[VIDEO] Nerdrotic Re-Examines Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I’m trying to hold on to a filler posting for more than a few days. The point of having a buffer is to actually buffer. Trying to get my schedule on track without taking a week off (which hasn’t worked as I’ll get sick or otherwise distracted) has not been successful. So let’s see how long this one, typed up on Feb 4, lasts. I’m betting you’re seeing this on Feb 5 given my luck.  (Nope. Made it to February 11.) I hope I at least got to work on something.

So…Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The first story in the Disney era of Star Wars is not exactly looked back upon as favorably as when it first came out. From JJ Abrams rehashing the same story beats in an attempt to prove they were moving away from the political climate of the prequels to questions without answers (aka Abrams’ beloved “mystery box”), there were a lot of problems with the movie. My own initial review was fairly positive, but that’s before the problems of the two sequels and all of the live-action and animated shows pointed out more of the flaws that we didn’t think about at the time. Like with The Phantom Menace we were just happy to see Star Wars back with new official stories, as the canon of the novels, comics, and games were up for debate.

We would soon realize that the people involve really weren’t interested in the saga. They liked the Brand, because it was popular and they assumed they could remake it in their image and still make tons of money, ego trumping the desires of the fans. Subverting expectations is fine if done right, but subverting fan desire for the long-awaited return of the franchise will hurt you every time.

For the anniversary of The Force Awakens, Gary Buchler of Nerdrotic finally did a review of a movie he wasn’t able to when it came out. Turns out I’ve been doing this longer than he has. In the following video he goes over why the movie actually should have been a prediction of what was to come. Then I’ll have a few thoughts of my own.

Could the movie have been better? Yes. There’s a reason my initial review was more favorable than my reassessment and that of everyone else. There are good ideas, which we accepted more because the other films hadn’t happened yet and we were happy to have Star Wars back in theaters (or in my case home video as me and my friends were unable to see it in theaters at the time due in part to it being 2016 and not dying was even more important than which jackass took the White House). There are ways to fix this…but it’s too late to actually do so. The dead characters’ actors are still alive, but some of the actors of living character ironically are not. The ones that are alive are too old to pull off proper adaptations of the “Expanded Universe” stories that did a far better job continuing the growth of the characters and the creations of new characters and offspring. Perhaps animated productions could pull it off, but as for this story, it exists in the universe and you can’t change that. Plus Disney doesn’t want to.

So we don’t get to see the characters back together one more time. Carrie Fisher, Kenny Baker, and Peter Mayhew have all become one with the Force, and even though one was costumed and you could replace another with an actual robot, you can’t just replace Leia. (I’m guessing Leia is a general because it’s tough to be a princess when your kingdom is destroyed and Disney has their own idea of what a princess is…which isn’t what Walt considered a princess, but that’s another commentary.) Not anymore at least, since anyone of the classic audience who cares are now reduced to gallows humor style ridiculing of what the elitists who want to replace the real cast with their own “daughters” (the existing Kathleen Kennedy with Rey and the incoming Dave Filoni with Ahsoka Tano) and the failures they made by ignoring the actual notes George Lucas, the man who created this franchise, gave them. This is what happens when the fans insist the creator was the real threat to Star Wars. For all of the prequels faults, there’s a reason that same reassessment is giving it a more favorable rating that the sequel trilogy or most of what else has come out.

Gary has a running comment about how things were explained in the Expanded Media that will later be contradicted. On the one hand it’s not like the novels, comics, and games didn’t do that. Nobody knew what the Clone Wars was until the prequels and came up with their own versions. The Marvel comics and the novel Splinter In The Mind’s Eye, one of the first novels, switched whether it was Luke or Leia who knew how to swim, and the comics followed the typical hero formula of the hero getting the girl, but Empire Strikes Back decided to put her with the scoundrel against space opera norms even before Lucas decided it was easier to make Leia the mysterious sister in Return Of The Jedi because he didn’t have time to create a new character.

On the other hand, Disney tossed out all of the novels, comics, and games with the express goal of building a shared continuity with all their media, including Disney+, which is what Bob Iger was ultimately more interested in. You’d think a story bible of important details would be a good idea. Then again, Hasbro tried that with Transformers and the “binder of revelation”, and it’s not like the novels, comics, and video games paid attention to it. Even now the Skybound comics aren’t following the 13 Primes story the toys are trying to tell. The problem with a shared universe is making sure your creators actually care enough to follow one rather than follow their own egos.

This the end result of nothing being thought out, nothing planned out, or ignoring the plans of those who came before. Abrams ignored Lucas’ plans. Rian Johnson ignored Abrams’ fans. Abrams then had to undo Johnson’s mistakes and ended up making nobody happy because they didn’t think of how to conclude the threads since he doesn’t care. The “mystery box” is a lie because it doesn’t have an answer, it just uses the questions to  falsely give the audience hope that it will be interesting. Since then they’ve done nothing to figure it out. Just throw stories out and assume the Brand is all you need. This is what has ruined so many famous brands and chased off their audiences without replacing them, whether the new version was “woke” or not. It’s more a case of not caring about what you’re doing or the people that made the thing popular in the first place. To quote a certain Jedi Master, that is why you fail.