‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’: L’Osservatore Romano Decries the Depiction of Evil

Last updated on: December 24, 2015 at 10:34 am by Kate O'Hare

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’: L’Osservatore Romano Decries the Depiction of Evil 2015-12-24T10:34:35-08:00 Kate O'Hare

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While the secular world has been heaping praise on “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” Disney’s massively marketed reboot of the Lucasfilm franchise (after buying George Lucas’ company and the rights to the “Star Wars” universe), the semi-official newspaper of the Vatican begs to differ.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I’m not a big fan of The Walt Disney Company, but I am fond of director J.J. Abrams and “Star Wars” — the first three, not the prequels. I haven’t seen “The Force Awakens” and have no immediate plans to do so. Therefore, I have no specific opinion of it to share.)

There isn’t a direct link yet to the L’Osservatore Romano review online yet, but it’s been quoted in a host of newspapers and Websites, who seem very interested in what a publication connected to the Church has to say about a movie that has no Christian elements and it set long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

From The Los Angeles Times:

The new director’s set-up fails most spectacularly in its representation of evil, meaning the negative characters,” according to the review. “Darth Vader and above all the Emperor Palpatine were two of the most efficient villains in that genre of American cinema.”

This time around, the villains are more insipid than devilish, the paper adds.

“The counterpart of Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, wears a mask merely to emulate his predecessor, while the character who needs to substitute the emperor Palpatine as the incarnation of supreme evil represents the most serious defect of the film,” it wrote. “Without revealing anything about the character, all we will say is that it is the clumsiest and tackiest result you can obtain from computer graphics.”

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Moreover the review suggests that director J.J. Abrams’ action sequences are better suited for the world of video games.

The review slams the film as “more reboot than sequel,” saying “not a classy reboot however, like Nolan’s Batman, but an update twisted to suit today’s tastes and a public more accustomed to sitting in front of a computer than in a cinema.”

However, as The U.K. Guardian points out, not all secular critics fell in love with the reboot:

Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir labelled JJ Abrams’ movie a “simulacrum of something that was already a simulacrum of something else” made by a director he called a “one-man industry of cultural recycling and repurposing”.

Writing in the New Statesman, Ryan Gilbey described Abrams as “a ceramicist producing a brand new model from a faulty mould”, adding: “The same flaws and shortcomings apparent in the rest of the series (the prioritising of plot over characterisation, the feeble humour and simple-minded morality) are beyond his power to correct.”

Meanwhile, Time magazine’s Stephanie Zacharek complained: “Somewhere along the way, Abrams begins delivering everything we expect, as opposed to those nebulous wonders we didn’t know we wanted.”

Lastly, from Variety:

These isolated observations certainly have not impacted box office for ”The Force” in Italy, where the film has grossed over $10 million to date, in line with expectations, after scoring the country’s top December opening frame ever.

L’Osservatore Romano is not new to going against the grain in its reviews of record-breaking Hollywood blockbusters. It slammed “Avatar” as “sentimental hokum.”

For what it’s worth, I totally agree on that view of “Avatar,” which I thought was a very pretty but extremely silly movie.

A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Movie Night.

Image: Courtesy The Walt Disney Company

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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