At least not the cinematographic one. Just to give you some context: I grew up with the Star Wars saga. When it first began, it was fresh, it was new, it had fantasy, battle, space ships, a love story, and a bit of something for each generation — a real family movie.
When I say that Star Wars 7 is bad, I am not saying this from the point of someone who saw the movie for the first time and does not like the sci-fi genre; there is no bias like this behind my critique. It is something else.
Rotten Tomatoes gave Star Wars an amazing 92% and 90% of audience score, and IMDB was a bit more modest, with a score of 8.4/10. In my opinion, it certainly does not deserve such a huge score, at least not as a movie.
I watched all the Star Wars movies a few times. I even watched the remastered versions. For me, this one is the worst; it is almost a complete disappointment.
How would I rate this movie? Probably between 5 and 6.
Why that high? Let me say that I can understand the need to give today’s kids something fresh, with state-of-the-art CGI effects, but, in my mind, this film is still bad.
First of all, the story is completely the same; there are no new elements. The only new/introduced element is the same one that was introduced a gazillion times on Cartoon Network 20 years ago, where, for every “adult” animated super hero, in lack of imagination, they made a baby version of the same. Cartoon Network felt that they needed to fill the time gap and make more money with no effort or imagination.
Star Wars 7 is just a combination of the previous versions. The plot is the same — nothing new. It is like watching the next day in Groundhog Day, only with younger versions of the actors. As for the acting, I would rather not even go there. It’s like the movie title The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. If anything, Star Wars 7 is a new, politically and racially corrected version of the previous movies, where everyone has to be there, so no one will be offended — or, better to say, so that they could capture more people willing to pay for the ticket.
So, if Star Wars 7 is not cinematographic success, what is it?
It is a huge marketing, money-making, brain-washing success. Never in the history of the capitalistic film machine has anyone done the job better, and never did someone on this planet undertake such a huge psychology experiment on such a grand scale. Simply put, it is massive.
The first time they announced the movie officially was in October 2012. Between then and December 2015, every step was carefully planned; every announcement was carefully crafted. It was 3 years of careful strategy. Long before the first teaser trailer was released in November 2014, Disney was pumping social medias, geek forums, twitter, Facebook — you name it.
Occasionally, now and then, some already famous movie star would just appear on the screen as a fan of the saga, in costume, saying that being on the set is a fulfilment of their childhood dreams.
Before you know it, long before the release, everyone was cheerfully chanting Star Wars themes for free — a huge marketing campaign in social media and primetime, all for free (or we would like to think so). I would like to avoid mentioning — but I cannot — the sleazy marketing move with terminally-ill people and their dying wishes to see the movie before everyone else. Ask yourself how many people had the following thought: “If this is his last wish, I must see it. I do not know what it is, but I have to see it.” Then there were the tears of joy in the eyes of the Big Bang Theory crew in an episode dedicated only to the Star Wars 7 event. All of this, plus many more things carefully constructed as a part of the brainwashing campaign.
This had an enormous hypnotic effect, and it was done on such a massive scale that not even the famous illusionist and mentalist Derren Brown could pull it off.
This hypnotic effect did exactly the thing it was created for: it separated a huge number of people from their money, making the staggering revenue of $ 2 billion (that is $2,000,000,000) for one movie. Just for comparison, Indian Mars Orbited Space Mission cost $74 million. Just from the movie earnings, they could finance 27 similar space missions. I am not even mentioning the franchise revenue from the toys, books, video games, DVDs, licensing, etc. and that will be three times as profitable.*1
If they wanted to create a good SF movie, they could pick any story from famous, well-known SF authors like Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Greg Bear, Charles Stross, Ursula K. Le Guin, and so many, many more. They have not done that; they used the same plot, same characters, and good, old money-making formulas.
This would never happen, if people had the ability to pay after watching the movie and to pay according their satisfaction. Instead, we buy goods before we can see what is inside, and, when we get fooled, we pretend that it never happened. It’s like all those posh people pretending that Caviar is super tasty; how could they otherwise in any sane mind justify $300 per spoon of it.
Star Wars 7 is literally The Emperor's New Clothes of our time: nothing is there, and we would rather pretend it is a good movie than admit the truth. It is easy, just admit... Disney has made fool out of you.
I hope, one day, someone will see that movie, read about it, and see it as a sum of all the wrongs in this society — a time when people made films not to create something that is artistically beautiful but just to make more money.
In conclusion — pardon my French — but Star Wars 7 is a shit movie!
But, do not worry; they will make an even bigger one. Just prepare your wallet in years to come...
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