Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Directed by J.J. Abrams                                                                                                             Starring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Harrion Ford and Carrie Fisher                              2hours 15 minutes                                                                   US

No film should ever be hyped up the way Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been. The only result can be disappointment. Suffice to say, if you see Star Wars: The Force Awakens you will not see the face of god, nor will you see something which is as good as the original trilogy. What you will see however, is an extraordinarily well made and entertaining Sci-Fi adventure with injects a healthy dose of nostalgia whilst still moving forward into a brave new world.

I don’t really want to give away too much so I’ll give only a brief explanation of the plot. The film revolves around two new characters, Rey (Daisy Ridley), a scavenger from the planet Jakku, and Finn (John Boyega) a stormtrooper who gives up on being a stormtrooper after experiencing a crisis of conscience. Along the way they meet old favorites Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and General (no longer Princess) Leia (Carrie Fisher). Together they must take on the sinister First Order, an evil force risen from the ashes of the empire that includes among its upper ranks Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), an inverted crucifix light-saber wielding Darth Vader fanboy who’s rather unlike any villain seen in the series thus far.

Where Abrams has really succeeded here is in putting the joy and innocence back into the Star Wars experience. After the melodramatic misery porn that was Revenge of The Sith, its extremely welcome to see a Star Wars film that makes you feel like a child again. Having the plot follow the two newcomers, Rey and Finn was exactly the right thing to do, as it puts the audience in the shoes of the identifiable characters, something which the prequels failed at spectacularly. Another place in which this sense of classic Star Wars joy is accomplished is in the character of the new droid BB-8. BB-8 is adorable as fuck. It’s character alone has more charm and actual CHARACTER than anything in the entire prequel trilogy. Proof that you can have comic relief characters in these films without making them as pandering, obnoxious and racist as Jar Jar Binks.

Some might say The Force Awakens might owe even a little TOO much to the original trilogy. This is basically A New Hope 2015, and many of that films story beats are recycled here (at several points I could guess what was going to happen before it did because of this). It is debatable to what extent this is a good or bad thing. Personally, what I find most disappointing about this is the limited pool of influences it gives the film. The original Star Wars was a collage of a bunch of different influences from throughout film and history, from fairy tales and mythology, to the eastern cinema of Akira Kurosawa, western cinema of John Ford and the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone. It would have been nice to see Abrams dig a little deeper into sources like this for a Star Wars as seeped in culture as the original was, rather than just being influenced by past films in the series.

As a starting point to a new series of films however, its hard to regard The Force Awakens as anything other than a triumph. It recaptures the energy and joy that made Star Wars so great a long time ago and has been so sorely missing for a while night. I can’t wait to see more of these films.

(Originally published at https://tornfromthetomb.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/star-wars-the-force-awakens-2015/)