Second Thoughts on The Force Awakens

First time I saw anything of Star Wars was a shot from Return of the Jedi during the build-up for the ‘97 Special Edition release. It stayed with me until the point when I finally saw Jedi, I knew that I had seen that shot before. The first Star Wars movie I had ever seen fully was A New Hope (so, though I wasn’t around in 1977, I got the similar experience that everyone else had nonetheless). After the first viewing, the prequel trilogy just became boring.

And now we have The Force Awakens.

I know I gave it a positive review, but I was just reeling from “just having watched a movie on a huge screen” jitters. But as those initial feelings died down, I realized that I was more disappointed than happy overall.

The Force Awakens was empty.

Let’s start out with the obvious. People always say that a film’s hero is only as good as the villain. Well, which villain? The faceless CGI-gollum holograph or Kylo Ren (aka. the biggest b*tch in the whole wide universe)? Honestly, he’s a bigger b*tch than Anakin in the prequel trilogies and I don’t care who knows it.

This film was not original. It was the plot to A New Hope. Apparently that’s what the fans want, no progress or interesting things/places happening, just a boring re-tread of familiar ground (but then again, having spent many years in the metal-scene, I should come to expect this attitude from fans).

Here’s what made the movie work even less. It was like a work of fan-fiction (which, essentially, it is), where some loony liberal takes the story to A New Hope and rewrites it with a female protagonist, a black dude and a non-white pilot as the heroes (oh and kills off one of the characters from the original trilogy, who are only here for fan-service).

And don’t give me your bs explanation for why Rey suddenly has a mastery of the Force without any training. Just don’t! We saw in both the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy when both Luke and Anakin had their first serious lightsaber duel (after having spent three to ten years of training, i might add) they both got their asses handed to them. You all know why she won and it’s a dumb reason.

I honestly wanted to like this movie, but…JJ dropped the ball.

Summary for those too lazy to read: The Force Awakens was a remake of A New Hope with all the politically correct and feminist bullshit we’ve become mired in of late.

catie-does-things:

To be honest, if we’re talking overly powerful Mary-Sue characters in Star Wars, Galen Marek/Starkiller is probably the worst offender.

But at least he had had extensive training to get to that point.

And that’s the real issue with Rey – it’s not that the things she does are particularly impressive, it’s that she acquires new skills as the plot demands with no practice or instruction, and that’s just lazy writing.

that was one of the film’s weakest points

Conspiracy Theory (The Force Awakens Spoilers)

Okay, so we know that Disney and JJ Abrams killed the Expanded Universe when they planned the sequel trilogy.

But what if Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy is still technically canon?

I mean, if Rey is Luke’s daughter, then that presupposes the existence of her mother, whoever that may be. I’m not saying it’s Mara Jade, but until a name and a face are given to Rey’s mother around Episode VIII or IX, that will be a good assumption to make.

One of the Resistance commanders looks like Garm Bel Iblis.

Han and Leia having kids was from the Thrawn Trilogy, though here it has been narrowed down to one instead of two (although if Rey is Han and Leia’s daughter, then she could be the second child, which further strengthens this theory).

It is the best explanation for how Anakin’s lightsaber came back from Bespin.