You can’t go home again, Chewie: An appreciative look at what’s wrong with “The Force Awakens”

You’re being torn apart. You want to be free of this pain. You know what you have to do but you don’t know if you have the strength to do it.

I will help you. Ready? Here we go:

SPOILERS! LOTS OF SPOILERS!!

“The Force Awakens” is good fun — Han Solo! Leia! Lightsabers! A bad guy in a mask! — but it will be seen as a disappointment once the initial euphoria fades.

Not a “Phantom Menace” disappointment, but it is isn’t one tenth as good as New Hope or Empire — It’s maybe a fifth as good as Jedi — for two reasons.

First, let’s get the good stuff out of the way.

“The Force Awakens” is solidly entertaining and delivers about as much as fans could reasonably expect. It nods effectively to the original films, in both big and little ways. It introduces compelling new heroes. It ignores the prequels.

But.

1) It’s just too derivative of the original trilogy.

Another planet-destroying weapon. With fatal vulnerability. That’s extremely poorly guarded.

Another “dad wants me to choose one side of the Force, but I’m just not sure” galactic family psychodrama.

2) Too much lame stuff, and you won’t be able to ignore it forever.

The little problems

Rey goes from solo scavenger to “I won’t ever leave you, BB-8!” in about 15 minutes.

Rey and Finn go from strangers to best buddies in about 14 minutes.

Their relationship is weirdly chaste.

Rey goes from “the Jedi are real?” to “I have pretty good mastery of the Force and lightsaber technique” in about a day.

Captain Phasma got a fair bit of buildup for someone who marches around a bit, gets captured, rolls over, and vanishes from the film.

The big problems

The map subplot is horrible. We have to give the film’s creators the benefit of the doubt to some extent. We don’t know the backstory of why Luke left, where he is, etc. etc. But he happened to leave a map to his whereabouts? That happened to have two pieces? And half happened to find its way into the hands of the bad guys? And the other half just happened to be in the hands of an old Ben Kenobi-like guy on Jakku? It’s too silly and feels contrived solely to get the good guys and bad guys both suddenly chasing after Luke.

General Snoke feels pretty contrived, too. Again, we should give the benefit of the doubt to some degree. But too much of “The Force Awakens” feels like scene-setting for future installments. Who is Snoke? What does he want? What will he do with Kylo Ren? All we really get is that he is an evil Palpatine-like puppeteer.

To a lesser extent, Maz Kanata feels pretty contrived, too. Small, wizened provider of backstory. Very familiar, that sounds.

The biggest problem

The real issue, of course, is that we, the fans of Star Wars, have grown up. Embracing something wholeheartedly when you’re 11 isn’t the same thing as enjoying it at age 35. You just can’t ignore the silly bits, the lapses in logic, the clotted dialog. The shortcomings of the original trilogy have become entirely familiar, embraced, beloved. It’s like seeing a photo of your mom and being asked, “Is her smile a little lopsided?” Maybe, but it’s completely besides the point. It’s you’re mom!

“The Force Awakens” can be a lot of things, but not that.

Sorry, Chewie. You can’t go home again.