Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

After viewing Episode II upon its release, my viewing group and I emerged from the theater, stood beneath the box office signs at the front of the theater, and performed a ritual that I'm sure many of you share, whereupon we clear up confusions, share opinions, and attempt to classify what we had just seen. To this day, I clearly remember a good friend of mine saying, “People will argue because of nostalgia, but that was the best Star Wars yet.” The rest of us stood there flabbergasted because Episode II was quite obviously not the best Star Wars yet, nor even very good to begin with.

Thirteen years later, I feel like I am reliving that moment. Only instead we are talking about Episode VII, and rather than it being my one friend, it is nearly everyone who has expressed an opinion to me or written a review that I've read on the internet. Perhaps people aren't saying that it was the best Star Wars, but they're positively comparing it to the original trilogy. And once again I am flabbergasted, because Episode VII was terrible.

In this review, I will attempt to demonstrate that not only is Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens a bad movie, it is in fact the worst movie in the series. I know this statement sets off a few alarms in many reader's heads. First, it looks like hyperbole. Second, it seems reactionary given the recency of its release. Third, considering the general praise that it has thus far received, it sounds contradictory for the sake of attention. I affirm that, despite appearances, it is none of those things, and that I firmly believe in my thesis.

Before continuing, understand that the review necessarily contains massive spoilers.

DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM AND DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED.

Plot

To start with, I want to review the plot from a high level before getting into some of the details. The plot of this movie seems to be pretty simple, as things generally are in the Star Wars universe. Here was have a smaller subplot specific to Episode VII within a larger plot of what I assume will be this trilogy.

The former of those, the plot specific to this movie, is Star Wars: The Search For Skywalker. Everyone wants to find Luke. Which is understandable. Luke Skywalker is a Jedi. The last in existence (again, since he went from being the last in existence to having students to all of his students being…dead?).

The Resistance wants to find him so that they can…well they don't explain it, exactly. In fact, they don't explain anything about what the Resistance is trying to do. We don't see any glimpses into the ongoing war, we just know that there's a war over something. At no point is there any Resistance strategy to the war until like eleven planets get blown up, and the Resistance decides that they probably shouldn't let that happen again. So Luke fits into their lack of plans somehow. Maybe they need him to come up with a plan? Who knows?

The First Order wants to find Luke so that they can…what? Turn him to the dark side in order to win the war? No, that doesn't seem to be the plan. And what good would that do when they can blow up like eleven planets at a time? So that Kylo Ren can complete his transition to the Dark Side? Because that would be worse than, I don't know, murdering his father somehow? No, that can't be it. Also, Snoke says he can complete his training without Luke. So they can kill him so they don't have to fight him? No, he's a hermit and he's not fighting, so that can't be it. So the Resistance doesn't get him on their side and turn the tide of battle like he did in the war against the Empire? This seems to be the only reasonable explanation, though when they have a weapon that can blow up eleven planets at once, that doesn't seem like it should be a priority.

So everyone wants to find Luke, but the only real reason he's so important seems to be because Mark Hamill wants to get paid and his name will help sell movie tickets, I guess.

This brings up a couple things that don't make much sense. First is the Resistance. We know that a Republic exists, and we know that the Resistance and the Republic share a common enemy. If the Resistance is not the Republic's military, then why don't we see them? Why aren't the Resistance and the Republic teaming up? Who does the Resistance represent, what are its goals, and why is it not affiliated with the Republic? Seemingly, the Resistance is the Republic's military, and so why aren't they called the Republic or the Republic Army instead of the Resistance? Who are they resisting? The First Order? They're using the original trilogy Rebellion's ships and symbol, so why aren't they called the Rebellion? Presumably it's because the Empire seems to no longer exist, so they're not rebelling against anything. Does the Resistance only exist to resist the First Order? What military existed between the Empire and the First Order?

