Short Cuts: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

This is usually the part where the author goes on at length about how he's a huge Star Wars fan and enjoyed it as a kid, etc. Not me. To be frank, I never had a thing for Star Wars. I don't hate it. At most, I find the whole thing, the hype and the obsessive fandom around it slightly obnoxious but to put it another way, I'm not as emotionally invested to this particular franchise as others.

That being said, I didn't really like this movie. I wanted to. The action scenes were fun, I guess. Overall, I just didn't feel anything. I felt like I had seen it all before. Wait, I did. It was called A New Hope. The Force Awakens follows the original's major plot beats. This is the most common criticism of it and I think it's fair.

I guess it was my fault too for expecting something mind-blowing. With all the unbelievable hype surrounding this movie, you can't blame me. Instead, the reasoning for TFA ripping off the original is that it's a "soft reboot". What nice sounding corporate dribble. It's meant to please the old fans by sticking to the familiar while easing new fans into the universe. I get the point of it. I understand why they did it but I'd hate to live in a world where I have to think more about the marketing angle of a movie to "appreciate it" rather than the movie itself. 

This movie was going to make billions on name brand alone. They had a lot of room to take more risks with it and push it harder to more daring territory. Instead it's as "safe" as can be, so much so that it's basically a copy of the first. It's like a grown man who still refuses to go to the deeper end of the pool. The folks at Disney wanted a safe bet despite there not being a safer thing in the world, as far as milking nostalgia goes, as Star Wars. And I thought I was cynical.

This reminds me of my review of Guardians of the Galaxy. That was an incoherent, raging mess which I'm not proud of but TFA reminds me of it and now I realize why I was so angry. I felt manipulated in a way. I felt Guardians of the Galaxy relied on catchy tunes and cheap Internet meme-material jokes to hook people in. I felt TFA relied on the original so much that the illusion was shattered and you saw the inner workings of corporate bullshit. It's like it doesn't have a soul, you know? Ah, it's hard to describe in words exactly.

Feel free to hate me.