SPOILERS (The movie has been out for a while now so at this point it's your fault.)

Yes I know my title is kind of dumb and not that creative.

"Star Wars" has a simple, yet well-developed universe that is vast and expansive. The movies are filled with exciting action and adventure as we follow memorable heroes on a quest to vanquish a powerful and evil darkness with cool science fiction stuff and light saber duels.

I know what you're thinking. Don't think about it. We don't talk about the prequels, so we're not talking about them. Just close your eyes and hopefully they'll go away (they won't.)

Now that I've gone on about how the writing of "Star Wars" is not the most keystone thing about the franchise as it is just about having fun with a bunch of science fiction stuff, let's talk about the writing.

"Star Wars" is essentially children's theater. It has a hero, a villain, a battle between good and evil, etc. A story of this nature follows a very common, effective, and simplistic formula. This includes the design of the two most important characters in this formula - The Antagonist and the Protagonist who, coincidentally enough, is Rey (the protagonist) the most poorly written character in the film while Kylo Ren (the antagonist) is the most well written character in the film.

I'm not saying that Kylo is the most well written because I've been approached at a bathroom urinal by a stranger to tell me how much I look like Kylo Ren more times than I've actually seen the movie (look at my profile picture, you'll see what I mean).

I say this because he's consistent and well designed. Impressively enough - this is not because he follows the typical antagonistic character design as was done with Darth Vader (except for the very last part when Vader tries to redeem himself - that was a bit of a twist.). Even at first glance, one might guess that Kylo is merely Darth Vader part 2. He is not. His writing style is different and well done. Kylo is young, immature, and untested. He is strong, but still has much to learn. He learns and grows throughout his conquest for power and the success of The First Order. This is special because character growth and development is something usually experienced by the protagonist. In this story, development of the protagonist and the antagonist is done simultaneously. The antagonist is typically someone who already has everything figured out, and it is up to the protagonist to catch up to his/her level. Kylo's primary internal struggle is between siding with The Light Side and The Dark Side. The Dark Side offers two things of appeal: Absolute power, and accepting one's self as a being pure self-indulgence, so selfish desires can be carried out without remorse or regret. Kylo is a megalomaniac and finds the power offered by The Dark Side more appealing than that of the light. However, Kylo is not heartless. There is good in him which he struggles to expel from his conscious.

A glaring flaw occurs in this observation. What caused Kylo to turn to the Dark Side? Was the calling to power truly that strong? If he is truly an absolute megalomaniac, then he would be written differently. If his calling to the Dark Side is coupled with a desire to be entirely selfish and evil, then that needs to be illustrated more clearly.

Regardless of this criticism, Kylo undergoes a very well written character arc. When confronted by his father, Han Solo, he is offered the chance to come home, accept The Light Side, love, serve others, and work very very hard to redeem himself. The alternative: embrace The Dark Side, continue the conquest for power, and enjoy life caring only about the pleasure of indulging in absolute selfishness without being held back by remorse, regret, or pity.

Kylo chooses the latter.

This is the best part in the movie (I'm aware that this sounds like an opinion, but I'm going by the belief that there is an objective good and bad to art that stands regardless of opinion, and I'm going to be so bold as to assert that belief here.) Kylo actively chooses his own path through a decision that cannot be taken back, and will define him forever. His decisive choice marks the creation of a true villain - a decision that runs parallel between him and Rey as Rey makes her decision to become a Jedi and fight for The Light Side against the impending darkness. However, the contrast between the moral philosophies that the villain and protagonist have subscribed to is eclipsed by the contrast in the quality of writing between these two characters ... which is a bad thing.

Honestly, how do you mess that up? For a movie that has so much riding on its success, you'd think that the most important character would be well written. Nope.

Rey is infuriatingly inconsistent. The only solace I felt while observing how terribly written she is is that I knew I would be able to write bad things about her later.

My deepest and most crushing fear is that her poor writing is the result of trying to make her Tumblr's greatest image of a "Strong Female Character." That phrase makes me genuinely angry. Unless a plot has themes that revolve around gender in some way, what gender a character is should never matter (with the exception of a world building plot device in which different genders are treated in different ways). Since this is "Star Wars" - a movie about spaceships and laser beams, gender is perhaps the most irrelevant part of the plot. I do understand that this entire complaint rides on the assumption that Rey's bad writing is the result of a writer making her Mary Sue who changes who she is every other scene because he/she wants to make her a "Strong Female Character," *triggered* so I know that this complaint has a vast potential to be irrelevant. Still, I thought it was at least worth acknowledging.

"Star Wars" has always struggled with its protagonists. The best one so far is Luke, but even he was kind of boring and complained a lot.

Then there was the other character in that thing we don't talk about so we're not going to talk about it.

When establishing a new character, everything that that character does should reveal something about him/her so we understand how this character thinks. Rey’s first actions weakly establish a base character personality – a base which is very quickly disregarded. Her loyalty to BB8 comes out of nowhere, especially when the second thing she does with BB8 is tell it to go away. Her interaction with Finn is somewhat random as well. She doesn’t have any defining personality behind any of her words. The delivery of her lines can be summarized as, *insert interrogation here* when she first talks to Finn, then *insert whimsical wide-eyedness* at the mention of Luke Skywalker. While these are all appropriate reactions to these things, she only has personality in her reactions. She lacks any sort of inherent character. She’s just, normal I guess – without anything interesting or particular about her.

Later when she’s running for her life with Finn she’s very particular about her personal space and isn’t entirely comfortable about a companionship with Finn. This is the only strong instance where she has any kind of base character.

From that point on everything she does is reactionary based, and sometimes comes out of nowhere. She has no inherent personality which these reactions build off of. I know I've said that like three times now, but I cannot emphasize how not OK that is.

She meets Han solo and is suddenly fascinated with Luke Skywalker again like she’s about to be a great explorer. Then she keeps saying she wants to go back to that desert planet to wait for the person who left her there. Finn tries to leave and she gets mad at Finn for running away from a fight she has nothing to do with and has no inherent investment in. After getting visions from a lightsaber she immediately insists that she has to run away too even though that is perhaps the strongest calling of destiny ever, of all time. That's also dumb since she just told Finn not to run away from the very thing she's trying to run away from now. She eventually figures out that she’s force sensitive and leaves to train with Skywalker even though she only got involved in this conflict because Kylo forces her into it (get it?). Even more irritatingly, she never has any closure with abandoning her desire to stay on the desert planet. That whole plot point just disappears.

Do you see what I have to do? In order to describe what she’s like I had to tell her how she reacts to things, rather than explain her character. I can't explain her character because she doesn’t have one.

This is the solution to this: Make her cold, unfriendly, and kind of a jerk. This is due to her entire life consisting of being alone, surviving on her own, and growing up in a very cruel and unfair world. She saves BB8 because even though she’s not pleasant and kind of cynical, she is still a good person, thus creating a contrast between what is righteous and what is nice adding depth to her character. This also gives her incentive to join the fight for The Light Side and vanquish evil. She makes it a point that she’s only working with Finn (and the other characters she meets) because she needs to survive, but over time she learns to grow and like these other characters. She bonds with them slowly while she discovers what it means to care about someone else, and for someone else to care about her. She probably hasn’t felt that in like a decade or something.

Those are my thoughts on two of the characters in "Star Wars The Force Awakens."