just okay; something of a letdown

Rating: 7/10 (1 January 2016)

I don't recall there ever being more anticipation for a film, ever (myself included), so the likelihood of this film living up to the hype was probably an impossible task... with that said, I found it lacking in real substance/originality, and surprisingly lazy & weak (for a film/story 30 years in the making, with a huge budget) in many aspects. I thought we were really going to steer clear of unnecessary CG in Star Wars this time around, yet many of the 'dogfight' air battles seemed to ooze with it in a transparent way. Two significant characters were fully rendered in CG, also, as well as those crappy monsters aboard Han's ship. While the first character, Maz Kanata, was acceptable- she did look pretty amazing, albeit forgettable and kinf of pointless- the second character, Supreme Leader Snoke, was downright pathetic. Snoke's appearance and purpose in the film is lazy, boring, ridiculous, retread, weak and out of place. Why pay big bucks for top actors (Serkis & Nyong'o) if they're going to be entirely recreated with computer graphics? I'm not sure what the point of Captain Phasma was, either. For a main villain in the story, she sure didn't really do anything. Did she even shoot a single shot from her blaster anywhere in the film? Her role could have been played easily by anyone so this is another odd case of paying big bucks for an actor/name that doesn't even show their face or really perform in any way. I'm thinking Disney/Abrams had intent to have some big reveal with her by removing the helmet somewhere in the movie but when word got out about the female playing the role they just scrapped that idea, as the surprise was ruined. And then again, maybe I'm giving more credit to them than they deserve. It also felt like Disney was trying to push an interracial romantic relationship here that didn't seem natural (with Rey & Finn) for PR purposes. The chemistry between the two main characters was good and worked as a friendship but not really believable as a romance. The acting by Ridley, Boyega, Driver and Ford was good enough- I found Ridley/Rey especially enjoyable. The rest were meh. Kylo Ren's character was okay, especially his voice, but he did lose a lot- whenever the helmet came off; imbued more Hayden Christianson, disgruntled teen (yawn) than Darth Vader, badass- in those instances. Ford as Solo was somewhat surprisingly right on beat though I thought he would have served the story better as an evolved mature businessman or something rather than an aged-but-still-smuggling type. His character is more important than that. Thankfully the interaction between he and Chewy was perfect as always. There wasn't enough pacing and downtime in my opinion for really building the characters and conflicts properly, as the story seems set on hurrying to the next flying/blasting action sequence. The way they just 'hey, let's take that ship (sitting there).' and jump in and fly off with the Millennium Falcon from Jakku- a place that seems rough and full of scavengers- was particularly weak. Luke's lightsabre just chilling there in a plain wooden box- for basically anyone to take at anytime- in Maz's basement was dumb, too. The whole 'visions' and 'being called to it' stuff was kinda lame. BB-8 was good; a cool, truly inspired creation. In all, it's a decent film by itself but not a stellar sequel to the original Star Wars trilogy. It simply rehashes too much of the original without introducing enough new, original and creative (interesting) ideas. I seem to be in the minority that thinks J.J. Abrams kind of dropped the ball on this one. I like the next gen of Jedi being in the hands of Rey (Ridley). I feel confident in her ability to carry it. There's little else to be excited over to me from this film going forward. P.S. Does no one on the bad side realize that Darth Vader is the sole and primary reason The Emperor, and thus, The Empire, was defeated? Not exactly the guy one should idolize if they're pusuing a path to the darkside (ahem, Kylo...)