Boring and Predictable

Rating: 4/10 (16 December 2015)

I jut got just back from the cinema, watching a movie everyone has been waiting for since 1983, me included. And i got to say, I'm starting to get a little bit tired of watching a 2 hour movie about destroying a death star.
Because here we go again! George Lucas did not succeed with his follow-up movies, and there is many reasons for that. And no, it is mainly not because of Jar-Jar, it is because he just threw in one epic battle after the other, without having any good story, or any good plot, and at times horrible acting to come with it.
Michael Bay has this as his trademark, but he is still very successful and his movies makes billions. And why is that?. Because kids. And the Star wars and transformers franchises have in common that they sell toys, in large quantity. This is what really makes the big bucks over time. Not the movies themselves. The movies are just big commercials for toys.
George Lucas knew this better than anyone. And he is a brilliant businessman, but not so brilliant when it comes to making movies.
I do like the first Star wars trilogy, with "the empire strikes back" as my favorite, this is by the way the film in the trilogy George Lucas himself dislikes the most. That pretty much explains why the second trilogy was so bad, as "The Empire Strikes back" spends more time developing a story than the other two films in the original trilogy, and therefor you get more attached to the characters.
When George Lucas then made His second trilogy, all character development went out the window. This was a trilogy that was going to sell more toys, and that's it. Lucas has even half-way admitted this later on. And the fans of the Star wars franchise have disliked the second trilogy almost since release.
I say almost, because many did hang in there for years, denying that the second trilogy was bad. But now most people seem to have noticed.
So here we are in 2015 and J.J. Abrams takes over. He is the new skip, he gave us a fantastic reboot with Star Trek, now he is going to save us all from the god awful mistakes of George Lucas. We all believed it, we all hoped for it, at least he can not do worse than Lucas.
The biggest hype of all time was born.
And we fight a death star.... again....
Just a lot bigger.... Because of course bigger, at least they couldn't make it smaller.....
What about not including a death star... Yet again?
This movie tries so hard to show us a lot of cool stuff. But the pacing is awful, the slapstick humor is mostly misplaced, the introduction of the leading actors suffers from very bad timing. This movie basically tries to look and feel exactly like the original Star Wars film, but fails to bring us close to the leading characters.
In the story, 30 years has gone by. A lot of things happen in that time, but the movie can't tell us anything about what has happened in those 30 years, all we get is guns blazing from the get go, till the very end. Almost no character development what so ever. Not even for Rey, the leading actress. Did J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan think it was enough to show us that when Rey eats less food than usual, was enough to make us really care for her? And just add in the "The family will never come back for you" sub plot? which BTW has no impact.
Yes OK Rey is struggling a bit when we meet her, but she looks very healthy, she is climbing ropes and running like an Olympian in sand..
Ahh no, now i know. They showed us she had good morale by not selling the droid to get a lot more food.. Ahh.. So complicated. *sigh*
This movie is so disappointing. This was their chance to make it right. To make Star Wars good again, not only focus on what 12 year old kids want to see constantly for 2 hours, which is laser beams and explosions. But it makes perfect sense, because these films are now all about making the big bucks, which is from selling toys. And now this film was released just before Christmas... No coincidence.
So it's time to just take in some facts, the movies we grew up with, are never coming back. The only ones in the business that seem to get the movie story and toys business combo right, is Marvel.
They had all this time. All this money. All this willpower. And this is what they come up with. Terrible script, bad story, outdated soundtrack, taking few or no risks to renew the franchise by telling the exact same story as before.
What is really good about this film is the CGI and Sound effects. But that should not come as a surprise to anyone.
The acting is mediocre. No one stands out and brings a really good performance.
4/10 - Very disappointing.