K-SCORE: 98
Director: J.J. Abrams
Writer: Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams, Michael Arndt
Starring: Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher
Spoiler Level: Minor
“Thank you.”
Star Wars: The Force Awakens - phew.
I liked it. I really enjoyed sitting and watching the movie.
I can’t review the latest Star Wars in my usual scathingly sarcastic style. Or, I could, but I won’t. Here’s why:
Star Wars is a very important set of fiction for me and my brothers. Enjoying the old films and the whole Star Wars universe creates some of my earliest and happiest memories. In terms of world-building/universe-creation Star Wars is the very pinnacle, the most enjoyable you can possibly get. I’ve loved the force, lightsabers, smugglers, droids, blasters, fighters, alien species, speeders, countless planets, bounty hunters, sith lords, force powers, space stations, stormtroopers, and so on for decades and I’m only twenty-seven. Star Wars has always been around to entertain me growing up as I have and it’s not done yet.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, in spite of a few hiccups, is a Star Wars film. I’m not looking to be entertained once. I’m looking to be entertained literally dozens of times and there is so much nostalgia, so much of the original greatness, and simultaneously so much new Star Wars lore, content, amazing lines, and epic Jedi stories that I think the film might just be able to do that. That is really all I could ask for and more than I could reasonably expect.
At times I felt J.J. Abrams and the team at Disney had a checklist of elements of episodes IV, V, and VI that they wanted to include and were struggling to squeeze it all in, but their success level at hearkening back to the older films and introducing new content was so high that I didn’t mind.
Han Solo is back! The story arc, though tragic, is wonderful. His schtick with Chewie is as hilarious as ever. The new droid, BB-8, is amazingly well-designed. The battles between tie fighters and X-wings are great. The way the galaxy settled after the fall of the empire is interesting if vague. The mysteries presented, from the big ones like what happened in Rey’s past to little ones like how did C-3PO’s arm become red, are compelling. Rey is awesome. I loved her optimism, her salvager skills, her tragic waiting for her parents, her skill piloting - she’s a fantastic new character to follow in an awakening force storyline. The stormtrooper turned desperate hero of Finn is pretty good. The movie is funny often! The sets and costumes are quintessentially Star Wars. I want to learn about the planets and new species and new technologies that are randomly inserted into the background. The lightsaber Kylo Ren uses is fantastic and even better than I expected when it’s tearing apart rooms in anger or burning a hole in Finn’s shoulder with its handguards.
I could go on and on. I want to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens again soon and probably a few times right after that. It’s Star Wars. It’s new. And the reason I and millions of others get excited is because it’s such an incredible, accessible, thrilling, and powerful universe, and I can’t get enough of the elements and the characters. Thank you. I needed this: a film where I get way more enjoyment watching it than I do from analyzing it, a film that adds to really old fond memories.