Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

Before I go into why the score is the way it is, I will say a Happy 10th Anniversary to this abomination of cinema. Star Wars has never been in a better place and all the fans still love Star Wars and are not at all apathetic about it anymore. I know I enjoyed this when it came out. It was a new era and everyone was so happy! I think I gave this around an 8/10 out of the theater but then a 7/10 when I finally wrote my review the next day. On a rewatch I gave it a 3/10 and then secretly gave it a 2/10. I have made many mistakes, but I am only human and bought into the hype and culture when they first came out. How times change, this is the film that led to the destruction of Star Wars.


Strap in, this will be long...


The Force Awakens presents itself as a triumphant return to Star Wars, but beneath the surface it functions primarily as nostalgia bait. It imitates past glories without delivering on its own promises and fails to establish a meaningful foundation for the trilogy. What should have been the spark of something new instead collapses into hollow repetition.

The movie starts with some of the worst Bathos humor (contemporarily known as Marvel humor) after Kylo Ren kills Lor San Tekka, even though he needed the information that old geezer had about the map. We know Kylo Ren can interrogate people wherever, and it would have been better if Lor San Tekka had died from that to show how brutal Kylo Ren is. Instead, our whiny baby Sith kills him, and Poe comes out and shoots a laser. It would have been even more fun if the laser he shot killed Lor San Tekka because of Kylo’s power, but that’s a second idea that’s too cool for this film. After that, we get some cringe Bathos humor. Again, Kylo does not interrogate Poe when BB-8 is literally within spitting distance, and the whole plot unfolds because the bad guys are bad at their job. This is all within the first eight minutes, and I didn’t even nitpick 100 other things.

Rey’s introduction also exemplifies a problem. She is framed as an orphan from a desert planet who discovers latent powers, inherits a droid carrying vital information, and ultimately helps destroy a planet-sized weapon. Structurally, this is a near beat-for-beat retread of A New Hope. The film seemingly asks us to celebrate this as an innovation on the basis of the protagonist being a woman. (Mark Hamill himself said this, by the way.) The narrative discipline, restraint, and earned growth that defined Luke’s journey are conspicuously absent. Her story will only get more contrived as the sequels continue.

Kylo Ren’s defeat by Rey is the clearest example of narrative collapse. Kylo is mildly injured from a bowcaster that could have sent him flying off the bridge, but the film goes out of its way to show him striking his wound later to stay focused. As a Sith, pain only would have empowered him. He easily defeats Finn, proving the injury is not crippling. Kylo was trained by Luke Skywalker, mentored by Snoke, and fought alongside his elite warriors. By all logic he should be a master with a blade. Yet Rey, with ZERO training or knowledge of the Force, defeats him by “opening herself” to powers she barely understands. Her decisive strike is a face slash that ends up barely damaging him, yet somehow ends the fight. Kylo even pivots beforehand from wanting to kill Rey to asking her to join him after this single clash of blades. This is not earned storytelling at all. Rey should have lost and been saved by the planet splitting apart, mirroring Luke’s retreat after losing his hand to Vader and throwing himself miles down a shaft to escape. The planet would also not become a sun because that's not how physics works in any universe.

Even the film’s supposed emotional core is broken. Leia hugs Rey over Han’s death even though Leia DID NOT MEET REY OR KNOW WHO SHE IS past a connection to the force INSTEAD OF CHEWBACCA, who she knew for TWENTY YEARS and Han knew for THIRTY YEARS and had a relationship. Again, I need to stress this... LEIA DID NOT KNOW REY AT ALL. This is not character-driven emotion. It is symbolic torch-passing, and it insults the relationships the saga spent DECADES building. To make matters worse, Rey is somehow the person meant to go find Luke versus any of the other dozens of people who actually know Luke. (Let's not forget how The Last Jedi treats Luke... no wonder Mark Hamill went crazy.)

The ending only deepens the contradictions. Snoke declares Kylo needs more training, framing Han’s murder as proof of loyalty. Yet in The Last Jedi this act is reframed as weakness, humiliation, and failure. Snoke mocks Kylo for losing to “a girl with no training,” collapsing the arc under its own contradictions. The villain loses all credibility, the apprentice loses coherence, and the trilogy loses its foundation.

The problems with The Force Awakens do not stop at nostalgia. They bleed directly into The Last Jedi, exposing how shallow the setup really was. It is just unavoidable. Finn is sliced across the back in a lightsaber duel, a wound that should have been life-altering, yet in the sequel it is treated as a joke and he's fine. Poe Dameron helps destroy Starkiller Base, only to be accused of being a mole in The Last Jedi. Actions that should carry weight are discarded for cheap reversals. The setup was broken and needed a better roadmap, which Disney admitted to not having multiple times.

None of this is “just” recycled imagery. It is storytelling that discards consequence, undermines training, and replaces earned emotion with hollow gestures. All of this film was packaged to sell, and they left what made good stories at the door. The only source of Joy I had with this movie was Poe and Finn escaping The First Order and BB-8s thumbs up, everything can go to hell for all I care.

This is not Star Wars. This is empty nostalgia, broken character logic, and a trilogy built on contradictions. What a disgrace...
December 18th 2015 was the day Star Wars was wounded. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.