The second thing that doesn't make sense is The First Order. It appears that the Empire no longer exists, and the First Order represents what's left of its military. Does the First Order represent any actually population? Is it a group of planets? It appears to be nothing but a military force. A mercenary force without a master. Their only goal appears to be to destroy the Republic. But why? To rule? Revenge? These questions aren't answered. But it does lead to other questions. If they don't have a population, where are they getting their troops? They're landing on Republic or other planets and stealing children, and then brainwashing them into fighting? What reason are those troops given to fight? It's easier to brainwash someone to an actual cause than to convince them to fight just to fight. Where does the First Order get its resources? It built a weapon the size of a planet that eats suns. Where did they get the funds to build that? Who built it? The empire had a huge collection of planets, an enormous number of taxpayers, and rule over engineers, construction workers, and everyone else with the skills necessary for a project such as this. The First Order appears to have none of this. Everything was just magicked up for the sake of a movie.

Then you have the plot of the trilogy, which I guess is that the First Order wants to destroy the Republic, which is back somehow. So they start by blowing up the Republic's planets. They don't say which ones, but it's like eleven of them. And from the looks of it, heavily populated ones. And immediately before that, Hux gives a Hitler speech where he tells us that when they fire the gun, the Republic will be gone. So uhh, I guess that plot is over.

Except the Resistance still exists. So now you have an army but no government that it's fighting for and, what I assume is a heavily depleted population. At this point, you could call them a resistance force, as they are resisting The First Order. At least now the name “The Resistance” makes more sense.

But here's the thing. The First Order knows where The Resistance Army is. Their second target group are its military sites. But The First Order's plan is foiled because the Resistance, the only military force in the galaxy that is capable of stopping them, is still around to stop them. Why the hell wouldn't The First Order have destroyed the military first and then the government? There was a 100% chance of success if they did it that way.

And again, we still don't know The First Order's goal. In Episode IV, the Death Star is meant to intimidate the rebels. They're not trying to kill everyone. They make a strategic decision to sacrifice one planet (that they know to be home to rebels) in order to bring peace through the threat of force. The First Order seems to just want to blow shit up because it's cool. It's like the writers thought, “How do we one-up the Death Star? Let's make it even bigger and let it blow up lots of planets all at once! That's really evil!” Even terrorists have ultimate goals. Terror isn't the goal, it exists to serve some ultimate purpose. The First Order hasn't demonstrated any ultimate purpose outside of terror itself. It's not an interesting entity.

I want to contrast that with the Empire destroying Alderaan. In Episode IV, when that happens, there is a lot of emotional buildup. Leia's pleas to save the lives of billions of people serve to make the audience understand the level of catastrophe that they're about to witness. Obi-Wan's reaction reinforces this. And if you still don't get it, when the Milennium Falcon arrives to find Alderaan turned into nothing but chunks of rock, you can fully comprehend what has transpired. A lot of time is spent on screen to ensure that. In Episode VII, the level of destruction and death is multiples of that, and nobody seems to care at all. The only reaction we get is when people see the death lasers shooting across the sky and scream. I don't understand how they even know it's a bad thing, except maybe that it's red, and red lasers always mean something nefarious in the Star Wars universe. We don't even know the names of the planets that were destroyed. Thus, this event lacks all of the emotional impact that Alderaan had. JJ Abrams was simply trying to do something that looked cool and create something more evil than the Empire without having to do the legwork to earn it.

Let's specifically focus on the climactic scene where the Rebellion Resistance takes out the Death Star Starkiller using a fleet of fighters. First of all, the plan was far too complex to be successful. Especially since Stormtrooper Jar Jar said he had a plan that he couldn't reveal on how to take down their shields, which was step one out of like five that all had to go right and in order. And everyone just trusted him. And trusted that every other thing would go exactly right.

So Stormtrooper Jar Jar gets there and reveals, lo and behold, he doesn't know what to do. They decide to capture his former commanding officer and make her tell them what to do. What we know about her in particular and these troopers in general is that they are brainwashed, have no regard for human life, and live to serve Empire, not themselves. So how does it make sense that she'd agree to whatever they ask because they have a gun pointed at her? But she does, and falls back on simply making empty threats while acquiescing to their plans.

At some point Chewie set off some explosives, which did something, I'm not sure what, and then X-Wings started doing “bombing runs” on a thing despite the fact that they are air-to-air dogfighting ships and they should be using actual bombers like B-Wings to blow it up. But no, they use fighters that have to do repeated runs because they lack firepower.

