4th? So, at least one of the prequels was better?
Although
@Jymmymack is right about the math, yes, I consider at least one prequel better than TFA. My ranking (as of now) would be:
1. Empire
2. Revenge of the Sith
3. A New Hope
4. Force Awakens/Attack of the Clones (I wanna put AoC higher, but I know I need to see TFA again with better expectations before I can do that definitively)
6. Return of the Jedi
7. The Phantom Menace
Again, that's purely off of first impressions, which are rarely correct. I know I need to see this again to judge fairly.
If you really wanna know, here's my thought process for the whole movie (SPOILERS AHEAD, DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANNA KNOW ANYTHING)
No Disney castle to open the movie, good. Opening crawl, awesome. First shot, beautiful, one of the best in the series.
The whole first third of the movie is some of the best storytelling I've ever seen. It was truly Star Wars at its finest. I think I was smiling throughout the entirety of the time the main characters are on Jakku. The way they worked in the homages and references to old movies were great (loved the Falcon re-introduction). Also really like Poe, probably my favorite new character, but Finn and Rey are also great...Finn has some of the funniest dialog in the franchise. I thought that at this point, nothing could go wrong and I was hoping the movie would never end.
Then Act II starts. I'm curious as to how Rey is such an amazing pilot but the movie never bothers to explain...whatever, I can let it go. Everything is well and good when Han and Chewie enter the Falcon. Han getting into trouble was good, the monster attack was fun (although at this point I'm starting to think that Finn and Rey are two of the most ridiculously lucky people ever but I digress), and all is still well. Then they get to that forest planet and things start to fall apart a little bit for me. I honestly don't know if it's bad storytelling or it's me truly being caught off guard as the narrative started taking some turns.
First off, I hate the Supreme Leader. Poorly designed character, stupid, un-intimidating name, and he lacks the gravitas of the Emperor...by a lot. Also absolutely hate (seriously, stop reading if you don't want spoilers) how they threw in that Kylo Ren was Han's son. I get it, you don't want to do a dramatic moment that rips off Empire, but still, they just sorta mentioned it and we are all of a sudden supposed to accept that without it making much sense to us at all. What's worse--this has very little bearing on the plot. Maybe they'll elaborate it on the future movies, but in this one, I don't think anything would've been lost if Kylo had no relation to Han and Leia (and wtf was with them referring to him only as "their son"...so weird). I guess you could argue that the final confrontation between Kylo and Han wouldn't have been as meaningful had this relationship not been established, but then again, it wasn't very good to begin with. Kylo Ren starts freaking crying, only to kill Han in a very un-Star Wars moment IMO. It was a scene that I think was meant to be powerful, but it just was so awkward and out of place to me.
And that brings me to another problem--Kylo. He starts off as a straight up badass. He has an amazing presence in the first half of the movie. As soon as he takes his mask off though (why does the guy have a mask anyway?), he becomes the weakest villain in the series. His serious moments are undermined by bits of comedy (his lightsaber fits, the stormtroopers watching and walking away...even as corny as the OT got, they never reduced Darth Vader to a comic relief character, he ALWAYS had an intimidating presence on screen). I loved the comedic bits in the movie, but too many here ruined the tone of parts of the movie.
Anyway, so after Rey discovers the lightsaber, Starkiller Base starts blowing up planets...wut? Where did that come from? The whole movie we've been following the First Order and yet THIS is the first time we hear about this super weapon and what it can do. It just sorta...happens, without us understanding truly what it is, robbing what should've been a grand cinematic reveal (like the Death Star) to what seems like an afterthought.
So this happens, The First Order begins attacking, and all of a sudden the Resistance shows up, with Poe leading the way. Again, wtf? He's the main focus of the movie's first ten minutes, then disappears for like an hour, then shows back up again with absolutely no explanation of where he's been and no introduction other than a shot of him in the cockpit coming up with the rest of the X-Wings.
And that becomes a main problem throughout the movie. While the Falcon and Han/Chewie's intro is well-done, characters just start appearing for the sake of appearing in the second half. C-3PO literally comes out of nowhere and pops into the screen. R2D2 is given a contrived reason to appear. Leia is said to be a general but is given pretty much nothing to do but be there for the sake of being there. It's just disappointing compared to the excellent beginning.
So we get to the climax...we have to blow up the station or else. Finn mentions he can do it, but then at the last second mentions "hey jk, I was a janitor I don't know what I'm doing". It was a funny moment in the movie, but served 0 purpose. The shield gets deactivated anyway, and we literally gained nothing from that part of the story except some extra jokes. And I hated that the badass chick in the badass stormtrooper outfit from the beginning is given the task of deactivating the shield and then forgotten about. Like really? She was made out to be a major component of the First Order but her sendoff is "where do we put her? do you have a trash compactor?" Again, good for a laugh but not the story or the pace of the movie.
So then the climax happens. Kylo has lost all intimidating factor at this point. I liked the lightsaber battle at the end. But I didn't like how we focus on that for what seems like a good 20 minutes and get nothing of the dogfight until the end. Remember RoJ where we were constantly cutting back and forth between Luke vs Vader and Lando vs the Death Star? Not here. We just forget about Poe and his guys until the end and they just happen to blow it up (and it's unclear how. They're given until it gets dark out but they keep fighting well past that point. What took them so long to fire the thing up? And while I'm at it, why does it use the sun for power? That's too over-the-top and makes no sense. This was never established in the first attack, why all of a sudden is that an important point? Again, it seems like poor storytelling).
Then we're given a cliffhanger ending which, I'll admit, is great. It's very, very different from previous Star Wars closing shots (I don't like that they end it on a helicopter shot, it's not as powerful, but that's a petty complaint). I'm glad that Luke is back. That was good way to end it.
I don't want to seem like I'm sh*tting on the movie. I actually did really, really like it. It felt like Star Wars, and I'm impressed with JJ Abrams was able to accomplish. The action scenes were brilliant, as was the cinematography, and the cast is stellar...couldn't think of better heroes to spend the next two movies with. BB-8 is also a really well-done character. Overall, it was just so fun. But it lacked something iconic. From every Star Wars movie, you can pick out at least one element or scene that stands out and makes that movie that movie. Darth Maul in 1. The Battle of Genesis in 2. Grievous and the emergence of Darth Vader in 3. Pretty much everything in 4. "I am your father" in 5. The final battle and moment between Luke/Vader in 6. In 7...I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything. We have a weapon that's not well-explained, a weak villain, and a lot of throwbacks. Even the score was disappointing, generic background music sprinkled with a few themes from the past. Maybe that'll change over time, but we have yet to find out.
The thing is, I only have seen 4 SW movies in theaters (including this one), and the only ones I really remember are 3 and 7. The feeling I had leaving the theater after ep. 3 was much, much greater than the one I had after leaving this movie. I feel that, weak dialogue and poor direction aside, the prequels were great Star Wars movies. You remove the elements of the OT from the PT and you still have very unique movies with a very powerful story. In this one, I feel that if you remove the cameos and references, you have a pretty basic sci-fi film. Again, I'm sure this will change over time, especially as the story is expanded upon in subsequent films, but that's my feeling as of now. That's not to say it was bad, but it was not all it could have been IMO. Beautiful, yes. Fun, yes. But the next great Star Wars movie? Not for now. We'll see what happens when I give it a re-watch.
