A Solid, Over-Hyped Dramedy with a Cute Droid

Rating: 6/10 (18 December 2015)

When the first part of Star Wars (now referred to as Episode IV) came to the movie theaters back in the late 1970ies, George Lucas, the creator, rather went on holiday with his buddy Steven Spielberg than attending the premiere of his movie expecting this B-movie inspired Sci-FI Western to be a failure and yet it became possibly the most successful movie franchise in history giving millions of viewers worldwide a form of light escapism which rarely another series managed to accomplish; and now roughly 40 years later, we have a whole different situation, the movie companies invested so much money into this and the fan expectations are so high that failure is simply not an option so whatever fresh, innovative, bold ideas on part of young, aspiring script authors were submitted for Episode VII, obviously everything was abandoned as too risky for a potential success, therefore they hired the same old script author L. Kasdan not to adequately continue the saga but to simply retell it for a new generation of movie goers in such a way that the old fans won't feel excluded and J.J. Abrams made sure the cast is young and energetic and the dialogues not so cheesy like in G. Lukas' times.
The result is a fastidious clinging to main plot lines of Episode IV our heroes have to pass in order to be more or less at the same endpoint as their predecessors. Making the new version of Luke Skywalker female is not hiding how closely she is portrayed after Luke having no real background story whatsoever leaving much to tell for further installments emphasizing the incomplete nature of Episode VII. As much as Kylo would like to become the new Darth Vader, in the end he is just a whiny mother's boy, such a disappointment. The fact alone that they felt the need for a Darth Vader rip-off is a sacrilege in my eyes, instead it would have been more honest to just let Vader clone or resurrect otherwise than just replace him with a wannabe cult figure. Some of the CGI aliens look like they come right from Hogwarts. J. Boyega as Finn is the only new archetype of character having no old role model. And the new version of R2D2, the cute BB-8 is almost stealing the show to everyone and he is just a beeping ball with a head! All the old characters like Han Solo or C3PO seemingly pop up out of nothing and they are really holding the story kept into a firm nostalgia corsage. Especially this entire annoying relational entanglements in the sense of who is the grandfather or mother or cousin of whom is on very trivial dramedy level.
Where the prequels used to be all shiny and imaginative and epic in terms of settings and abundance, Episode VII is just open, barren deserts, empty space and forsaken forests, gray and monotonous with cheap scenery and one or two solid space battles and a weak melee fight.
I really liked the beginning of this movie up until I realized this dog is just chasing after his own tail and we even applaud it since failure is not an option.