I’ve finally had the chance to watch Star Wars – The Force Awakens, and I’m not going to sweeten the deal: It was incredibly mediocre. The director mainly played up on nostalgia value to replace the need for humor, real drama or character development. I’m not saying you shouldn’t watch it – just don’t set your expectations too high.

The really interesting thing in the movie for me, though, was the ongoing Failure of the Paradigm woven throughout the movie. As has often been mentioned in the past, Star Wars is in fact a medieval tale of knights in a shiny armor, a princess in distress (an actual princess! in space!), an evil dark wizard and some father-son unresolved issues. So yeah, we have a civilization that is technologically advanced enough to travel between planets at warp speed without much need for fuel, but we see no similar developments in any other fields: no nano-robots, no human augmentation, no biological warfare, no computer-brain interface, and absolutely no artificial intelligence. And please don’t insult my intelligence by claiming that R2D2 has one.

The question we should be asking is why. Why would any script writer ignore so many of these potential technological developments – some of which are bound to pop up in the next few decades – and focus instead on plots around which countless other stories have been told and retold throughout thousands of years?

The answer is the Failure of Paradigm: we are stuck in the current paradigm of humanity, love, heroes and free will expressed by biological entities. It takes a superb director and script writer – the Wachowskis’ The Matrix comes to mind – to create an excellent movie that makes you rethink those paradigms. But if you stick with the current paradigms, all you need is an average script, an average director and a lot of explosions to create a blockbuster.

Star Wars is a great example of how NOT to make a science fiction movie. It does not explore the boundaries of what’s possible and impossible in any significant way. It does not make us consider the impact of new technologies, or the changing structure of humanity. It sticks to the old lines and old terms: evil vs. good, empire vs. rebels, father vs. son, and a dashing hero with a bumbling damsel in distress (even though the damsel in the new movie is male). It is not science fiction. Instead, it is a fantasy movie.

And that’s great for some people. Heck, maybe even most people. That’s why it’s the ruling paradigm at the moment – it makes people feel happy and content. But I can’t help thinking and regretting the opportunity lost here. A movie with such a huge audience could make people think. The director could have involved a sophisticated AI in the plot, to make people consider the future of working with artificial virtual assistants. Instead we got a clownish robot. And destroying planets with cannons, requiring immense energy output? What evil empire in its right mind would use such an inefficient method? Why not, instead, just reprogram a single bacteria to create ‘grey goo’ – a self-replicating nano-robot that can devour all humans in its path in order to make more replicas of itself?

The answer is obvious: developments like these would make this fictional world too different from anything we’re willing to accept. In a world of sophisticated risk-calculating AI, there’s not much place for heroics. In a world of nano-technology, there’s no place for wasteful explosions. And in a world with brain-machine interfaces, it is entirely possible that there’s no place for love, biological or otherwise. All of these paradigms that are inherent to us would be gone, and that’s a risk most directors and script writers just aren’t willing to take.

So go – watch the new Star Wars movie, for old time sakes. But after you do that, don’t skimp on some other science fiction movies from the last couple of years that force us to rethink our paradigms. I recommend Chappie and Ex Machina from the last year in particular. These movies may not have the same number of eager followers, and in some cases they are quite disturbing (Chappie only received a rating of 31% in Rotten Tomatoes) – but they will make you think between the explosions. And in the end, isn’t that what we should expect from our science fiction?