Star Wars did not need a reboot

Rating: 2/10 (27 February 2018)

The Force Awakens was a fun if uninspired movie, that fuses a cast of new quirky characters almost seamlessly with a number of old time favorites. And the onscreen chemistry is great. The adventure is exciting if already done and the pacing is very Star Wars. While Kylo Ren was a week and unconventional villain, that give him the potential the be a more interesting villain(Ante herow?) than usual. And the ominous supreme leader Snoke fills the niche of evil mastermind well enough. None of this however saved the movie form a number of unfortunate truths. The most obvious of which is that the movie is actually A New Hope but different and in a decisively worse way. Almost trope for trope the force awakens was a copy of A New Hope. Not to say there weren't some very different elements but the skeleton was still there. Orphan hero growing up on a desert planet, secret data carried by a droid that speaks in beeps, new heroes' meat old heroes, old hero sacrifices himself in front of new hero. And before it is all over a bar fight at a really sketchy bar. Retooling the old movies however was not as bad as what they had to do to the Star Wars Universe to do it. Taking the rebellion back to square one betrayed the entire first trilogy as a whole. Sending Han and Chewy back into the smuggling business undoes all the character evolution he underwent in the first 3 movies, and requires that we imagine Laya would just let him go. And there is a huge plot whole established with the introduction of Supreme Leader Snoke. All of the Sith were destroyed. Twice in fact, the first time before A Phantom Menace, the second time at the end of Return of the Jedi. So where did this new guy come from especially since he seems so old. I must say that although it was an enjoyable movie it's popcorn value dos not make up for the fact that they had to reboot the universe to retell us a story we liked but in a worse way. Say what you want about the screen writing of the prequels, but you must admit the story was fantastic. The Plot of The Force Awakens leaves much to be desired and that is as thoroughly un Star Wars as a movie can be.