A New Hope (that we recoup our $4 billion investment)

I finally saw the new Star Wars.

I know, it has been ages since it was released ten days ago. What can I say? It's hard to find time when you've got a 3 year old and a wife finishing Grad school.

On the plus side, like everyone else in the world it seems, I liked it. It felt very Star Warsish. Harrison Ford made a fine appearance as Han Solo and Rey and Finn make for nice additions to the cast. Plus BB-8 was just as adorable as R2-D2. The Light Side is strong in this movie.

I wish the same could be said for the Dark Side. I wish they had explained more about how the First Order came about and had toned down the Nazi veneer a bit. It's just a bit too on the nose here. Supreme Leader Snoke was a bit of joke to me. First, his name is as stupid as Count Dooku. Second, he was just another lackluster CGI cartoon that lacked weight despite being twenty feet tall. Third, I hope he gets fleshed out in the next two movies because there was nothing much to him in this one.

I get they are space Nazis.
You don't have to copy their propaganda films for me to get that

Also, while calling back to the original movies is all well and good, even expected and needed, this movie was basically A New Hope with some minor tweaks. Mysterious dark, helmeted villain: check. Seemingly vast Nazi empire facing off against a tattered and sparse Rebellion (Resistance): check. Super weapon capable of exploding planets: yup, but let's make it Super-Duper and it can now destroy planets and moons (maybe even entire solar systems?). They might as well as skipped Jakku and done the first part of the movie on Tatooine and just had the cantina redux done there too. Along with myopic Yoda.

And Kylo Ren...well I mean Adam Driver. Kylo Ren is a fine character and I look forward to learning more about how he fell to the Dark Side and why he wanted to kill his Dad so badly. It's just Adam Driver. Oh, Adam Driver. He's an alright actor and my dislike is mostly personal and probably unfair. Yet, every time I see him I just can't get his awkward sex scenes with Lena Dunham from Girls out of my head. And I don't like having those scenes in my head!

He also just looks goofy

Now that I've had sometime to think about it, I feel this movie should have been called Star Wars: Into Darkness or maybe Star Wars: Return of the JJ Abrams. He made a lot of the same mistakes in this movie as he did in Star Trek. Though, JJ Abrams is a far better Star Wars director than Star Trek one.

All-in-all the movie can't be prefect and can't ever live up to the hype it had around it, but it came close. I look forward to the next one, in 2017 or whenever it is due out.

PS Disney probably recouped their $4 billion investment 24 hours after they bought Star Wars.