Something Old is... Still Old

Rating: 6/10 (21 December 2015)

Over the past couple of years, Hollywood has made an attempt to bring back as many successful franchises from the past as possible, either through reboots or straight-up sequels. Needless to say, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is one of those attempts, and it is definitely one of the better ones! With that being said, it was still not as convincing of a return as I had hoped due to the awfully predictable script, and the general lack of surprising and exciting moments.
The first half of the movie is deceiving. The Force Awakens has a very strong start, and it feels quite different from any of the other Star Wars movies. It was a surprisingly dark and shocking opening, and it is very unfortunate that it turned out to be the height of the movie. It was a promising start to this new story, and that was mostly due to the introduction of the new villain, Kylo Ren, who felt like a genuine threat.
That feeling of dread dissipates after the first thirty minutes or so, however, as you start noticing that there is nothing to really worry about. It's not that the tone changed or anything like that, but I just felt as though I misunderstood the movie at first. The threat isn't as big as I thought, the villain isn't as threatening as I thought, and the characters sure as heck weren't as powerless as I imagined. Don't get me wrong, the movie still wants you to think that everyone's in trouble, but you won't feel any sort of worry at all as the characters seem to be doing just fine In fact, they are doing far too well.
This problem is further compounded by the lack of action scenes. If the characters could at least do something cool and exciting during an action scene (a la the prequels), you wouldn't even mind the lack of urgency and cheer for them regardless. However, the characters are written to be and act weak, yet appear to be very strong and capable considering how easily they deal with adversity, and that just leaves you with nothing to worry about and nobody to cheer for.
But besides all of that, the biggest problem with this movie is that you have already seen it before - especially if you have just re- watched the original Star Wars trilogy in anticipation for this new entry in the series. That is a common problem with these modern re- imaginings or continuations of older franchises, as they tend to simply retell the same stories that were told many years ago. However, this one is so upfront about shoving as many cameos and scenes from the original trilogy into these two hours that it feels like cheap fan-fiction. It got so bad that I drifted off during the climax of the movie, because I was really just re-watching the same scene from 'A New Hope'.
The whole movie left me baffled by the fact that I really did predict the entire second half of the movie at one point. I was sure that I was being misled at first and that the movie would throw something unexpected at me at the end, but no, the second half really is just a copy and paste job of scenes from the previous movies. Again, this is really unfortunate because parts of the first half felt so wonderfully unique.
The thing that bothered me the most about this lack of new ideas was that there was no effort put into showing off new environments in the Star Wars universe. You have been to these planets before (even though they are 'new'), and you have seen all these ships before, and you have seen these weapons before (except the oh-so-shocking cross-guard light saber). It's fine to keep things the same if you have new stories to tell, but if you don't have new stories to tell you better change everything else to make the old seem new again. Unfortunately, that just was not the case here.
With all of that said, this is by no means a bad movie, and if you are already a Star Wars fan, it is probably worth the price of admission! If you aren't a Star Wars fan, though, I do not see how you could get much out of this movie. The only few exciting scenes rely completely on nostalgia, and if you haven't seen these old characters before or seen these old ships before, there is nothing for you here except the first 30 minutes. If you want to jump into Star Wars, watch the other movies first! After all, you can't enjoy fan-fiction without being a fan first.