feel like your inside this world. It just looks and feels so...  artifical and fake and plain downright unconvincing.
The production design is bland, the costumes are babyish and laughable (Kylo Ren's costume looks like a cosplay Darth Vader costume a Star Wars fan made for a comic con), the cinematography lacks glitter, the anamatronics are crummy and obvious, the props are silly and toyetic, the special effects are lifeless (mainly because of Abrams and his crews decision to shoot the film with models to make it aesthetically similar to the original trilogy - as well as to pander to ungrateful fans) the make up is uncreative, the model work is shoddy and uninspired, the score by John Williams is mediocre and dull and not up Williams's usual standards. Even the action scenes in this film are farely lifeless, lacklustre, lack energy, feel drawn out and really are nothing we haven't seen before and done 100 times better - the climactic lightsaber duel between Rey and Kylo Ren, in particular, is sleep-inducingly dull.

I honestly believe this movie was made by a group of film students who were Star Wars fans and they used all the student lones they had to make the sets and models etc, shot the film with whatever resources they could find, then somehow Disney got hold of the distribution rights for a stupendous amount of money and gave it a theatrical release.

And after watching this film (and this is an emotion I rearly feel after a viewing), I actually felt insulted. I get the feeling that Disney thinks "Star Wars fans are stupid and we can sell them anything as long as we fill it with lots of models, cool toys, the original cast members, some pretty, young, unknown actors, lightsaber fights, paint-by-the-numbers space battles, loads of callbacks to the original trilogy and bright colours." Even if we just assume that's true, that doesn't excuse their complete lack of effort, your target audience should never be an indicator of quality, wether you're aiming for five-year-olds, fifteen-year-olds or fifty-year-old, do it properly or don't do it at all.

This film as a whole is mearly a series of dutifully, banal, by-the-numbers crafted scenes punctured by some of the most silly, wooden and lifeless dialogue I have ever heard in movies of recent years.
I have never seen a film in which characters talk so much utter nonsense.
There is not one single moment in this film that I could take seriously.
I don't believe the characters or the world this movie takes place in at all because there is no sense of naturalism or realism in this film because the characters don't feel like real people, they feel like stereotypical cardboard cutouts you'd find in some children's fairy tale and the world feels so artificial and lacking in texture or depth.
The original Star Wars films were enjoyable nonsense, here this film embraces it's inherent ridiculousness and never bothers to question itself.

The ending of this film is hockey and emotionally detached from the audience that it doesn't really feel like a proper ending, it just sort of stops.

The acting is flat out dreadful. Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Issac and Adam Driver are horrid in their respective roles. The characters in this film are so one dimensional, it just enhances the inherent ridiculousness of the film.

Daisy Ridley proves to me nothing except that she was SO not ready for this type of role or a franchise of this scale and magnitude and can't carry one on her two shoulders for that matter.
Throughout the movie she's pretty much emotionless and you don't get a sense of depth with her.
Her acting as a whole is extremely stiff and bereft of any charisma whatsoever. Every single line of dialogue she uttered was so stiff and banal. There's no emotion, life or enthusiasm from her. She doesn't seem excited at the prospect of being in Star Wars movie - which is a once in a life time opportunity.
Also, her character, Rey has come under scrutiny about being a Mary Sue type character.
I can honestly see why, she's just too good at what she does for her good. She's highly force-sensitive, can wield a lightsaber without any training - even though in A New Hope, it was established that you had to have years of training to be a full Jedi Knight. As well as an expert mechanic and pilot, the origins of these abilities are never explained!
Because of this I'd argue she doesn't empower women so much as give them an idealised version of what they to be - What a great role model for kids and girls. It even shows in her performance, she tries act all tough and brave, but really she's a complete wimp. I'm telling you, she's a ruddy coward. She also has no arc in this film. I don't see any character progression, growth or development in her character. By the end of this movie you don't get the sense she's a different person to what she was at the beginning.

