A Missed Opportunity

Rating: 5/10 (18 December 2015)

First of all I must say that I knew than JJ Abrams can't pull this thing off. His storytelling abilities were always– at least to me –insuffcient. Just look at LOST" and the last installment of Star Trek". Nobody knows what happened with those stories and neither deserves a second viewing. He is capable to throw in some cool stuff in his movies but he was always unable to dramaturgicaly develop a story and finalize it in a satisfactory manner. And the hype from his fans is mostly damaging for the movie. The same applies for SWTFA. I remember some guy on YT with a T-shirt with a logo In J.J. we trust". Well, that trust was misplaced. But where to begin? First of all, the biggest issue with this movie is that if you have seen all the trailers you wont have to see the movie. Honestly, there is just a single scene in the movie that wasn't shown in the trailers. The rest is well known. It is sad, because many fans thought that JJ decided to limit the trailers to predictable stuff. But that was all there is. The entire movie. Second thing. The hype, which began some time ago was about the fact that there are not much CGI effects and characters in the movie. But – imagine! – the supreme leader of Nord Kor... I mean First Order is humongous, bad, childish and cartoonish computer generated image in manner of Azog the Defiler form the last Hobbit-Movie. Then, of course we have nacistic imagery which is always effective to show some bad guys, but the speech from General Hitler...I mean Hux at the festive launch of the new Death Star made me laugh. It was so over the top, and a funny copy of Hitlers voice and countenance. Further, we have some under-under-under-used characters like Captain Phasma, who was so cool in the trailer with her silver armor. I thought that she will be the main opponent for some of our heroes but alas. She was captured without a fight and put into a garbage compactor (not shown on screen so maybe she did survive, who knows? Or cares.). Then we have our main bad guy-mister Kylo Ren. What a disappointment! At the beginning of the movie he is really a menacing presence with some new powers of the Dark side, but then we get to know him better and I must say I don't understand him or his motivation. Even the sulking Anakin from the prequels is better defined than this dark lord". But he had three movies to develop" his character, maybe we will someday see why Kylo Ren became Kylo Ren. But at first sight, I have no idea how he became evil, or why, or how did the ayatollah...I mean supreme leader manage to bring him to the DSOTF. Furthermore, in this movie we have more of the same stuff from the original trilogy. A planet-destroying weapon. Again. With some Achilles-heel that our heroes might exploit. Again. Some fighter battles. Again. Everything is by-the-numbers and everything we have seen before. So dramaturgicaly it is Episode IV all over again. But on the other side, we have some likable plucky heroes (hmm...again). All in all, it could have been much better.