Star Wars VII "I've Got A Bad Feeling About This"

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2015)

Where do I begin? Where do I begin indeed After a while you begin to notice commonalities between movies, plots, characters, themes and other nuances of the theatrical type. In a multi-movie run as long as Star Wars has been around you are bound to notice some of these similarities - most of which are minor in scope and detail. Overall though we expect originality to build our belief in the world being shown to us on the silver screen. It is this originality that we go back for, it is this newness that keeps us expecting more and it is this fresh take that make us excited about a movie that defines our generation.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
I sat in the theater by myself with other Star War Fans around me and I must admit I was really stoked to see this movie. It's been a few years since a new Star Wars movie came out and this was the first time Disney was at the helm guiding this franchise out of the harbor so to speak. What could go wrong? Disney bought Marvel and those movies were fantastic! J.J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek to great fanfare so see seems to know what he is doing. This had all the making of space opera perfection! The moment that Lucasfilm badge appeared on screen I felt my emotions well up, that music you all instantly know as the Star Wars theme song began and I leaned forward in anticipation, those words scrolled up the black space background and I was smiling ear to ear. It was actually starting! I sat back to enjoy the ride. But This movie seemed intent on destroying many of the previous conceptions of Star Wars (please keep in mind I don't' want to spoil it too much so I'll keep my review rather ambiguous). Female Stormtroopers - heck let's do a female Stormtrooper commander! Why? Because it's 2015 I guess. But let's limit her role to menacing lines and a then later as a cooperative prisoner to advance the plot. Let's throw in a black Stormtrooper as well - that will really shake things up! Except the black Stormtrooper runs away from his job a'la slave escaping it's master and is now on the run. And the main bad guy. Let's dress him in black, give him a mask for no reason and super cool funky sword that no one else has so he looks like a religious knight about to embark on a holy war. Let's make him mean! But unsure of himself and not completely trained yet - so people know he will be in training in the second movie. Let's make his current training so bad that a brand new user of the force can defeat him - in everything! I won't tell you the plot twist in all this but trust me, you'll see it coming. As much as the movie wants to destroy many of the previous conceptions of Star Wars, it also wants to hold many of the main plot points dear. A Droid holding secret plans, a droid abandoned on a planet, a droid finding friends to help it along. Let's have a Death Star, but not a Death Star, but bigger! NO! MUCH BIGGER! A wait for it A STAR KILLER! But let's not learn anything from the previous Death Stars instead let's make the same mistake of making an easily accessible guarded by laser cannons that rebel fights must fly through in a limited amount of time to the weak point that we can use as an attack point to blow it up. Just like the original Star Wars movie. How could it have been better? It's been 30 years since the end of the events in the The Return of the Jedi, new characters needed to be developed, new ships given a bigger role and a letting go of the past to the point of just allowing Han, Chewie, C-3P0 and Leia to be just background cameo characters - not the leads. Except for Mark Hamill, the movie connection could have just been Luke Skywalker and I think it would have been fine. Personally, I think the best part of the movie was the Mark Hamill reveal. Mirroring is one thing, but when you copy and paste the major plot points from one movie to the next - you're taking the fans for idiots J.J. Abrams, and trust me we are not. Finally, I predict that this "Star Wars IV A New Hope remake" will drop off the radar as many people realize just how bad it really is.