When we first meet Rey, she's a lonely scavenger whose apparently been waiting for her family to come and find after being separated from them as a baby yet she doesn't seem to have to found the necessary to help her find said family, we don't know if she asked anyone for help, it never seems to occur to her to use the currency she gained selling the parts she scavenged to junk dealers to book passage off Jakku and go out and look for them. We aren't given enough information, there doesn't seem to be anything on Jakku that's holding her back from leaving except herself unlike Luke who was a s simple farm boy and wasn't allowed to leave because his uncle said no or Anakin whose mother and himself were slaves and didn't have the best of opportunities until Qui-Got arrived.

Until Finn and BB-8 arrive, she comes across as a extremely passive character whose decision to get the later to the "Resistance" is pretty much decided and thrust upon her.

As a hero for a normal sci-fi, action, adventure series, she's a complete fail. As a hero for a Star Wars movie - she's an embarrassment. There is nothing interesting about her, you don't get to know anything about her, and the stuff you do get to know about her is pulled form more engaging, better realised, more likeable protagonist ranging from Harry Potter to Daenerys Targaryen to Luke Skywalker. It's so lazy and uninspired.
Starting out as a stormtrooper seemingly loyal to the First Order, Finn decides to defect to "Resistance" because "it's the right thing" as he says which isn't so much a motivation as it is an after thought.

John Boyega I found to be shockingly one-note. His character Finn has one personality trait and that is he's cool. That's all there is to this guy, like most of these characters there's just no dimension to him at all. You could honestly redub all his dialogue with "yo, yo, yo kids, plagiarism is cool" and I honestly don't you would have missed a thing.
If his experiences with the First Order in the opening of the film really were as traumatic as J. J. Abrams would lead you to believe, then we as audience have to ask: Has anything like this happened before on any prior mission and if it has what is it about this particular incident that leaves an impact on him and if he really is a rookie stormtrooper why would this incident be so eye-opening in particular. The idea of a Stormtrooper who defects is admitedly an intriging one, but the social ramifications and emotional conflict that should come with it are greatly unexplored throughout the film.

Oscar Issac - well - ugh, why was he even there? He does nothing. He gets captured at the beginning (sound familiar?), he's freed by Finn for the lamest reasons for helping someone escape possible. He supposedly gets swallowed up by Quicksand when he and Finn crash land on Jakku following their escape from The First Order. He somehow survives and links up with the Resistance and leads an attack on Starkiller base - ugh -  there's nothing to this guy, he adds nothing to the film.
He was such an uninteresting character and served practically no purpose by the end of the film.

As for Adam Driver as Kylo Ren - look he's a gifted actor, but whatever he was doing in this film, whatever he was being told to do, just didn't work at all. His performance was truly bad and his villian character was shockingly ill-concived. He just doesn't come across as the least bit menacing or intimidating. The most thunder striking thing about his character is that every time a Imperial officer delivers some bad news to him, he throws a temper tantrum like a spoiled teenager who didn't get the Birthday present he so desperately desired. THAT'S NOT HOW A DANGEROUS VILLIAN REACTS. When Darth Vader was presented with bad news, he forced chocked the officers - which one sounds more intimidating?

As a villain for a normal normal sci-fi, action, adventure series, he's a complete fail. As a villain for a Star Wars movie - he is an embrassement. There is nothing interesting about him, there is nothing threatening about him, there is nothing menacing about him, there is nothing intimidating about him, there is nothing layered about him, there is nothing complex about him, there is nothing "conflicted" about him. He's just a petulant little sh*thead who only turned to the dark side because he didn't get a hug from mummy and daddy. This gets two Ls: FOR LAME AND LAZY! - Temper tantrums involving smashing up computers using your lightsaber do not spell out conflicted nature in my book.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the fact that Kylo Ren is a petulant teenager makes him a crummy antagonist but there needs to something that he genuinely cares about in order for us as an audience to relate to him, which brings us to the main thing that he lacks to make a compelling villain and that thing is...    Humanity.

