The power of advertising and nostalgia

Rating: 3/10 (24 January 2016)

There is always an explanation...and many reviewers have given them. Indulge me and let me get this disappointment off my chest and into the universe. The extraordinarily high rating given this episode, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is surely linked in part to nostalgia and massive advertising. It is as if we couldn't dislike such a fixture of our childhood even if it is being served up again covered with crème chantilly and so many other frills designed to cover up the truth that the dish is tasteless. There is plenty of humanity in earlier episodes, the Nytimes.com review is a mystery here. And please tell me if I missed it but there is less than nothing new or original in this episode. The new young stars are compelling but the out of the vacuum storyline is not. The only humanity I saw in the film is that Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill were allowed to age, graciously or not depending on your personal projections. We do have the generalized massacre of anything enemy, as well as defenseless planets. In sheer numbers these virtual deaths put practically every other high body count movie to shame. The carnage is rarely graphic however. The first 'moment of blood' is when John Boyega realizes that his fellow Stormtrooper is indeed flesh and blood, however, there are no indications that all these billions? of people being blown away, even though it looks so clean and spectacular, you know using the power of the sun to annihilate planets, are indeed people... This said, annihilating billions is a SF trope (see Dune, etc.) and the real problems with this film lie mostly elsewhere. Disney can make great films, using its name or one of its subsidiary studios but this film, which I am sure has already spawned many video games, was made to make money big time, and little else. Which is disappointing.