What Did You All Expect?

Rating: 7/10 (28 September 2016)

I read many negative reviewers on here that refuse to get it. This movie was never meant for us super fans in the first place. When I saw A New Hope back in 1977, I knew that it had a limited life span that Hollywood would exploit and reboot after Lucas' brilliant original trilogy had finished. He knew that as well. In fact, it all went downhill for me after The Empire Strikes Back with Return of The Jedi getting a little too childish for my taste or was it really that I was I aging, maturing, while the story remained true for the intended target audience, the under 20 crowd? Yes, we grew up, and we expected Stars Wars to age & mature along with us. Well it hadn't and that was intentional. Now please, move on with your ridiculous ridicule that the plot was too similar to A New Hope, or the story had too many holes, or it wasn't true to George's vision. When you try and actually do better, then get back to me.
Now for my review: Although I found it very visually entertaining, some of the performances were not very convincing. But I enjoyed the retro look very much, with the camera work nearly duplicating Gilbert Taylor's lighting and angles, the throw back watering hole bar scene, the cartoonish costumes, and seeing my favorite spaceship of all time, the MF. I find it very amusing that many naysayers missed a very important aspect. They complained about Ray, that how could this "female" with no Jedi training defeat Kylo Ren? The reason that Ray could defeat Kylo Ren was that he intentionally wished it, so he telepathically showed her the way to The Force so that he would indeed be defeated by her.. an intentional plot hole like so many others to be answered in good time. Was it out of guilt for killing his father, which by the way, he didn't intend to do until the Light of the Sun was sucked dark... which prompted his sword, (granted, this scene was not properly directed) or was it part of an unknown Master plan? We'll see.
Clearly JJ tried to do the impossible, to make everyone happy, from the studio bosses to the Super Fans, with whom he apparently failed, with one exception, me! But he nailed it with his TRUE intended audience once again, the more sophisticated yet still youthful elementary school kids all over the globe and that, my friends, is called good business.