Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is the most brilliant marketing campaign ever, especially if you’re a multi-billion dollar company (Disney) that needs to make a 4 billion dollar return (from buying Lucasarts) with a franchise you just bought. As a film, though, it’s derivative and boring to a fault.
I would guess the intended market for The Force Awakens rests with two audiences, the same two audiences which also made Jurassic World the second highest-grossing film of 2015. First, people who are nostalgic for a particular franchise. People who like Star Wars really like Star Wars, and they especially like the original trilogy. The prequel trilogy contains a lot of interesting ideas, but fails to coalesce into interesting film-making (shot/reverse shot, a million different green screen shots that make everything very boring to watch, etc). So, when Disney thought “let’s reboot this thing”, what greater lane could they slot “new” Star Wars into than to basically remake A New Hope (or the original “Star Wars”, if you’re a purist)?
An evil empire rises again, with a new name that calls itself The New Order. It has a Sith, a pretty bad one. They kinda look like Nazis. They replaced the Death Star with the Starkiller, because this one is built into a planet core instead. The Republic exists, and then explodes immediately because everyone hated Coruscant and political debates from the prequels (HURRAY, says all the Star Wars fans). The Rebel Alliance is now The Resistance. Both factions fighting use slightly updated versions of the same ship designs, despite a 30 year gap between this film and Return of the Jedi. Not surprisingly, any ship that isn’t in modern use ends up in a frame somewhere to give you a tinge of nostalgic longing (Look at the Star Destroyer! Look at the AT-AT!)
I’m sure there is more callbacks to the original trilogy, but I don’t want to think about them because I might throw up in my mouth a little bit at the shameless pandering. Just for example, Han and Kylo Ren’s meeting is a clear callback to Obi Wan and Darth Vader in Episode IV, except they replaced the mentor/student relationship with father/son, which they’ll probably play up. My brother didn’t realize this when we saw it, but once he realized that was exactly what happened, he called the movie “crap”.
Anyway, the second obvious target market is kids between the ages of 5-15, who are the obvious demographic for this reboot. Whether they saw the original movies or not, this is a new movie for them, and either audience can enjoy SPACE BATTLES and LIGHT SWORDS. It’s the same thing that makes Jurassic Park work well, just by replacing DINOSAURS with other things that are exciting.
Further: the protagonist, Rey, is from a desert planet (Jakku, not Tatooine, despite them looking identical). She is a scavenger instead of a farmer, but it makes little difference. She’s like a millennial version of Luke Skywalker, in that she is absolutely the best at everything she tries, even The Force, despite Luke taking three movies to get even basically competent at any Jedi-related activities. Most kids growing up today relate to her, because they are also the best at everything because their parents told them they were. Also, everyone has impeccable aim with blasters in this movie, which is surprising because I never saw Rey use a blaster before and nobody was any good at shooting in the other movies (maybe she got it from her father, Han Solo, which is not really a spoiler unless you couldn’t pick up any of the one million hints they dropped in the film that they are similar and she has her mother’s force powers).
Because they gave every good quality to Rey, Finn gets the short end of the stick by being an incompetent black guy (stereotype much?) who runs around and is bad at fighting and everything despite being a Stormtrooper. I am unsure why this character exists except to make Rey look awesome because she’s a young woman who is greater at everything (maybe to appeal to the “urban market”, as the great Mr. Plinkett noted with Mace Windu, but what do I know?). Poe Dameron is also awesome, despite being in the movie for about 10 minutes total out of the run time (though I’m unsure what, exactly, he will add to the coming films). This is considered an “interesting” set of characters, apparently, or ones crafted in a board room meeting to appeal to the widest demographic possible. It goes without saying that there is almost zero character development at all.
I noticed I didn’t mention Kylo Ren, but that’s because he’s a whiny emo kid who wears black. This is also a relatable character for people in certain age groups, and I have a feeling he’ll be redeemed in Episode IX before doing some heroic act of self-sacrifice. For right now, he’s worse at the Force than the girl with zero training or understanding of what, exactly, the Force is. It’s a little pathetic when you can’t really make your villain all that intimidating, at all, because Rey is so completely great at everything that he barely presents a challenge. Grit your teeth, Rey! Concentrate on mysterious powers and somehow use them immediately to win the fight, unlike every other character in this universe!
Then Luke Skywalker turns into Yoda and the film ends. Not that Leia didn’t already look like that in the movie.
So, if you like really safe, very tired narrative tropes and copying something that worked almost 40 years ago because everyone wanted it really bad, I guess The Force Awakens will fit the bill. I expected a J.J. Abrams movie with mysterious mysteries and dangling plot threads, but here the director forces himself into an already-cast mold which makes his style far less exciting. The man only gets to shuffle the deck chairs around, rather than actually building a new ship, and that’s pretty disappointing. It almost makes me long for the prequel trilogy, because at least it was different, if substantially less exciting.
The Force Awakens, as I said, is a brilliant advertisement for Star Wars-related products for all ages, so in that way it’s similar to the prequel trilogy. It just is much broader in appeal than its predecessors, which will hopefully let Disney make its money back as quickly as possible. As for the movie itself, the constant sense of déjà vu made it really hard to enjoy The Force Awakens at all. Without tension, or any sense that things won’t arrive at an obvious, foregone conclusion, it’s hard to get invested in it. Add all the other silly stuff above and I can’t say I’m looking forward to anything Star Wars related in the near future. Count me out, guys!
