WARNING: If you have not yet seen the newest Star Wars film, then do not read this review, as it is *full* of spoilers. Much of what's fun about this film depends on little (and big) surprises. Do you really want to ruin it for yourself?
Right, well I hope you've seen the film. Speaking of which, The Force Awakens (TFA) was a good movie. I really don't have much to say that has not been said by most reviewers, so I'll respond to what others are saying.
First, many critics and moviegoers dislike how heavily the film borrowed from A New Hope. Here are my thoughts on borrowing from the original trilogy: sometimes it's fine, and sometimes it's not. When Kylo Ren tells us that the map to Luke Skywalker is hidden in a droid, BB-8, I didn't mind. In fact, I enjoyed it--I got excited. The audience has just been introduced to the protagonist, Rey, and we now know that a run-in between her and Kylo Ren is not far off. It has been done before, but it works. It creates suspense.
People are also protesting the similarities between some of the old and new characters, especially Rey/Luke and Kylo Ren/Vader. But these parallels hardly amount to ripoff. (If you want an example of a character who is clearly a ripoff of another character, click here.) It's one thing to rip off a character. It's another thing to avail oneself of a character archetype. Like Luke, Rey is a lonely young orphan on a bleak world who is about to discover a hidden purpose. But she's also a different character with her own personality: the Luke of ANH and ESB is whiny, petulant, and kind of a moron (that is not to say I dislike the character). By comparison, Rey is measured and assertive. Both are highly talented and have a sense of adventure, yes. As I said, same archetype, different character. I consider myself contemplative, opinionated, and analytical. I also know a lot of other people who are contemplative, opinionated, and analytical. But I consider myself very different from some of those people.
I also strongly suspect that Luke is her father. There are some not-so-subtle hints dropped throughout the movie that he is. But I've been wrong before.
Kylo Ren is not Darth Vader. Think about the way Vader walks--steady, imposing, ominous. Now think about how Kylo Ren walks (if you recall): rushed, agitated, unstable. Think about Vader's voice: commanding, unwavering--everything he says, he means. By contrast, Kylo Ren's voice is quavering and uncertain--even behind the imposing timbre of his voicebox, he's not fully convinced of what he says. And whereas no one (save Leia and some dude on the Death Star who gets choked) makes fun of Darth Vader in the original trilogy, everyone seems to make fun of Kylo Ren--and he can't handle it, because despite his constant attempts to be a badass, he is not one, and this largely explains his fall to the dark side.
I say he is not a badass, but I shall qualify that by stating that he is an effectively terrifying villain when appropriate. Incidentally, he might be my favorite new character in the movie. Had he sucked as a character, I would have been very mad about the death of Han Solo. But I wasn't.
If the complaint is that TFA is too derivative, the only thing that I really did not like in that regard was Starkiller Base. And fundamentally, it's not because of its derivativeness that I dislike it--it's because it makes for uninteresting storytelling. We don't have any emotional connection to the people in the Hosnian System (the star system that gets blown up halfway through the film). In A New Hope, the audience has that connection through Leia: the destruction of Alderaan is a bad thing for her, and thus a bad thing for us, the audience members, because we identify with her. But TFA does not give us anyone to identify with here.
Ditto for the final battle sequence: the audience has no reason to care. What we get is a condensed mashup of the two debriefing sequences from A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, except that this one has all the emotional intensity of a somewhat cheerful office meeting. We don't care that the bad guys are planning to blow up the Resistance's base--and it's not simply because we have already seen A New Hope. It's because there's no desperation or drama of any kind, no sense of impending doom among the characters themselves, who appear just as sanguine as we are that this movie will have a happy ending. During the trench run in A New Hope, everything seems to be going wrong: the starfighters are getting picked off one by one and we actually see the pilots dying. (kids movie my eye, Lucas), an experienced pilot fails horribly to land the shot, R2D2 gets a hole blown in his head, and the audience really has no idea how Luke is going to win this one. With Starkiller Base, there's no challenge, no fear, no dramatic lowpoint where it looks like the characters might actually lose. They fly in, blow it up, and leave. All too easy.
Instead of Starkiller Base, just have those assholes from the First Order land on the Resistance Homeworld and engage in a firefight there while the protagonists do stuff elsewhere. Or have Kylo Ren kidnap Finn and threaten to kill him if Rey doesn't turn to the dark side. Or something. Anything. These are just ideas, spontaneously conjured from the top of my head as I write this, and if I can do that, JJ and crew can do better than Starkiller Base.
