New Hope Remastered, with a pathetic antagonist Sith and annoying protagonists

Rating: 1/10 (24 December 2015)

I don't normally feel compelled to write reviews, but the amount of 10's this rework of the original movie is getting demands balance. Many of the reviews on IMDb emphasize the myriad of issues that The Force Awakens suffers from, many of these from the point of view of a die-hard fan. I will not pretend for a second that I am a die- hard fan myself, but having watched the original films as a young kid and then have the prequel series (despite its own flaws) released as I grew up, I certainly became enamoured with many of the themes, characters and overall package of entertainment that each Star Wars movie offered. By the time Revenge had been released, I had certainly not come to expect the highest quality acting or scripting but what I had come to expect was a certain level of wonder, exciting battle sequences, bad ass antagonists and somewhat respectable protagonists. Star Wars The Force Awakens nails everything it was always going to succeed with, sparkly effect ridden battles, the cameos of old characters and basically just having the Star Wars universe present in the movie. However, Star Wars The Force Awakens fails in almost every other regard, which I will run through; 1.) Pathetic Antagonist Sith (Kylo Ren) - One of the most exciting things about the previous movies is the presence of powerful antagonist characters (sith) that can only be overcome through particular hardship by the Jedi/protagonists. Darth Vader and Darth Sidious took 3 movies to be overcome in the original trilogy, Darth Maul took Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn on 2v1 in the Phantom Menace before going down to Obi-Wan's hacks and Count Dooku whooped Anakin, Obi-Wan and even Yoda before going down at the start of the Revenge of the Sith. KYLO REN, the Sith character from The Force Awakens was extremely promising, albeit very similar initially in terms of characteristics to Darth Vader. However, the combination of him removing his helmet and being some Serverus Snape looking emo weasel, having multiple batty tantrums and then getting beaten by the female protagonist, who hasn't ever used a lightsabre before fighting him, makes Kylo Ren by far the worst antagonist to exist in the Star Wars universe. He's already been made to look like a total sissy before the beginning of episode 8, truly a let-down in this regard. – Additionally, the chrome storm trooper officer, while being shown off in the trailer, does absolutely nothing in the movie except help the rebels shut down the shield to blow up the Death Star Mk2. 2.) Completely Re-hashed story taken from Star Wars A New Hope – not much to say here, even the titles of the movies are similar – young force-gifted person awakens on desert planet, saves droids, destroy death star etc etc. Many other reviews go into just how ridiculously copy-pasted the story is, if you can think of a plot- point from A New Hope then an almost identical one probably exists in The Force Awakens. 3.) INCONSISTENCIES – Came to realise some of these through scanning other reviews and thinking about it myself, but The Force Awakens, while extremely faithful to many themes and motifs of the Star Wars Universe, screws many of them up. The most obvious and ridiculous one would be the way that Rey, the female force using protagonist, literally gets told of the force's existence by Han Solo and then somehow (without explanation through the course of the story) figures out how to use Jedi-Mind-Tricks, force pull/push(telekinesis) and how to use a lightsabre (eventually beating the Sith Kylo Ren who trained UNDER Luke SKYWALKER and then KILLED ALL THE OTHER DISCIPLES HE WAS TRAINING). The Jedi-Mind-Trick scene was added purely for use as a plot device and for comedic value. Someone also please explain how the lightsabre Rey eventually receives (AKA Luke's old lightsabre) is BLUE, when the last lightsabre he had was GREEN because he was forced to make after losing the blue one in cloud city after Vader cut his hand off. If the First Order are supposed to be the new, even more dangerous Empire, why have they gone and made an even more idiotic and moronic version of the Death Star. There are even more 4.) Over excited, over-acting from the main characters. Seems like a bit of Disney charm here, in an effort to make the wooden acting more acceptable they have made the main characters far too intense and at times very cringe in their interactions. Finn was much better than Rey in terms of how his performance fit his character, but let's be honest, we all know why Rey was chosen for this role (Keira Knightly look alike AKA Natalie Portman look alike) and it wasn't for her acting – instead just a lot of shouting. Ultimately, the movie was entertaining enough, especially in IMAX but the problem is that was purely because I initially thought I was in for something special (which I continued to believe until about midway into the movie due to pure faith in the director, technology available and early responses) and because of the effect sequences (which didn't provide anything new you wouldn't have seen in previous movies.) What the movie is extremely successful at, is being a flawless commercial success in the way that it has got everyone to pay top dollar for a very low-quality, poorly written, acted and characterised movie that has been almost entirely copy pasted from A New Hope. It will be exciting for people who don't know star wars for sure, but even for someone who has only watched the previous movies one or two times each, The Force Awakens offers nothing new and f**ks up a few things it probably just could have copy pasted as well, ONE STAR