A New Hope, Return of the Jedi, Empire Strikes Back, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, Phantom Menace.....then Force Awakens.
In all blunt honesty, while I need to see it again down the road after it's no longer fresh, my initial gut reaction walking out of the theater was "Is this the worst Star Wars movie I've ever seen?" And my initial answer was: yes.
Granted, the prequel trilogy made TOO much use of CGI, and someone else should have written/directed the romance scenes other than Lucas, as that is NOT his strong suit (obviously). But while the prequels absolutely had their flaws, to ME, at least upon one viewing, they were, collectively and individually, BETTER Star Wars films than Ep. VII was.
Don't get me wrong, Ep. VII COULD have been great. But for whatever complaints people had about Ep I-III, things that they DIDN'T do, were have constant, often out of place humor gags, constant, often pointless fan-service pandering, and a plethora of plot holes that leave you going "WHAT?"
Abrams and company tried SO hard to pander to fans of the original trilogy, that they were literally tripping over themselves trying to fit in every POSSIBLE nod, wink and reference to those movies that they could. And the plot was a blatant ripoff of Ep IV (IE the original, arguably best Star Wars). And to me, as a lifelong fan, that is unacceptable. I will not accept a plate of badly written fan service, and allow the fact that they went out of their way to tickle the fanboy clitoris of every Star Wars geek out there with non-stop self-aware references, as a "great" Star Wars film.
I'm sorry, but I honestly feel that a lot of people are blinded by the hype, blinded by the fan-service, and blinded by how much many of them claim to "hate" the prequel films. Many people have even said that they were SO excited that this WASN'T going to be the prequel movies, that they didn't even care about the blatant fan-service of glaring plot issues. And to me, that's not right. To me, PERSONALLY, while the prequels were flawed and SHOULD have been better, they didn't pander. They told the story Lucas wanted to tell, they told the story that all of us knew they were GOING to tell, which was "how did Anakin become Darth Vader, and how did the Republic become the Empire".
I have heard people complain that they "to this day have no idea what the plot was in the first two prequel films". And quite frankly? That is only possible if you're either legally brain dead, or you just weren't paying attention on purpose (IE trolling). Because whether you thought they had GOOD plots or not, those plots were pretty fucking cut and dry. And to me, someone who grew up a fan of the original trilogy AND much of the expanded universe content (at least the Old Republic and pre-Battle of Yavin type stuff), the plots of the prequel films made perfect sense, and added up just fine. Could they have been EXECUTED in acting and dialogue better? Absolutely, hence those films being flawed.
But you know what? AS a lifelong Star Wars fan, I will gladly take flawed films that at least TRIED to say something of their own, over a film whose entire existence, from start to finish, was just fan-service to make prequel trilogy fanboys happy. That isn't art, that's a contrived commercial product, which is modern Disney's calling card. I'm just glad that Abrams is NOT going to be writing or directing Ep. 8 or 9. And I then hope that they do NOT repeat the bullshit he pulled with this film, even though the initial damage is already done, and that those two films somehow manage to pick it up and be decent Star Wars films. Because to me, so far, I don't feel like I've seen a new Star Wars film yet. I feel like I sat through a 2 hour Star Wars fan media event, which was all pandering and lead-up to an actual Star Wars film, coming in 2017......
There were a handful of positives this film had. But I was just overwhelmed by the many things that left a bad taste in my mouth. I had a bad feeling that Abrams and Disney being involved was going to be a bad thing....and so far, it looks like that was justified. It just makes me sad that they try to render all of that great (and some not so great) EU content "not canon", but we're expected to take THIS as canon. I am not a fan of the Thrawn Trilogy, personally, but I honestly would rather they had directly adapted that, than what this is turning out to be so far.....