I know what some of you are thinking - that Ren's lack of humanity wasn't the result of poor parenting on Han & Leia's part it was Snoke sucking all the humanity out of him.
The problem is we're constantly told this, but we never get to see it.
One of the fundamental rules of writing is "Show, don't tell". It may be a simple rule, but it's one that The Force Awakens manages to break a lot.
While Kylo Ren might have been an passionate, hard-working but confused, misguided, Jedi padawan who was afraid of not living up to his family legacy before he turned to the darks side, we as an audience never get to see that version of him.
George Lucas dedicated an entire trilogy to revealing Anakin's backstory so we felt and understood his decision to go down the Dark Path.
Kylo Ren gets no such backstory, we never at the very least get to see the story from his perspective at all, we only see it through the eyes of others i.e. it would be nice to see "the Light" version of him but all we get is expositional dialogue.
Hence it's impossible to feel sympathy for Kylo Ren pronounced lack of humanity or the films attempts at humanising him because we never get to see that there was any in the first place.

It's also never explained or elaborated one why he in particular would idolise Darth Vader of all people and view him as martyr.

His unstable lightsaber core is meant to represent his unpredictable nature but honestly it comes across as style for styles sake as opposed to representing a multilayerd character.

Carrie Fisher and Anthony Daniels both reprise their respective roles as Princess Leia and C-3PO. They have NOTHING to do in this film -  they do anything integral to the plot or add anything to film. They were only there as unforgivable fan service. They are two extras. You could removed all trace of them from the film and replaced them from with two nameless extras and you would have changed NOTHING. They are Princess Leia and C-3PO so F***ing what!

The film also wastes the talents of Lupita Nyong'o, Gwendoline Christie and Max von Sydow. Nyong'o is reduced to mearly being the exposition machine, Christie does absolutely nothing but appear as a cool action figure to sell toys and von Sydow is canned at the beginning before he's given a chance to shine.

Andy Serkis is given the thankless task of playing Supreme Comander Snoke who is quite possibly the most boring and one dimensional villain of the entire Star Wars saga. Much like the rest of the characters in this film there's no dimension to him. He just the stereotypical evil overlord character we've seen in better and more thoroughly though out film series such as Lord Voldermort from Harry Potter, Suaron from The Lord of the Rings and Emperor Palpatine from the previous trilogies.
After seeing him onscreen for about 5 milliseconds at the maximum, I was begging for the return of Ian McDiarmid from the previous trilogies.

Domhnall Gleeson gives a performance that is an unusual mixture of hammy, laughable and flat out embarrassing as General Hux. You watch as scenes colapse under the weight of his acting because he's so overly flamboyent and one dimensional it's just impossible to take him seriously - and he's just there to be the cliched Gran Moff character who answers to big baddie.

The film also have a bunch of glorified Celebrity cameos up its sleeve. Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Sebastian Armesto, Hannah John-Kamen and Kate Fleetwood appear as First Order officers and Daniel Craig and J. J. Abrams regular composer Michael Giacchino cameo as Stormtroopers.
As does Simon Pegg as a sleazy junk-dealer.
Greg Grunberg, Jessica Henwick and Kevin Smith have cameos as X-Wing Pilots.
Even Carrie Fisher's real life daughter Billie Lourd has a cameo as a Resistance officer.
Tim Rose and Mike Quinn also appear as Admiral Ackbar and Nien Nunb from Return of the Jedi. Again they do much or contribute anything vital to the plot, they're mainly there to please ungrateful, spoilt fans.

And as for Mark Hamill, they keep teasing and mentioning Luke throughout this movie and we as an audience are kept in suspense about his inevitable appearing but ultimately it's like "Oh he's just in this film for a 5 second cameo at the end". The litteral face of this saga basically vanishes offscreen and is barely in the film.

The only good performance in this film and by far the best part of this film is Harrison Ford as Han Solo - I'll at least say that. Sure he was sleepwalking through the role but at least he looked like he gave a sh*t about what was happening.

There will come a day in the history of film when film students in their media schools will be given a lecture on the Star Wars franchise and they'll reevaluate the quality of the 9 films in the three trilogies. The Prequel Trilogy will be recognised as solid and entertaining - not on par with the Original Trilogy obviously but well made and entertaining and The Force Awakens and the rest of the Disney/Star Wars fare will be recognised as tame, uninspired and unnecessary. And don't tell me that day won't come because it bloody will!

I'm sorry but when I come to power, Star Wars films are going to be banned and that's it!

The Anonymous Critic.