Another problem with Starkiller Base is that it drowns out the many glimmers of ingenuity that the filmmakers manage. It's barely forgivable here--but if they do it again in Episode VIII, it won't be. Having said that, here are some things I like about TFA, in no guaranteed order:
The opening crawl. It's clear, exciting, and pulls the audience in. It does not contain the sort of cringe-worthy tripe found in the Prequels, e.g.:
("Heroes on both sides"? Wtf? On that note, TFA does not contain anyone named "Dooku", which, as my brother once noted, sounds like a word that a four-year old might use to refer to excrement.)
The scene where Rey dons an X-wing pilot's helmet and then just sits there. It's eccentric, it's endearing, and it also establishes her character.
The opening scene where the Star Destroyer eclipses Jakku. Visually it's quite interesting, and implies the dominance and relentlessness of the first order.
Chewie. The part where he tackles Captain Phasma from offscreen is pretty hilarious, and true to his character as Han Solo's muscle. I also can't remember precisely which character it was--I think Fin?--but there's a funny scene where he falls on top of Chewbacca while the latter is lying on a bed, and we get an awkward closeup of them face to face.
Speaking of which, I wish we'd seen more of Captain Phasma. She was kind of campy in an 80's sci-fi way. Reportedly, she'll be playing a more prominent role in Episode VIII.
Han Solo and Princess Leia. Words can't do justice to Ford's performance in this film. It might just be the crowning performance of his career (though his portrayal of Deckard in Blade Runner is an admittedly tough act to follow). He not only steps back into the shoes of Han Solo, he reimagines him, and his interactions with the younger cast members lifts them up and holds the film together--not unlike Alec Guiness in A New Hope. Possibly my favorite line in the whole film:
Right, well I hope you've seen the film. Speaking of which, The Force Awakens (TFA) was a good movie. I really don't have much to say that has not been said by most reviewers, so I'll respond to what others are saying.
First, many critics and moviegoers dislike how heavily the film borrowed from A New Hope. Here are my thoughts on borrowing from the original trilogy: sometimes it's fine, and sometimes it's not. When Kylo Ren tells us that the map to Luke Skywalker is hidden in a droid, BB-8, I didn't mind. In fact, I enjoyed it--I got excited. The audience has just been introduced to the protagonist, Rey, and we now know that a run-in between her and Kylo Ren is not far off. It has been done before, but it works. It creates suspense.
People are also protesting the similarities between some of the old and new characters, especially Rey/Luke and Kylo Ren/Vader. But these parallels hardly amount to ripoff. (If you want an example of a character who is clearly a ripoff of another character, click here.) It's one thing to rip off a character. It's another thing to avail oneself of a character archetype. Like Luke, Rey is a lonely young orphan on a bleak world who is about to discover a hidden purpose. But she's also a different character with her own personality: the Luke of ANH and ESB is whiny, petulant, and kind of a moron (that is not to say I dislike the character). By comparison, Rey is measured and assertive. Both are highly talented and have a sense of adventure, yes. As I said, same archetype, different character. I consider myself contemplative, opinionated, and analytical. I also know a lot of other people who are contemplative, opinionated, and analytical. But I consider myself very different from some of those people.
I also strongly suspect that Luke is her father. There are some not-so-subtle hints dropped throughout the movie that he is. But I've been wrong before.
Kylo Ren is not Darth Vader. Think about the way Vader walks--steady, imposing, ominous. Now think about how Kylo Ren walks (if you recall): rushed, agitated, unstable. Think about Vader's voice: commanding, unwavering--everything he says, he means. By contrast, Kylo Ren's voice is quavering and uncertain--even behind the imposing timbre of his voicebox, he's not fully convinced of what he says. And whereas no one (save Leia and some dude on the Death Star who gets choked) makes fun of Darth Vader in the original trilogy, everyone seems to make fun of Kylo Ren--and he can't handle it, because despite his constant attempts to be a badass, he is not one, and this largely explains his fall to the dark side.
I say he is not a badass, but I shall qualify that by stating that he is an effectively terrifying villain when appropriate. Incidentally, he might be my favorite new character in the movie. Had he sucked as a character, I would have been very mad about the death of Han Solo. But I wasn't.