Then Hux orders that all ships be deployed in defense of the Starkiller, a thing that is the size of like ten Death Stars. This turns out to be about a dozen TIE Fighters. How is that reasonable at all?

The Resistance needs to blow up the Starkiller before 100% of the nearby star has been absorbed, because for some unknown reason, the weapon cannot fire until 100% of the star has been absorbed. And also that the weapon will fire at the exact moment that the star is 100% absorbed. That means that the star that is being absorbed is the absolute minimum sized star that can power the weapon, or that every star has the exact same amount of stored energy, or that the writing was shoddy. I'm going to go with the last option.

Finally, I want to talk about the lightsaber duel between Kylo, Stormtrooper Jar Jar, and Rey, and how it reveals one of the most severe problems in Episode VII, which is the inconsistency of the power of the force. Kylo begins by fighting Stormtrooper Jar Jar, who is wielding a lightsaber that he has used once before, in a fight against a random Stormtrooper, in which he lost badly. Kylo has force powers and training in using the force and lightsaber combat.

Briefly, let's go back to the Episode V fight between Luke and Vader. At this point, Luke has had some training and is at least somewhat able to channel the force. And Vader wrecks him. Hard. Eventually Vader puts his lightsaber away and just throws shit at him because that's all he needs to do against a lesser foe.

I'm not saying Kylo Ren is Vader, but Stormtrooper Jar Jar sure as shit isn't Luke. And Ren struggles to beat him. Like, takes a few licks first. And can't even finish him off before Rey gets up. What happens when Rey gets up? She beats the everloving shit out of Kylo. At this point, Rey has never wielded a lightsaber in her life, and only realizes she has force powers during the fight itself! Granted, Kylo was injured. He had just taken a direct hit from a bowcaster that, previously, was shown to take out multiple stormtroopers in a single shot. But Kylo just has a flesh wound for some reason that's probably thoughtless writing like so many other things.

When Episode I introduced Darth Maul, they had a fun, well-choreographed lightsaber fight with him vs. two Jedi. It was the best lightsaber fight in the entire series. At the conclusion of it, they killed Darth Maul, because he had served his purpose. He didn't have a personality, he was there to look cool and have a fantastic duel. Mission: accomplished.

Kylo Ren was a less good at fighting, less cool looking Darth Maul, but they decided he needed to be kept alive for some reason, so a rift showed up out of nowhere before Rey could finish him off. And even though she's instantly good at everything she tries, I guess she doesn't know about force jump yet. It was a completely contrived scenario that could have been handled immensely better, and instead left me throwing my hands up in the air towards the screen in disbelief at how badly done it was.

Contrast this with Kylo Ren at the beginning of the movie who is holding blaster fire in the air while doing other things and in general running around being Vader-like. The discrepancy of his power level at the tail ends of the movie does a huge disservice to him as a character and the concept of the force as a whole.

Sentimentality and Nostalgia

I don't have a lot to say about nostalgia except that every time they try it, it feels heavy-handed or even, at times, dishonest. Indeed, a lot of the plot points and characters tie directly back into the original trilogy. You have a new Jedi / aspiring pilot just discovering their powers (Luke / Rey). You have a charismatic pilot (Han, Poe). You have a masked, auto-tuned villain in black who likes to use the force to hurt people (Vader / Ren). You have a cute boopity-bop Droid (R2-D2 / BB-8). You have a planet shattering weapon (Death Star, Starkiller) that needs to be destroyed using X-Wings. You have a search for an old Jedi Master (Kenobi / Luke). You have your origins on a desert planet (Tatooine / Jakuu). You have a place to get information and travel full of all kinds of aliens (Cantina / Maz's Place). You have an evil military leader (Tarkin / Hux). You have the enigmatic, sinister overlord (Emperor, Snoke). You have Han Solo being hunted down for money that he owes. You have the tragic death of one of our heroes (Kenobi, Han). And there's tons more.

