I thought force awakens was good but... kylo ren had like acne. He is no where near Darth Vader. They should have a twist where he dies and some actual good sith takes his place
i think they brought jj abrams on knowing he'd make an enjoyable movie that would appeal to the masses, it's a story you can walk into and get whether youre new to the franchise or you've been watching since 1977. theres layers of references to the old movies like ok you can walk in blind and still enjoy the story, but if youve seen the old ones once or twice you'll be hyped to see han/leia/luke/chewie etc, and if you're a hardcore fan you'll catch on to the episode iv parallels and all the lil hidden neato easter eggs
it's not groundbreaking or particularly original or artistic like you could say a new hope was, but it has sucked in legions of new fans and tons of $$$$$$, now they know episodes 8 and 9 will succeed financially bc the whole world is obsessed, so they can do what they want with the new movies and it won't be a huge risk bc the audience is already hooked. even people who thought the prequels killed the franchise are getting hyped about this and getting re-invested, both financially and emotionally
in short: episode 7 is bait and it's worked, so we'll see what's on the other end of the line
You can't have romance between a character established as at least heterosexual and a character who only had about 10 minutes of establishment dialogue and nothing else.
Episode VII was garbage. It was a complete carbon copy of the original film with some other themes and plots that were overlaid to try and make it seem original, but failed flat on its face as those themes just copied other Star Wars sources. The plot was a nasty cocktail derived from two failed script treatments and one that was cowritten by none other than the biggest hollywood hack around, JJ Abrams. The characters were the best part of the movie, no matter how woefully underutilized (Luke, Poe, Phasma) they were. Even with the excellent character-building, however, Rey and Finn had terrible arcs because they have complete heel-turns at least twice. Kylo Ren has been converted by the Internet Hate Machine into a whiny teenager meme when he should be a mentally unstable unstoppable murderer.
The problem with Episode VII is that it would have benefited if the EU was not in the canonical quagmire it is. For those of you who don't know, the Star Wars Expanded Universe was repackaged last April as "Legends," however it has never been clarified whether or not Legends is no longer canon. The Lucasfilm Story Group (the committee Disney put together to churn out copy-paste storylines) dodges it completely, and the "new canon" books still reference and go along with old sources. If movie-goers went in knowing the political dynamics of the Galaxy post-Vong War they would have been much more satisfied (No Coruscant did not blow up, the entire Republic did not blow up, the First Order is not what became of the Empire, etc.)
However, none of that matters because JJ Abrams decided to cut out many of the meaty plot exposition scenes since he's an adrenaline junky who wants to see the x-wing make bigger death star go boom. Even with the knowledge of the Galaxy after Episode VI, I'm sure Abrams would have just cut out anything that was too boring. Maybe it's fear from the prequels being too political, or maybe it's because Abrams is a hack. I'll let you decide that one.
it paid stellar homage to the original trilogy (particularly "a new hope") but was unable to create its own mythology, which i feel was the crux of the original trilogy. unforeseen mystery/wonder being the linchpin of the franchise, i felt like i was being catered to a bit too readily. instead of recreating and redefining, it mostly replicated. that being said, i enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than "a new hope" and i'm hopeful that the next 2 installments will build on their own respective mythos.
