First off, if you haven't seen the film yet, leave now. There are SPOILERS. Plot reveals. You will know exactly what happens.  You have been warned.

Director and Creater George Lucas is not part of the inner circle of Hollywood.  He doesn't belong to the Director's guild because he disagreed with them.  He's always been a bit of a rebel. I always liked that about him.  He's a true artist.  Maybe things didn't always work, but he never stopped trying to make something interesting & original. I think he thought he'd have more say even though Disney bought the rights.  He fought to keep Kathleen Kennedy as head of Lucasfilm.  I bet he's feeling a little betrayed.  I wish he hadn't felt he needed to sell. 

 

Let's also talk about those of us who grew up with the expanded universe.  Those of us who found the politics in Star Wars so interesting.  Those of us who saw characters like Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar and so many others fleshed out in print.  The Republic flourish and change and rise and become something better & stronger.  To wipe out the Republic without so much as a tear was blasphemous to me.  I still don't know the fate of many of my favorite characters from the EU, but I was lead to believe that most, including Mon Mothma, perished with one shot, and no one really cared.  Leia would have been DEVASTATED.  Mon Mothma was a mentor to her.  Oh, but wait, Disney clearly said EU doesn't exist anymore.  Well, it's not that easy for me to simply wipe away 30+ years of world building.  I'm sorry.  I'm sure that's part of my own issues with this whole mess, but I assure you I'm not alone.

The Force was also misused.  The "old" Force just wasn't cool enough.  Everything now has to be over the top & steroided up. Patience & training are boring.  So, now you can capture and hold laser bolts while fighting a village despite not even having much formal training. You can mind rape people. That's so much cooler than using an interrogation droid.  Actually, I really hate this.  Jedi mind tricks are one thing...mind rape...ugh. The Force has been turned into a weapon & a silly magic trick and an invasive torture tool.  It's laughed at.  No one laughed at the Force before!  The Force was serious. It was something many of us believe in.  It was based on the best parts of all the great stories & philosophies that came before & now it's just a joke.  A steroided weapon to be used to FORCE people to do different things. The snark towards it in the movie turned my stomach a bit.  

Originality is so lacking in this movie. The costumes, the ships, and more are all old McQuarrie designs.  McQuarrie even imagined a female Jedi Skywalker & a spherical droid.  BB-8 uses a flash drive. I say uses, it just sits in a plastic tray. It didn't even plug in.  Lazy writing. Unimaginative. That's now tech.  R2 used a DVD before DVDs existed.  Where's the imagination? Where's the cool new stuff? Even the prequels succeeded there. We have a desert planet that isn't Tattoonie, but it is.  Moisture vaporators & all.  We have an Ice planet that isn't Hoth & a tree planet that isn't Endor. Where's the cool alien planets?  Speaking of aliens, where the hell are they?!  No Rodans? No Nautolans.  No Twi'leks.  No Ithorians.  No Grans. No Gamorreans. No Duros?  Just humans and maybe 5 new creatures?  Whatever Maz is, the big lug on the couch with evil Harley Quinn, the Monsters Han caught, and 3 or 4 aliens on Jakku.  Star Wars has always been filled with interesting and new forms of life.  This was 95 percent HUMANS.  Boring.  Unimaginative. 

 Despite being told we wouldn't be fed tons of CGI, we did get a large dose of it.  Snoke, Maz, and even Unkar Plutt were all CGI characters. Why did they build a costume for Simon Pegg if they were just going to CGI over it? There were more  practical effects in this film than the prequels though. I can't deny that. Yet, Snoke looked like the great & powerful Oz version of Gollum.  I won't even start with the 3rd Death Star thing.  Seriously, no one could imagine anything better?  I bet Lucas did.  We'll never know.

Despite all of this,  there were things I loved. Rey. Rey was a little more fleshed out than everyone else & I won't deny that it was cool seeing a female lead in a Star Wars movie. I did manage to care about her & do want to see what happens with her.  She better be a Skywalker, though.  Star Wars is about the Skywalkers.  If you want to spin off to another story, fine, just do it after the new trilogy.   BB-8 was nice, despite just being a round version of R2. Seeing Luke Skywalker again was awesome.  The nostalgia got me there. I was surprised by how annoying Finn was.  I went in expecting to love Finn, since I found John Boyega so cool in the interviews, but his character came off like an asthmatic fanboy.  Poe was a Mary Sue.  Seriously, the guy was perfect.  Perfect looks, perfect pilot, willing to help a stranger, found the missing piece of the map & destroyed Starkiller base.  All with a gorgeous smile.  I do sort of like Kylo.  I think he could be interesting.  It would have been more interesting to see how he came to this conclusion of Vader not finishing what he intended.  How he discovered his lineage.  What exactly happened to him BEFORE we got here.  Overall, I'm just so disappointed.  Disappointed & hurt.  I went to the movie with high hopes and left in tears.  I literally cried on the way home.

 

I know I'm in the minority.  I was disappointed with Phantom Menace as well, although it didn't make me cry, & I was in the minority then as well. I loved Qui-Gon but was annoyed by Jar Jar. I freaked out at the midichlorians thing, but Lucas went back & revised & explained it a bit.  People denied that it missed it mark at first. Force Awakens isn't a terrible film for a flashy action space film but it isn't great either.  That being said,  I will see the next one because I do care enough about Rey to want to see what happens to her.  I might not go to the theater to see it though.  I probably will.  

I don't buy the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" excuse either.  Maybe try first.  Of course, there is no try.  Do or do not.  They did not.

This review isn't meant to try & change anyone's mind.  It's just a way for me to voice my disappointment & to share my reasons.   Maybe reading all those novels & comics & being such a Luke fan & optimistic person has made my perspective different from the masses. Maybe it's because the Force was the thing that helped me get through the tough spots in my life & it's hard seeing that parodied in such a bad way.   Maybe it's because I refuse to believe people bonded so closely & who fought so hard would just give up on the important things in life & just become sad shadows of themselves..  I just hope the next one is better.  I hope they take it a little more serious.