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(Spoilers) The Force Awakens will not stand the test of time and IJBM.
I am going to relish the moment the hype finally dies down, people view this film with a fresh perspective, and realise that J.J. Abrams sabotaged his own good work. Because the fandom hype for this film is so utterly insufferable, with lay viewers and critics alike blinded by what amounts to brand loyalty.
It's not that it's a bad film. It's mostly well done. There are lots of fun moments. There's a fair share of interesting moments. The Force Awakens just doesn't stand alone as a good film; it can't, as too much of its content is dedicated to winking and nudging in the direction of the context established by the original trilogy. For someone entirely new to Star Wars, some things are going to come across as confusing and out of place. For someone familiar with Star Wars, many of the references and repetitions are going to run thin after a small handful of viewings. I'm not talking about the plot-relevant pieces, because those explain themselves thoroughly enough throughout the course of the film. Taking the "piece of junk" Millennium Falcon at the last second out of desperation? Sweet, nice setup that leads our new characters towards Han Solo. Rey having intense visions upon touching Luke's original lightsaber? All good, the Force can run like that and it provides insight to knowledgeable and non-knowledgeable viewers alike.
Those are examples of references to previous films that make sense in context of The Force Awakens as an independent movie, but link two separate trilogies together nicely all the same.
It's all the little things on the side. The game board on the Millennium Falcon that activates and puts the film on pause for a few seconds is a great example. When I saw that, I was amused and pleased, but I doubt that'll be the case the second time around. That joke has run its course after the first viewing. Those few seconds of focus on the training droid Luke used to practise blocking blaster bolts. On a larger scale, that we had another Death Star-oriented third act that had nothing to do with the plot concerning the location of Luke.
For all the things this film did well (and those are plentiful), it's dragged down by its indulgences. To my mind, they're just as bad as Lucas inserting gratuitous CGI into the remastered editions of the original trilogy. Pointless detractors in a film that already had sufficient references to its predecessors in terms of plot, characterisation, and humour.
The better version of this film is simply a fan edit with unnecessary clutter removed, so we're not so often overtly reminded of the fourth wall.
Comments
The style is the same, the length is the same, but...
...in a whole long post, not a single sentence whining about the inadequacies of lightsaber fight scenes?
WHO THE HELL YOU ARE AND WHY DID YOU COME HERE IMPOSTER
But overally, I like that "changing of the guard" stuff. (Well, except for the part where they kill off... you know, in case somebody ignored the spoiler warning. They seriously made me unhappy with that. But let's go back to the topic.) It's like none of the three main guys knows what to do with that Force stuff. Even the bad guy, while a powerful Force user, is pretty much an emo kid with half-finished training and some serious issues. (Digression: in my language, I'd call him an "emofaggot", but it doesn't sound good in English.) I was surprised that the girl can pilot, her repair skills I can chalk up as a by-product of the scavenging. Likewise the Finn guy's talent for gunnery may come from his marksmanship training. But in every case, it looks like there was some unconscious use of the Force going on in there.
Now that I think of it, Luke's negative consequences were the death of family and the death of mentor. Both lead characters here have no family to lose. Perhaps that's why they killed off who passed for their mentor, apart from a cheap gut punch.
I mean, I personally had no problem with the characters in story proving surprisingly good at stuff they're new to. It kind of flew over me. I was more bothered by coincidences, you know, of all the places in the whole galaxy the Millennium Falcon had to be parked in Rey's place, and of all the people in the galaxy Han and Chewie had to stumble on it the first moment Rey and Finn made it to space.
So, let me now tell you what I didn't like. The reused plotlines, that's what. One would think that after two failed attempts and thirty years, somebody in the Empire would wise up not to try out a Death Star for the third time. It seems that their combat doctrine is "this time we're gonna build a bigger one", feels like. This, and "no way they're gonna do that ventilation shaft trick once again". This is from the in-story point of view, of course. Externally, I've already seen complaints that the Expanded Universe can't come up with a better plot than giving the Empire remnants some yet another superweapon, each of them bigger and meaner than the last one. So when a canonical work does the same, it feels kinda stupid. Then of course the bad guy is a deep-voiced Sith Lord in a black cape and mask, answering only to some shadowed emperor. But at least, that made me quite surprised (in a good way) when he quite casually took it off. (The mask, I mean.)
As the fags from my highschool once said, 10% movie, 90% merch.
What will bother me, though, is if Episode 8 and 9 end up being rehashes of Empire and Jedi. THEN I can look back at Episode 7 negatively, but right now, I can say that Abrams played it safe and used it as an anchor between the originals and the sequels while removing the stench of the prequels. I'll take it as a reboot of a new era, but I will not accept the sequel trilogy if it's just retelling shit from the originals.
And no, Rey is not a Sue because the first thing she does is... crash the Falcon when she uses it, needs to use the Jedi Mind Trick three times on a Stormtrooper for it to work, fail to take the safety off her gun and miss on several of her first shots, get captured by Ren.... yeeah, not very Sue-ish. You can criticize her for learning too quickly, but don't call her a Sue, because she's not.