Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Just saw this last night. Compared to the prequels, this is fucking Citizen Kane. Compared to most other movies, it's very good, but just short of great. It is a great Star Wars movie though, which is all it had to be.

Tone/Feel: This is what they got right the most. It criticallyfeelslike Star Wars, where the prequels just... didn't. The look of everything, how things are used and scarred, there's dirt on people's clothes, Finn gets blood on his helmet, the way creatures look, it's all done right. Nothing feels particularly out of place. Even the new stuff like aliens and what-not.

Characters/acting: The new characters are all well done and likable. None of the woodenness from the prequels is here, whether it's in the dialogue, or the performances. Daisy Ridley is particularly good, I had my doubts with the now stereotypical "strong, independent female lead" but she really does do a good job here. Driver is also good, he comes off much different in the movie than in any of the interviews I've seen with him. Getting rid of that wispy mustache I've seen him in really makes him look younger. Special mention to Harrison Ford as well, I don't know if it was the dialogue, or the direction, or giving him some say in things creatively, but he had a light in his eyes that hasn't been there since.... The Fugitive maybe? Only thing I didn't like was C3P0, seeing him gave me prequel flashbacks to AoTC. Please have him talk less. Carrie Fisher was ok, considering what they had to work with. She's veered into self parody IRL a long time ago, so getting anything out of her is a win IMO. Oh, and did anyone else notice the guys from The Raid movies? They were the second set of guys who confronted Han right before the pastafarian demons got loose. I thought to myself, "Are they going to go Star Wars martial arts movie here?!"

Plot: As everyone has noted, it's basically A New Hope remade. Somehow, I'm pretty much OK with that though. My concern is, where do they go from here in episode 8? What's the threat? Abraham Snoke? The First Order Fleet? Some new super weapon? (please no, do something else) Finding some Sith artifact? I was also thinking, pre-release, that the first order was going to be kind of like a remnant of the empire that was tasked with tracking rare occult artifacts, similar to the Nazi's Thule Society/Ahnenerbe. I'd actually have been ok with this, when in doubt, use the war

Score/music: Sooo important in any movie, but especially Star Wars. It was just ok. Nothing offensive of course, being John Williams, but nothing great either. Dual of the Fates, divorced from the Phantom Menace, is a great piece of music on its own. There's nothing like that here. Also, the lack of the 20th Century Fox fanfare at the beginning was a little jarring. Not much to be done about that though, unless you come up with a Lucasfilm equivalent.

VFX/etc: Really well done. Everything looks fantastic. The way tie fighters still look and sound menacing, lightsabers lighting things up around them, the aliens at the forest base, A+. I particularly liked the look of Starkiller base. The way there was cloud systems above the laser opening, the shots of it draining the nearby star, all of that looks fantastic. Only thing is, I kind of wish they would have handled its destruction differently, like instead of it just blowing up, maybe all the energy is violently expelled out, kind of like an ignited high pressure gas leak, and the only thing left of the planet is like a round on one side chunk, that's basically a third of it. But that's just me


Random stuff: It seemed Rey was force sensitive almost off the bat. The way they handled the sound, I believe right when she found BB8, it sounded like she was hearing/feeling something, and then bam there it was over the dune. It happened a couple other times too.... I picked it up in the theater, but it was definitely Van Sydow's voice in her flashback.... when Han died, the dialogue there was interesting "I have to do something hard, but I'm not sure I can. Can you help me?" Then Han grabs the light saber, this shows aggression which is Dark Side. Boom, Han impaled, falls, then Kylo thanks him, presumably for showing him aggression rather than peace. That nuance is speculation on my part of course.... the fight with Kylo and Finn, I honestly didn't have a problem with. He's already wounded, presumably having to use a large amount of force to keep from bleeding to death. This is why he can't just freeze him and own him. He's also overconfident, so plays with his food a bit. He's visibly limping through that bit of the fight (I thought, need to see it again). And, he owns Finn pretty quickly in spite of all that. It was fucking awesome when Rey pulled the saber, bunch of jaded cocksuckers around here. What should have happened? Rey gets killed/mortally wounded? Cool guys, thanks for coming! We're only stopping at this movie, and the bad guy won. Later! Ground quakes and splits them apart before the fight? BORING. Luke comes in? WOW CONVENIENT, plus he kills/turns/resolves the plot of Kylo Ren and we're out of bad guys for the next movies.... there are some nits to pick: too many callbacks, too similar in plot to ANH, Poe Dameron doesn't have enough to do, lack of clarity in certain things, but they're all minor IMO.


TL;DR I really liked the movie. To me, it did the one thing that movies are supposed to do: forge an emotional connection and response in the audience. The Original Trilogy did this more than any other movies in history, arguably, and this one succeeded in that regard as well.