Hey,
person! Are you going to see the new Star Wars? Wait a second. Why do I need to
ask when I already know that you're a person? Of course you are! But now here's
the problem: You shouldn't. I don't normally review films, but this one was
just so heartbreakingly bad that I just knew from the moment I walked out of
that theater that I had to let the world know. And in this review, I'll be
covering character developing moments pretty in-depth, so careful of spoilers.
The
first thing you'll notice is that this movie is eerily similar to the the
fourth (or just the first if you deny the existence of the prequels): in the
last few seconds before he gets captured, someone that you don't care about yet
puts something we don't know the full importance of yet into a robot we all
already love. The robot then treks across a dessert until it gets to some rag
tag kid who's probably gonna be a Jedi. (Oh and there's some shit about a Black
storm trooper going on at the same time in the new one, which actually started
out quite well, but then since they realized they were about to make an actual
new story, they scrapped the ending and just finished off their "A New New
Hope" plot). And there's also this new big bad guy who has a badass mask
and rightfully acts like a badass... Until he takes it off. Could they have
possibly picked a worse actor to portrait Kylo Ren? He looks like a Jewish
version of Jon Snow and talks like a complete loser. Every part of him that you
thought was edgy and intimidating will from then on just look like him being a
whiny bitch. After that point, which is only about halfway through the film,
you'll never be able to take Kylo Ren seriously anymore, even when he puts the
mask back on! Just a few minutes after he takes the mask off, he has it on
again while having a fit of rage. Now if he had never taken his mask off, you
would find this somewhat intimidating, maybe even epic. But since you know what
he actually looks like, you just see him as a toddler having a fit. Why? For
what purpose? His face isn't even important because you already know who he is
before this, and even if you didn't, seeing his face wouldn't even give you the
first clue. If I haven't hinted enough yet, Ren isn't Luke in any sense
whatsoever. Ya wanna know what Luke is? The cameo that paid for the sequel! His
one appearance is the very last scene that ends on a "What's gonna happen
next?!!!!!" moment that basically turns the movie into a contract to watch
the next one. I didn't even enjoy this one! In Empire, they do a
thing like that and make the next movie mandatory viewing, but Empire was
good! And Jedi was good. But this movie doesn't deserve a
cliff hanger like that.
Also,
the story takes completely unnecessary turns that, in more than one case, just
defy the movie we saw in all the advertising. "Oh, it turns out that Rey
was the true inheritor of Luke's lightsaber, not Finn!" Well that's
boring. Like I said before, Finn's character and story were the only tolerable
thing about this film, and the fact that they took away his acceptance into the
cool guy club just proves that they didn't want to risk making a new story.
Well, here's a thought: Maybe you should, I don't know, operate under the
assumption that you don't have a choice. No other franchises just copy their
best success and expect to do just as well with it, because it's a known fact
that the copy is volumes worse than the original for whatever reason. And the
reason this copy was worse was in all truth for one reason: Expansion.
Instead
of one in-over-his-head rebellion recruit who's gonna end up with a lightsaber,
let's have 2 and have them be a woman and a Black storm trooper! Instead of one
masked (implied) badass, let's have 2! Instead of a Death Star that can destroy
a planet, let's have a Death Planet that can destroy 6! And because they
expanded the first movie's content without really even expanding the running
time, none of the new content is given enough time. The new silver storm
trooper with the name I can't spell makes no impact on the story behind giving
them a chance to make a trash compactor joke. They never give me a reason to
care about Rey until they held up the sign that said "Care about Rey
now." And Ren being the son of Han Solo was barely more than a detail that
gave us some connection to Ren so that we don't have another one of those
"General Grievous exists, by the way" moments from the last movie.
Even when Ren kills Han, I didn't even care. Provided it was 1 in the morning
at that point, but when a movie truly makes me not care about Han Solo– no,
Harrison Ford in general, you're doing it wrong.
And
so in all these ways, Disney has managed to do the impossible: They made a Star
Wars movie that could very well be worse than Episode 1. The story is
uninspired, the characters are undeveloped, and the title is literally a throw
away line. Long live Jar Jar Abrams.
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