It's pretty obvious that the movie was meant to mirror Episode IV. People are forgiving it because it was trying to introduce Star Wars while still being Star Wars. But the plot of Episode IV is not what made it Star Wars. And let's not forget that Episode I had to accomplish the same thing. And while maybe that wasn't a good movie, at least it tried to do something different. Episode VII vas lazy, and tried to leverage the goodness of its predecessors as a way of being warmly received. It's a cheap tactic that seems to have worked on most people, but I think it's heinous.

Additionally, you get this weird sentimental shit like when Han and Leia reunite. There's a romance movie moment where she puts her head in his chest and closes her eyes and smiles or something dumb, and the camera holds it for like five seconds. This is the woman we are supposed to believe is the commanding general of the entire Resistance military. The same Leia that was fierce and independent in the original movies and her relationship with Han wasn't lovey dovey at all like we're seeing. It feels fake and inconsistent with what we know about those characters, and their relationship is less likeable or interesting this way.

Characters

Leia

Speaking of Leia, what the hell happened to her? She's the general of the army (outranking Ackbar somehow) and yet she doesn't seem to know what she's doing or even care that much. Maybe that's why the Resistance is fiddling its thumbs. She needs to ask people like Stormtrooper Jar Jar for ideas. She's also too weak to be mad at Han for bailing on her, and she's too weak to go after her estranged serial killer son herself, so she asks Han to do it. Leia went from strong female heroine to feckless waste of screen space. It reminds me of what Indiana Jones IV did to Marion's character, only this time you can't blame George Lucas.

Han

Han mostly gets out of this movie unscathed, probably thanks to Harrison Ford's talent and charisma. His death scene, which I'll get to, was awfully done, and the aforementioned scene with Leia was bad. The only other part that I thought sucked was when the two different criminal organizations worked together (which doesn't entirely make sense to me) to approach him at the same time demanding money, so we could have a forced “Same ol' Han!” moment. In that scene, Han Solo seemed more like a caricature of himself than anything else.

Luke

Here's what we know about Luke. He tried to train a bunch of Jedi, including Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren did something (killed? recruited?) all of them and then escaped. Luke, having let this happen somehow, got super depressed and became a hermit. This is the same Luke who abandoned all reason multiple times in order to help his friends and the Rebellion in the original trilogy. Now he runs away and stares at oceans off of cliff sides all day long. Unless someone shows up and then he stares at their hands forever. And we're supposed to feel relieved when they find him.

R2-D2

He's in standby mode because he's depressed because one friend of his (of many) is in hiding. Does that seem at all like R2 to anyone? And then he comes out of it because they have the star map and he can go find his friend, except that even when they get the star map he still stays depressed for a while. Even though he has the star map that can lead everyone to his friend. He doesn't go off standby mode until later for absolutely no reason that can be explained. Why does he need to come out of standby? Because he has a star map that no other computer in the entire Resistance, or any ally of the Resistance, has. There's no explanation for how or why that happened.

BB-8

Let's call him what he is. Star Wars Wall-E, a character made to sell merchandise to people who already have R2-D2 shit, and move on.

Maz

Before entering Maz's place, Han tells his traveling party not to stare at anything. Because why? Because that makes the next scene more ominous. Except that Maz's place has no danger about it, Maz is a completely nice person. We go in expecting some kind of crafty character with questionable alliances, but instead we get someone who is wholeheartedly good and helpful. The denizens don't seem dangerous either. They even seem happy to take Stormtrooper Jar Jar wherever he wants to go with no questions asked. Maz also has Luke's lightsaber but they can't explain why that makes sense because "it's a long story." The one time the writers indicate that they aren't actually explaining something that doesn't make sense, and they excuse it away. Is their laziness and ineptitude not transparent to everyone? And oh yeah the lightsaber has magic memory powers now.

