Corporate-constructed entertainment

Rating: 6/10 (27 December 2015)

I have to agree with many of the mediocre reviews here. I think once the Disney PR-driven, socially-engineered hysteria has died down, and the hardcore fans and trolls have gotten bored, The Force Awakens will eventually come to be regarded, like other JJ Abrams films, as a fun, but ultimately hollow, experience. There is no point rehashing most of the criticisms that other reviewers have leveled, but I think I can sum many of them up this way: the plot of this movie feels mechanical rather than organic. It's exactly what one would expect from a committee of people who were hired to sit down and construct a piece of "art" according to corporate specifications. Here's a checklist, guys, now make sure your script checks off every box. It's not easy to write a screenplay that way while still maintaining the feel and flow of natural storytelling. You end up with a whole bunch of scenes that probably sounded great when they were pitched to the execs, but don't resonate with the audience when they are assembled together on screen because they haven't been earned.
You end up with things like outright plagiarism of the original trilogy, because Corporate knows fans love those films and they want more Death Star and heroes from desert planets. You get Leia and Rey crying over her lost "father figure" because we need to be "dark" like Empire and have "family drama," despite the fact that Rey has all of three minutes of screen time with Han, most of it involving them frantically trying to survive one of the movie's innumerable frenetic action scenes, all of which seem to blend together after a while. (Oh, that reminds me guys, Corporate also requests there be a hyper- frenetic CGI action sequence every five to six pages. See the checkboxes under the ADHD subsection of the script requirements!) You get scenes like the Han-Kylo standoff, despite the fact that there is no emotional connection developed between the two characters and we have absolutely no idea why they are even at odds, save for a couple bizarre scenes where Han and Leia keep repeating to each other that they have "lost our son." And, of course, you get scenes like the infamous I-picked-up-a- lightsaber-and-now-I'm-a-Jedi fight, because Corporate wanted a big lightsaber duel at the end which the good guys would win, and since Luke wasn't in the movie, Rey needed to jump suddenly from zero to Luke-at-the-end-of-Empire skill level. Which is convenient, because that kind of "I am woman, hear me roar!" stuff where the female lead is a perfect human being capable of learning any skill in under five seconds flat checks off more script requirements, notably those under the PC subsection. In retrospect, Disney hasn't even tried to hide the fact that race and gender and social empowerment issues were mandated parts of the story construction process. It's no coincidence they created a movie where the new heroes are a totally- unreliant-on-any-man-for-anything white woman; a bland, meek, completely-non-threatening-in-any-way black guy; a wisecracking, patriotic, also completely non-threatening Hispanic guy; and a wise, Yoda-like sage played by a black woman; and now they are putting out press releases claiming to be reaching "more diverse" audiences than previous Star Wars films. This is art as created by business school graduates.
Despite these flaws, The Force Awakens never becomes a bad movie, but the heart and soul of Star Wars have been replaced by a corporate-constructed mechanical simulation of a heart and soul. It's entertaining, but it won't stay with people long after they've left the theater. The original trilogy became an enduring part of pop culture. This movie will have fallen out of the collective consciousness by the time the next Star Trek film comes out (yes, the irony is palpable). But, hey, at least it's better than the prequels.