Awkwardly forced

Rating: 2/10 (19 December 2019)

This film was assuredly critic proof and having seen it that was certainly an advantage that it needed.
Why would you make the "next" Star Wars film like this? After a production hiatus and a change of franchise ownership. The first installment of a sequel trilogy? Episode VII of a nine part saga?
It's as though there was no confidence on the part of the film makers and financiers that Star Wars fans would go see it........and take their families and friends.......in some instances repeatedly.
They could have written, produced and released anything. Anything that their imaginations could conceive and their film making skills convey.
So.
Why this? Is this what they wanted to make?
A one paced remake. A prolonged slow, plodding, remake apology for touching the Star Wars brand? Why did they turn apologists for their own film making?
An entire movie of apologising for casting new actors in new roles in a new era of new stories. OK. We know it's not 1977 or 1999 or any part of the 20th century.
But there was no confidence that anything that these filmmakers would produce would be accepted by fans without a two hour apology on the part of the new management.
Perhaps because Disney had bought Lucasfilm simply because it was for sale and a desirable property to investing in.
Maybe.
As I watched this fresh in the cinema I realised that this film was bad because of how boring it was. Within thirty minutes of the opening scroll I was bored and getting increasingly so.
I wondered how professional filmmakers could produce a film so one paced. So incapable of telling a story in a manner that human beings naturally respond to, like a rhythm of life, like how almost every competent story teller does it. Modulation I believe is the term. Changes of pace and tone. Changes if emphasis and urgency. Things like that diminish the capacity for boring fiction. This film has a sky high over capacity.
Because the one paced storytelling is resolutely slow paced. Like a ship sluggishly responding to the helm at very low speeds. This film has a turning circle that never quits.
In part it is slowed down by the plethora of characters. The film sadly has two casts and that is far too many characters for this level of storytelling to carry.
You can almost see scenes getting out of the way so that the next character can introduce themselves. Then that scene stands aside so that a previously ponderously introduced new or reintroduced returning character can have a 'doing' scene. Then they, and their scene, step aside for the next introduction. Which repeats the formula once again. For ages this film keeps doing this.
Unfortunately I found the acting to be as awkward as the written filmplay must have read. New actors were awkward. Returning actors were awkward. Awkward individually. Awkward in concert. Generational difference doesn't have to produce an effect like this....an effect similar to one you may experience bumping into an old friend that you no longer have anything in common with. Or an ex partner.....
Harrison Ford seems as bored as I was watching his performance. I've since seen 'Solo: A Star Wars story' and I still think that this is the single worst performance of the role of Han Solo that I've ever witnessed.
Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford's returning characters take the awkwardness analogy of exes too literally. Why and who even wrote that? And with them both being pretty severe victims of 'Hollywood face syndrome' I couldn't decide if they were too bored to emote or just too numbed.
I thought that the sound design was poor for a Star Wars film, not least the iconic lightsaber duel sound effect, which was ruined by the debatable decision to give the chief goon Kylo Ten a 'lightbroadsword' which had an unattractive sound effect best put down as a simple "bad creative decision".
Finally I suppose the believability of the drama was utterly lacking. After all these characters are introduced, given their own scene, moved around the galaxy in twos and threes, there's no build up of credibility in any one of them. No credibility means no involvement. No involvement means no suspension of disbelief. And that means no drama. No thrills. No suspense. No climax. No release.
It means boring.
This is compounded by the choice of premise for our dangerous motivating driver; the thing prodding our protagonist to protagonise: 'The First Order' and it's "armed forces".
Hhhmmmmmmmm. Boringly derivative nonsense that degrades the original trilogy not so much by underplaying the extent of the goodies win in that contest but denying the new generation a truly distinctive baddie of their own to best. It isn't the original generation of character heros being short changed........its the new ones who are expecting to carry on the thrilling action adventures in space!!!
What a way to start. With a total lack of confidence and conviction. A total disdain for the filmmakers own competency.
That's my reasoning to explain why this is so boring that it's just finally, frankly, really bad.