Poe

When writing the movie, someone probably said, “Hey let's combine Han Solo's 'tude with Wedge's piloting” and then JJ Abrams, if it wasn't his idea originally, thought that was just wonderful. They gloss over how he survived the crash, didn't run into Stormtrooper Jar Jar, didn't seem to try to look for the droid that was the entire reason he was on the planet in the first place, and escaped without The First Order finding him. They also decided to make him the best fighter pilot in the history of the galaxy. Well, at least until Rey gets two minutes of flying time under her belt. There's a scene where he gets like six confirmed kills in three seconds. Why does The Resistance even have other pilots? Just send him in to take out the entire First Order. You can give him any gunner, because he apparently can train them to fire the guns on a ship he has never flown or gunned from before, while flying the ship he has never flown before better than anyone has ever flown it. At least if that gunner has the Luck of Jar Jar trait, anyway. Because in this movie, if you have a name, and you're not Stormtrooper Jar Jar, then you're the best person in the galaxy at whatever you specialize in. Or you're Rey and you're the best person in the galaxy at absolutely everything, but more on that in a bit. Also, one thing Poe and Stormtrooper Jar Jar have in common is they like to say things like, “Wow that person is a great ______” whenever someone with a name does something ridiculously well, just so that the audience can keep up and understand that the character with a name is really good at the thing that they do!

Rey

One of the stupid things Episode VII does is dumb down the force. Previously, you couldn't just be strong in the force to be able to wield it purposefully. The ways in which Episode IV Luke or Episode I Anakin were able to use the force was passively. It helped them with things like intuition or reaction. Actual mastery over techniques took a willing teacher and extensive training. But this movie couldn't wait for any of that, so it created Rey -- the force user who is good at everything she attempts, but who also learns specific force powers in a matter of minutes. Force powers that, historically, only a Jedi Master could summon (such as Force Persuade), and she can learn them before she even fully recognizes that she has the ability to wield the force at all (as seen when the realization comes to her during a lightsaber fight, during which, once she realizes it, is able to go into a meditative state whilst pushing against Kylo Ren's lightsaber, and then come out of the state more powerful than before, which is not something that any other Jedi has done ever). Here is a list of all the things that Rey is immediately a galaxy-class expert at the first time she attempts them: piloting the Millennium Falcon, repairing or altering complex electrical systems, being a deadeye with a blaster mid-combat, lightsaber dueling, force persuasion, force mind reading, force mind reading resistance. She's so good, that when the gun on the Falcon breaks such that it's stuck in one firing position that she can't see, in a direction she can't see, she's able to evade enemy fire, drastically change speeds, flip the Falcon around aim the cannon exactly at a moving, oncoming enemy TIE Fighter such that all Stormtrooper Jar Jar has to do is pull the trigger. This is the most over-the-top maneuver in the entire series by a substantial margin and it's performed by someone with no experience doing it. It makes Han successfully navigating an asteroid field look simple. If C-3PO were there, calculating the odds would have caused an overflow error.

Kylo Ren

I could probably write an entire review about how horrible Kylo Ren is, but here is the thing that I think sums it up the best. What made Darth Vader awesome was two things. One is that he starts off as the most menacing villain of all time. Anyone who challenges this fact learns quickly and severely how bad an idea that is. And yet the original trilogy is about Vader's redemption. It is his inner and outer struggle to overcome his previous mistakes, to get out of the hole he has dug himself, and to do what's right and good in the end. You would never guess that by the end of Episode VI, you'd be rooting for the fellow.

Here's why that's not going to happen with Kylo Ren. Because his struggle is that he has good parents and a supportive family and he has to fight everything they taught him and raised him to be so that he can willingly be evil. Vader wasn't willingly evil. He was manipulated into it. He's been convinced that what he's doing is the right thing. Not Ren. He's conscious of the choices he's making. He's completely and utterly unsympathetic, and the only reason we're given is so that he can be like Grandpa Annie.

History is written by the victors. You know who won in Episode VI? Luke. Luke won. Luke gets to tell everyone the truth behind Vader and the Emperor. He can emphasize Anakin Skywalker's redemption. You think Kylo Ren only hears the Episode IV stories of Vader? Hell no. He knows the whole thing. He knows Vader wasn't the purely evil man in black that he's trying to emulate. He just ignores it.

What makes an interesting villain is when they believe they are doing good. Maybe it's that the ends justify the means, or maybe they truly believe that the means themselves are good. For one reason or another, they are not doing good, or are at least doing enough harm that the good isn't justified. That's a villain. Kylo Ren doesn't seem to believe that he's doing anything good. He wants to be bad for badness sake. How can a character like this be at all compelling?