If the complaint is that TFA is too derivative, the only thing that I really did not like in that regard was Starkiller Base. And fundamentally, it's not because of its derivativeness that I dislike it--it's because it makes for uninteresting storytelling. We don't have any emotional connection to the people in the Hosnian System (the star system that gets blown up halfway through the film). In A New Hope, the audience has that connection through Leia: the destruction of Alderaan is a bad thing for her, and thus a bad thing for us, the audience members, because we identify with her. But TFA does not give us anyone to identify with here.
Ditto for the final battle sequence: the audience has no reason to care. What we get is a condensed mashup of the two debriefing sequences from A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, except that this one has all the emotional intensity of a somewhat cheerful office meeting. We don't care that the bad guys are planning to blow up the Resistance's base--and it's not simply because we have already seen A New Hope. It's because there's no desperation or drama of any kind, no sense of impending doom among the characters themselves, who appear just as sanguine as we are that this movie will have a happy ending. During the trench run in A New Hope, everything seems to be going wrong: the starfighters are getting picked off one by one and we actually see the pilots dying. (kids movie my eye, Lucas), an experienced pilot fails horribly to land the shot, R2D2 gets a hole blown in his head, and the audience really has no idea how Luke is going to win this one. With Starkiller Base, there's no challenge, no fear, no dramatic lowpoint where it looks like the characters might actually lose. They fly in, blow it up, and leave. All too easy.
Instead of Starkiller Base, just have those assholes from the First Order land on the Resistance Homeworld and engage in a firefight there while the protagonists do stuff elsewhere. Or have Kylo Ren kidnap Finn and threaten to kill him if Rey doesn't turn to the dark side. Or something. Anything. These are just ideas, spontaneously conjured from the top of my head as I write this, and if I can do that, JJ and crew can do better than Starkiller Base.
Another problem with Starkiller Base is that it drowns out the many glimmers of ingenuity that the filmmakers manage. It's barely forgivable here--but if they do it again in Episode VIII, it won't be. Having said that, here are some things I like about TFA, in no guaranteed order:
The opening crawl. It's clear, exciting, and pulls the audience in. It does not contain the sort of cringe-worthy tripe found in the Prequels, e.g.:
("Heroes on both sides"? Wtf? On that note, TFA does not contain anyone named "Dooku", which, as my brother once noted, sounds like a word that a four-year old might use to refer to excrement.)
The scene where Rey dons an X-wing pilot's helmet and then just sits there. It's eccentric, it's endearing, and it also establishes her character.
The opening scene where the Star Destroyer eclipses Jakku. Visually it's quite interesting, and implies the dominance and relentlessness of the first order.
Chewie. The part where he tackles Captain Phasma from offscreen is pretty hilarious, and true to his character as Han Solo's muscle. I also can't remember precisely which character it was--I think Fin?--but there's a funny scene where he falls on top of Chewbacca while the latter is lying on a bed, and we get an awkward closeup of them face to face.
Speaking of which, I wish we'd seen more of Captain Phasma. She was kind of campy in an 80's sci-fi way. Reportedly, she'll be playing a more prominent role in Episode VIII.
Han Solo and Princess Leia. Words can't do justice to Ford's performance in this film. It might just be the crowning performance of his career (though his portrayal of Deckard in Blade Runner is an admittedly tough act to follow). He not only steps back into the shoes of Han Solo, he reimagines him, and his interactions with the younger cast members lifts them up and holds the film together--not unlike Alec Guiness in A New Hope. Possibly my favorite line in the whole film:
"That's not how the force works! That's not how ANY of this works!"
[Chewie grunts]
"Oh, YOU'RE cold."
Like Ford, Fisher not only returns to but reimagines her character--the feisty, driven young woman from the original trilogy is now reserved, measured, but with a warm and dignified bearing. I wish she had had more screen time (but then again, I wish the new cast members had had more screen time).
I'm rather busy and don't have time to say more, so I think I'll stop there. Alas, I wanted to say more on Rey, Fin, and Poe, but I gotta teach a class and do grad school things. I wish Poe Dameron were more prominent in the film, the fight scene with Fin was cool, and hopefully my comments at the beginning implied that I liked Rey. As I said, it was a good movie. There's room to improve--and there are things that are done wrong--and hopefully, Episode VIII will aspire to greater emotional heights (and depths...).
What do you think? Like? Dislike? Love? Hate? A mixture of all of them? Post your comments below!
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