Uncreative script with no real tension and one dimensional characters

Rating: 4/10 (24 December 2015)

This film could have been so much more. Great films have great character development and evoke an emotional response other then boredom. The force awakens has very few high points. The only one that stands out for me is the few moments of tension excitement and interaction between Rey and Finn as they fight to learn to control the Millennium Falcon while trying to evade the TIE fighters on Jakku. This is the only interesting action scene in the film because it ties back to the nostalgia of the original and evokes emotion as the characters get to know one another in a tense situation. The rest of the film falls flat in my opinion. Poe the pilot who is supposed to be a cast member of substance seems like just another extra in the film. Same for the chrome trooper. The films story line is basically plagiarized from the the original star wars film. There is nothing wrong with creatively using certain elements of prior films that work well in your story but this is just a lazy ripoff. The film does have some creatively interesting concepts that could have been taken further. For example the starkiller base needing the sun to fire its weapon was creative and really could have been used to build tension. I was thinking while watching this they could have borrowed for example the concept used in the classic story of Dracula where the heroes are trying to get to Dracula before the sun goes down where he is most powerful. They could have built a lot of tension doing this and having our heroes fight a platoon of first order troops and Kylo. Could have had several of the non essential characters like Poe get badly hurt or killed trying to fight Ren to disable the shield thing. Could have had Solo die falling on a detonator and saving everyone (Bridge on River Kwai style. They could have had them dying trying to do this and have Ren kill them using his jedi powers. Point is they needed a climactic struggle that involved meaningful sacrifice and tension. This fell flat just having them plant a few bombs and have Solo just walk out alone and get killed by his petulant kid. These types of ideas have been done before but they are not blatant ripoffs like this film did. The character development in this movie was awful. The Finn character has one battle and defects. Sorry but they should have had him in a few battles and shown some kind of relationships with other troopers before having him just go off in the first few minutes of the film. In fact if they showed him having a friendship with chrome girl and then have him go awol making her have to chase him down it would have been better. The characters get very little back story so you really don't care about them. They make Finn and Poe like best buddies when they barely knew each other in the film. The film would have been better with one climactic action sequence and more character development. So many better ways to do this movie. Hell they could have made a chase movie where Kylo had to deliver something to the starkiller base in order for it to work. This would have built tension. They could have sought Luke out for help. I don't know any number of ideas are better then this bore. I cant figure out why these people are so bad at film making. Perhaps they haven't watched very many older great films to see what works.