10) The Over-Familiarity Of The Story
One thing we can be thankful for regarding J.J. Abrams coming on board Episode VII is that he brings his innate understanding of what fans love about Star Wars. His major contribution to making The Force Awakens such a delight is recognizing the magic of the original trilogy, then somehow bottling it and applying it to the new movie.
Unfortunately, it’s evidently not just the tone of the original trilogy that Abrams was seeking to repeat with The Force Awakens. The plot and characters are familiar – the good ‘Resistance’ versus the bad ‘First Order,’ conflicted masked villain and his even more evil master, droid on the run with a Macguffin, giant planet-killing space station, young dreamer abandoned on a desert planet who might just be The One – so much so that Episode VII is occasionally in danger of just feeling lazily derivative.
9) The Plot Holes And Inconsistencies
Of course, Star Wars has always been full of holes – which blockbuster franchise isn’t? If it’s not the Empire inexplicably holding fire on R2-D2 and C3-P0’s escape pod in A New Hope, it’s The Empire Strikes Back having a seriously messed-up timeline (watch it again – apparently, Yoda only needs a few days to train Luke in the ways of the Force).
The Force Awakens is particularly hole-y, however. Seriously, we’re talking prequel-levels, here. You also have logical inconsistencies, like – to name but one example – Finn breaking down over the sight of a dead stormtrooper, before minutes later giddily blasting through a whole platoon of them in order to escape the First Order. Sadly, it seems J.J. Abrams can’t escape his propensity for illogical and occasionally baffling storytelling.