Adieu, you scruffy-looking nerf herder

Rating: Null/10 (19 December 2015)

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" opens with the franchise's iconic receding text, a bit of Pavlovian conditioning guaranteed to bring fanboys to arousal. Director J. J Abrams then takes us to the planet Jakku, where Resistance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is acquiring a map which leads to Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamil), a powerful space wizard. Unfortunately Poe is attacked by The First Order, a military group which has risen from the ashes of a fallen Galactic Empire.
After a dull, poorly directed action sequence designed to impress upon us the nefariousness of First Order henchman Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Poe is taken to a First Order ship and interrogated. Why? Because the First Order want Luke's location. Luckily Poe gave the map to BB-8, a loyal droid still on the surface of Jakku. And so back down to Jakku the First Order go, as do Poe and Finn (John Boyega), a First Order soldier looking for a career change. Once there they meet Rey (Daisy Ridley), a resourceful scavenger.
"Awakens'" first act is dull, repetitive and too obvious a rip-off of "A New Hope's" (1977) more streamlined opening sequences. A better director would have flushed this material and opened simply with Rey, a lonely girl who ekes out an existence amidst the dunes of Jakku. See the opening scenes of Hayao Miyazaki's "Valley of the Wind" for similar material artfully set up.
"Awakens'" second act gets better thanks to John Boyega, who plays a likable deserter with the face of Matt Damon and the conscience of Edward Snowden. Finn's romantic relationship with Rey, both outcasts, leads to some of the film's best moments. They escape Jakku by strolling into the Millennium Falcon, everybody's favourite YT-1300 Corellian freighter, which for some inexplicable reason is left conveniently unlocked. Audiences are then treated to some serious Falcon-porn, the freighter dodging enemy TIE fighters amidst the wreckage of an old Star Destroyer. If you know what a TIE fighter and Star Destroyer are, commiserations, this film is for you.
"Awakens'" second half begins with Finn and Rey running into smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his sidekick Chewbacca. Solo's fleeing gangsters, Asian space triads and giant tentacle monsters. Because Han is such a powerful archetype, because Chewie is such a loyal lapdog, and because Harrison Ford does his best work in years, these unimaginative scenes work well. "Star Wars" without Han is like Sergio Leone without Clint Eastwood. He brings the cool.
But Abrams' an idiot, so Han steps onto a bridge and, in a moment everyone sees coming a mile away, gets stabbed by Kylo Ren. Audience interest in this franchise then plummets a further 50 percent. Along the way we learn that Kylo is Han's son and that the First Order have constructed a giant Star Killer. Yes, another planet-sized super-weapon. Abrams wrote this film. He can't write.
"Awakens" climaxes with the Star Killer being destroyed by a squadron of S-foil locking X-Wing fighters led by Poe Dameron, essentially a Latino Wedge Antilles. Dameron, who utilises manoeuvres reminiscent of the Death Star Trench Run, takes off from a planet which looks like Yavin 4. If you know what an S-foil, X-wing, Yavin 4, Death Star, Trench Run and Wedge Antilles are, commiserations, this film is for you.
"Awakens" is over two-hours long. Two long hours of shapeless scripting, Mcguffins, homages, call-backs, unimaginative writing, repeated scenes (two tortures, two giant hologram meetings etc etc), cartoonish villains, and an antagonist (Kylo Ren) who looks like a Harry Potter nemesis, disgruntled goth or disaffected American high-school spree shooter. Kylo Ren's subplot is so ridiculous - he's torn between the "dark side" and "light side" because he hates his teacher and drugs are cool AND WHY DOESN'T ANYONE UNDERSTAND ME AND OMG MOM, I'M NOT A KID ANYMORE! - you almost wish for the return of Hayden Christensen. When the moody Ren dramatically takes off his helmet to reveal a Napoleon Dynamite face underneath, it's hard not to laugh. Listening to him wax nostalgically for his grandfather, the apparently misunderstood Darth Vader, is even more hilarious. Why does this universe allow the Skywalkers to breed? This family's bad parenting is clearly putting everyone at risk.
"Awakens" is filled with talk of "mysterious forces", "dark sides" and "light sides". Back in 1977, this all felt mystical and mysterious. But to build a third trilogy on a kid's descend into "badness" due to magical mumbo jumbo is a sign of severe laziness. This laziness extends to the film's action sequences which, despite the aid of modern special effects, never really touch the work George Lucas did back in the 1970s and 80s. Old ideas in fresh paint can't beat the buzz of new ideas. Like him or loathe him, what Lucas did was once stylistically new. With every other blockbuster already a Lucas-clone, Abrams clone is still but a clone in daddy's decor.
Still, there's a solid 30 minutes of fun in "Awakens". The film works well when it operates on the level of slap-stick, its female roles are decently written, and it gives actual screen-time to a no-name black actor, a rarity in big-budget Hollywood. Han (R.I.P) and Chewie are also never less than fun, especially when scurrying down corridors and messing about behind enemy lines. Likewise Finn and Rey, who have good buddy-couple cum romantic-partner chemistry. Oscar Isaac is fine too, with his old-fashioned matinée idol looks. Where "Awakens" becomes tedious is in its villains, its pantomime evil dialogue, and its giant cast of heinous stormtroopers (chunkier than before, but still inept), members of a mass murdering trans-planetary government which inexplicably exists only to do cartoonishly evil stuff.
"Awakens" ends with one of its best moments. On the same islands Werner Herzog once contemplated man's epistemological limits, Master Luke Skywalker, his face aged and weather beaten, stands and awaits an apprentice.
6.5/10 - Lucas may have molested your childhood, but Abrams killed Han Solo, man.