Inevitable ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Backlash as Critics, Fans Turn on New Film

After nearly unanimous praise and feverish buzz, the J.J. Abrams film takes a beating

Star Wars The Force Awakens
Disney

For Disney’s record-setting “Star Wars” reboot, the Force isn’t strong enough to stave off Internet haters and critics waking up to hangovers from the lengthy hype.

The J.J. Abrams film was almost universally praised ahead of its Dec. 18 release where it went on to shatter domestic and global records, including the biggest opening weekend of all time and the first film to ever gross $100 million in a single day.

Now that the dust has settled, criticism over the film’s weaker plot points and pacing issues have cropped up in second takes from critics and fans on social media.

“[The film] is not very good … it’s depressingly unimaginative and dull in long stretches, and — crucially — reproduces George Lucas‘ original 1977 movie slavishly almost to the point of plagiarism,” wrote Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times on Monday.

“We’ve been played,” declared Vice’s Brian Merchant. “We’ve been served up a pretty unoriginal reboot that adds few, if any, new ideas to our greatest commercial mythology … and we’re lapping it up.”

The voices of dissent are greatly outnumbered, however. “The Force Awakens” has a rare 94-percent fresh rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and was also on AFI’s annual list of top ten films of the year.

The Huffington Post did a thorough and brutally honest inventory of 40 plot holes in the film, which features returning stars Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, along with newcomers Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac.

“It has a problem common to big action movies: villains who are not only dull, but also in this case, retreads of old ideas and dynamics,” concluded the Washington Post.

Read some of Twitter’s best rib shots below.

https://twitter.com/eliasisquith/status/678919488906076160

https://twitter.com/PaulKnights/status/681989996966993920

https://twitter.com/Paul_Surra/status/678493749287108608

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