First impressions (21st December 2015)
a) Darth Kretin for added gameplay
I am a great fan of Star Wars but this film made me cringe most of the way through.Kylo Wren is a mentally challenged individual who for some odd reason wears a mask and is an apprentice for the a dark being who looks like an oversized Gollum sitting on a throne, played by the actor who played Gollum in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films. He can throw people around and throttle them with the force, but when it comes to fighting with the light sabre, even a stormtrooper who hasn't had much battle experience, but worked in sanitation could even hold his own against this agent of the Sith for a few rounds. Kylo is suddenly beaten down by a woman named Rey who suddenly discovers her ability to use the force coming from nowhere, when she holds the light sabre for the first time. It feels as if anyone could use a lightsabre in this story as if they were videogame characters, and gain points in battle. For some reason, this Kylo's menace had sent Luke into hiding for some years and one wonders how it could be that Luke couldn't handle this Kylo unless he wanted to simply stop himself from killing or maiming this individual.The giant gollum character appeared to be very forgiving for all of Darth Kretin's errors such as leaving the BB-8 bringing with him a woman who only had a memory of the map. The biggest question might be the nature of the game plan and reading what it must say in the rule book about the story. So for the sequel, Kylo's connection with the Sith would have to be upgraded for him to be an entity with any effect and eventually he will surely become Darth Kretin if a Darth at all, but a user of the force in the manner of a Jedi just with a few moments of realisation will obviously beat him whatever. Gameplay also involved trying out flying a Millenium Falcon and operating the cannons with perhaps little or no experience and crashing it all over the place and escaping from TIE fighters in an already handicapped state. Further battles were fought with all the enthusiasm of videogamers on their videogame consols. If one loves videogames then this might be fine for many people, of course they might be used to the style of film making because of this.
b) Big Macs and MacGuffins
I admit that the others around me were enjoying the movie a lot more than I was, laughing at all the jokes which I didn't really relate to. The actors as their characters are all fine and the new robot BB8 is great. Perhaps the idea that Finn was supposed to be a stormtrooper who went AWOL made the whole idea of stormtroopers seem rather less serious than they had ever been, as if they hadn't been trained at all to carry out the tasks they're supposed to, let alone told about what the objectives of The First Order are, but Boyega was fine in his role. Now stormtroopers can be of all sizes and seemed laughable to look at, Boyega seemed too short to be Stormtrooper with his thick helment too big for him, being around the same height as Mark Hamill who played Luke Skywalker who was a little short for a Stormtrooper. Captain Phasma in her brilliant metallic armour has been used very pointlessly, easily overcome. Max Von Sydow as a character at the beginning seemed all very pointless as well. The designs for the new X-fighter and Tie-Fighters were fine as well as the tie-fighter launch bay but we had seen this before basically. Three main explosions in the film to keep people's brains occupied, when the tie fighter sinks into the sand, when the building with the alien cantina inside is bombed and when the Starkiller base is destroyed in the usual manner by the rebels with a new name. This obviously kept all the people excited and alert. They might as well have three paper bags full of air being popped through the movie to keep the audience alert. R2D2 is out of action in the movie until a cloth is pulled away to introduce him into the film and make some use out of him. Abrams loves to stuff an overinflated MacGuffin into anywhere he can squeeze it no matter how it bends anything around it out of shape. The Millenium Falcon travels through a strange tunnel in the film that makes it look as if it was likely to run into the Tardis. Obviously looking forwards to episode 8.
