Review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) by Bill B — 25 Dec 2017

In the wake of The Last Jedi and seeing all the justifiably negative reviews for it, including my own, I'm surprised there are so many positive reviews for The Force Awakens. While Rian Johnson veers the SW canon into a ditch and lights it on fire, Force Awakens is an overly safe, wooden and hollow remake of A New Hope in most respects. JJ Abrams is the ultimate hack director, bringing nothing new or interesting to the table and relying on audience pleasing cliches after cliches and poor writing. And while The Last Jedi may have messed with the SW universe to the point of no return, The Force Awakens does it's own dance on the SW universe's grave by making the Force something that is simply inherited with no explanation of why training was even needed in the OT.

There were also a number of unexplained moments and plot holes in Force Awakens that gets a pass from many while the Last Jedi gets rightly criticized for. I don't want to delegitimize other reviews but I do wonder how much the enormous hype leading up to A Force Awakens effected reviews.

Apart from the above issues, The Force Awakens itself looks surprisingly generic and rushed. The one positive for The Last Jedi is it does have some truly amazing visuals.

I believe neither one of these films will be remembered all too fondly down the road as Disney has completely missed the mark on what makes Star Wars so loved by so many. These new films seem to be creations of studio exec board meetings - cynically calculated for maximum profit and socially acceptable and not much else.