The good, the bad and the ugly (incl. German edition's review)

Rating: 7/10 (14 January 2016)

I went to the cinema last night and here's my personal review:
In general: None of the characters is getting developed during the plot. All of them are fully explained and equipped with all their attitude and feature sets within the first five minutes of appearance.
Kylo Ren, the villain: isn't threatening at all. I feel sad for a youngster who's apparently been hanging around with the wrong guys and is gotten weird in his puberty. But I'm not impressed. He's just a nervous kid who has never learned to control his temper, angrily destroying things in his room when he gets upset. To me he's more like Biff Tannen in the "Back to the Future" franchise.
Rey, the girl: is just as stubborn, insolent and ludicrously high gifted as all movie heroins are. She's so scrawny she can hardly hold a gun, yet she's winning every fight easily. Oh my god.... Well, at least she PILOTS like a woman ;)
Flinn, the guy: is stupid and clumsy. I wonder how he survived his time as a soldier. And I wonder why I should be continuously watching him failing over and over again. I feel sad for him.
The girl and the guy: I guess Disney wanted to turn the role model wheel 180°, making the skinny young girl a fighter and the fighter a foolish young girl. For me such absurdity is utterly hard to watch without holding and shaking my disenchanted head.
Lor San Tekka, Max von Sydow: Why is he, the perfect Obi-Wan Kenobi character successor, in the movie only for about five minutes?
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Why is every film aimed at 12 year old children nowadays? Why didn't the creatures in the carrier hurt someone?
Most of the excitement, suspense and sobriety in a movie comes from characters not talking. But all of the characters in the movie - just - didn't - stop - talking!
No ambiance or mute suspense scenes are depicted whatsoever. No fade or wipe as been applied, too. So there's no chance whatsoever to get John William's excellent score to interact with the audience.
Everyone was acting so fast and nervously. Gee, I felt like being in a nursery from all the unnecessary stupidity and cheer that's been said.
What's so great with Chewbacca's crossbow which Han Solo didn't see earlier in all these years?
Everyone in the movie is talking and behaving too nervously and fast. The only ones with a great timing were Han Solo - and Snoke in particular.
The Chewbacca character is giving a plain stupid idiot. Just like the Finn character does.
BB-8 is behaving like a little dog. No cleverness whatsoever. He's unnecessary from the beginning. It would have been more reasonable to put the USB stick into a box and hide it in the sands than to introduce the BB-8 character for this.
I would have preferred if a Muppet would have been used for playing Maz Kanata. These CGI characters just don't have soul. I bet no child would like to have a Maz Kanata puppet in their bed.
Why is the chess board (Dejarik) on board the Millennium Falcon playing all of a sudden - WITHOUT players?
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And here's my review to the horrible German translation of the flick:
"I'm a Stormtrooper" has been translated into "ich bin ein Sturmtruppler" - Huh? "Sturmtruppler"??? Really? So the German translators didn't know how to translate a German word into German?? In English this would be like calling him a "Stormtroopling"! Gee!! ... Who came up with that idea?? Why didn't they let him say something reasonable like: "ich gehöre zu den Sturmtruppen" which may be translated as "I'm belonging to the shock troops"?!?
Same for "The First Order": They translated it into "Die erste Ordnung" which sounds just like "The First Orderliness" in German. Gee!! What did they think this is? Isn't the house cleaning company nearby called like this? I hardly believe the director of the German version really knew what he/she was doing... A more appropriate translation into German would have been something like "Das neue Regime".
It must have been nitwits who did the translation. Didn't they know that the Empire is a allegory to the Third Reich? Come one, guys, this isn't Lord of the Rings!
Moreover, I don't know about Kylo Ren's English voice, but the German voice has been badly set. Too much intonation, he is talking too quickly. His voice is just too vivid and nervous to be evil. Given that voice, wouldn't he be better off singing when he tortures others? (After all, it's a Disney flick, isn't it?)
Same for the silvery "Stormtroopling". He's a "she" - and she's talking with a high pitched girl's voice! Urgh!! I couldn't hold myself laughing when she'd be giving orders.
Not to mention the voice of Maz Kanata. She's got the voice of a young woman! But does she look like one?? To me she rather seemed and felt like a female Yoda. And that's what I would have expected from her voice: The voice from someone having a voice like one of the Golden Girls actresses. Or Roseanne's as it is now.
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One positive thing: There *really* is a great deal of true hardware and makeup done in the movie. And it was great to see the Millennium Falcon interior with all the traditional switches and levers - and WITHOUT a touch screen!
However, the amount of CGI in the movie is still 99 % compared to real hardware/makeup.
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I'm very much looking forward to get a hand on the DVD. As soon as I get it I will cut all the hooey and girlish stuff out, add length by slowing down some scenes and create my own grown-up version of the flick.