He's just a rebellious kid. But what is he rebelling against? His parents weren't strict. There's no mention of regret between Han and Leia for anything wrong they did in bringing him up. They let him train with his savior of the galaxy, all-around good guy who saved Vader's soul Uncle Luke. His father is literally the coolest dude in the entire galaxy. And he's emo about all of that?

And let's talk about Han's death, which is easily the worst part of the movie. Han shows up, is willing to ignore / forgive all the evil things that his son has done. Han says he can still come home, that he's still loved, that his parents accept him for who he is. It's absolutely everything you'd want in a parent. And then Kylo, in a scene that's as telegraphed as they come, says he needs Han's help to do what he needs to do, which we all know is kill Han. And Han says that he'll do anything to help his son. Which apparently meant, “Put your hand on my lightsaber so that I can kill you.” What? How does that help Kylo overcome his conscience at all? Han didn't egg him on. He didn't offer him anything but support. If anything, that action would have the exact opposite effect of what Kylo wanted. But the lazy writers thought that would give Kylo Ren depth somehow. See, look? He's complex because he just said he was. No, sorry writers. It doesn't work that way. He's completely empty. He's a shell of a character. Kylo Ren is the worst character in the history of Star Wars, and that's including Jar Jar and also…

Stormtrooper Jar Jar

Let's compare Jar Jar and Stormtrooper Jar Jar. Both of them are alienated from their home. Both of them are clumsy and constantly falling over or getting captured. Both of them are bad at pretty much everything they attempt, but then stumble/luck into succeeding. Both of them lie about who they are because they are nobodies but want to be taken seriously. Both of them feel a half step out of sync with everyone else, like they are in a movie and say things that make no sense within their own world, but only make sense to us, the viewers who inhabit a totally different world. Thing that seem to only be there to appeal to children. Both of them are essentially tagalongs to the people who actually matter. Both of them exist to offer commentary on what's happening in the world. How many times does Stormtrooper Jar Jar point out a character who just did something really well? Who else but Jar Jar would utter a line like, “Droid, please?” Who else but Jar Jar would get captured by a monster that, up until the point where he was captured, mutilated everyone they came upon immediately, but in this case, for some unknown reason, the monster decided to instead drag him off to somewhere giving the heroes a chance to save him? Who else would make humorous remarks while getting dragged away to presumably their grotesque death at the hands of said monster? Who else would luck into getting saved from the monster? Who else would go into the enemy base without a plan and then somehow succeed despite that? Face it, Stormtrooper Jar Jar is Jar Jar. The only difference is that he doesn't talk in a ridiculous voice or make cartoonish facial expressions. If you think Episode I is bad because it has Jar Jar as a major character, well Episode VII has Stormtrooper Jar Jar.

The Good Stuff

Not everything was bad. The dogfighting was some of the best in the series. Chewie is cool as always, and so is his bowcaster, which got way more use than it ever has previously and I was happy to see that. Han Solo was good in most of his scenes. And the effects were cool and didn't get in the way, which can't be said about the prequels. That's about it.

Conclusion

I think at this point I've given enough evidence to show that Episode VII is not a good movie. Yet I go beyond that and consider it to be the worst Star Wars film, and here's why. It doesn't offer anything new and it doesn't do anything important well. The characters are flatter than in any other movie. They are archetypes of archetypes, with no flaws whatsoever. The prequels tried new things. They had new stories and new characters. Some of those characters were really good, such as Qui-Gon.

Another difference is that a lot of the things that people hate about Episode I or the other prequels, you could remove and not lose much, if anything. You can take out Jar Jar and not miss much. You can delete Anakin's escapades on the Naboo Fighter or any mention of midichlorians and have the same movie. But in Episode VII, every major character is bad. The plot is bad. The fight scenes that aren't dogfights are bad. You can't take this stuff out and still have a movie. You have nothing. If you erase Kylo Ren then you have lost your villain. If you get rid of Rey then you've lost pretty much everything else.

George Lucas made Episode I for children. JJ Abrams made Episode VII for….children too slow to understand Episode I?