Probably the most common issue with The Force Awakens, however, is its perceived similarities to A New Hope, which some have called "lazy" given how much ridiculous hype was built around the film. Let's look at how similar it is to both A New Hope and the original trilogy as a whole: a hero is plucked from the desert, meets a droid with crucial resistance information, the bad guys use their giant laser weapon to explode some planets, there's a Moff Tarkin-like villain (General Hux), a Yoda-like sage (Maz Kanata), a Boba Fett-like bada** (Phasma), there's a cantina scene, Han dies in similar fashion to Obi-Wan, and the villain's base is destroyed by a trench run where a small, specific object has to be destroyed. It felt very on-the-nose that the movie cribbed so blatantly from its own mythology, and though Episode VII was still an enjoyable film, one really hopes that the next one will be a little more confident in the foundation that's been built and branch out with some more original ideas. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now, but if Episode VIII is just more homages and references to what came before, we won't be as forgiving.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
