It took me a couple of years and several slide rulers, but I figured out how to categorize Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

It is kind of like Carnosaur 2.

All aboard my train of thought…

Carnosaur 2 is basically Aliens. Replace the facility on LV-426 with a facility on Earth; switch up character genders; replace Aliens with raptors; replace power loader with a forklift; replace the Alien Queen with a T-rex; sprinkle with B-movie dust and poof — movie alchemy!

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is basically Star Wars. Replace Tatooine with Jakku; switch up character genders; replace Empire with the First Order; replace Death Star with Starkiller Base, replace Darth Vader with Kylo Ren; sprinkle with nostalgia dust and poof — movie alchemy!

One could dial in further if desired. Han Solo plays the Obi-wan role. BB-8 is R2-D2. Instead of Darth Vader attacking a space ship at the beginning of the film, Kylo Ren attacks a base. Tie Fighter attack on Millennium Falcon? Check. Cantina? Check. Prison escape? Check. Droid with plans? Check. Weird tentacle monster? Check. Sneaking around a base to deactivate shield? Check. Trench run? Check. And so on and so forth…

Now then, I don’t mind movie formula. There are only seven basic plots. I don’t mind cliché. Cliché is cliché because it works. I will even allow copying under certain parameters. For example, take Dan O’Bannon, the amazing screenwriter who wrote Alien — “I didn’t steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!”

At the end of the day, I can’t blame Carnosaur 2 for copying Aliens. Carnosaur 2 was a low-budget Roger Corman film out in the market trying to survive. It has limits.

Star Wars, on the other hand, is a big-budget juggernaut that has no limits. They could have done whatever they wanted. Instead, they basically copied the original film.

For that reason, I donated no money to Star Wars: Rogue One. I decided to wait for it to show up on the library shelf. If it is solid, I will reassess whether or not to donate money to Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Based on The Last Jedi trailer, my first instinct is to skip that, as well. I checked out when I saw the AT-ATs being attacked by snow, I mean, sand speeders. To me, that says it is going to be an ersatz Empire Strikes Back (please tell me someone doesn’t lose an arm).

At least Carnosaur 2 had dinosaurs. It copied Aliens and tried to capitalize on Jurassic Park. That is ambition…of a sort. Meanwhile, Star Wars is sitting on a copy machine…

Oh well, maybe that is where things are at nowadays. The generation that gave us guys like Speilberg, Lucas and Cameron copied the ones that came before them with innovation. Now we copy with improvement. It’s not the same thing. Movies are slicker these days, no question, but they are getting so slick that very little about them sticks.

Take special effects — I remember when CGI was touted for enabling filmmakers to bring whatever they imagined to the screen. Now we see that they all imagine the same thing, except bigger (the new and improved Death Star can blow up five planets instead of one; five is bigger than one, so it’s better!). Limitations on special effects were perhaps a blessing. It forced skill and talent to produce something amazing. Doing something in the computer can sometimes take amazing out of the equation and one is left with nothing but the equation.

It makes me wonder if Disney is feeding the original Star Wars scripts into an accounting computer, and an algorithm is spitting out a greatest-hits script.

Welcome to tomorrow, where Carnosaur 2 can make a billion dollars!