Movie Review Star Wars The Force Awakens

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Serious Spoiler alerts 2015 Yayyy!!!!! The best news is that it is certainly on par with episodes 4-6 rather than 1-3. There is a lot of great invention, a saturation of homage to the other movies, and though there is a lot of humour it ultimately has the darker edges of Jedi. The cinema was only half full at the 10 AM 2D screening which I went to, though notices reported the various 3D screenings were close to sold out. The new characters are mostly very well presented and cast, especially Daisy Ridley as Rey, who is clearly the one in who the Force does its awakening. Finn, played by John Boyega is also great as a Storm Trooper deserter. Underused is Poe, (Oscar Isaac), who is built up nicely, though we are led to believe he is dead but who just conveniently turns up later safe and sound, hears some exposition and doesn’t do anything at all. Max Von Sydow is barely introduced early on before he is killed off – possibly the shortest cameo in the saga to date, as Hamill is likely to have a lot to do in Episode 8. Of the old guard, Harrison Ford is terrific as Han, and very integral to the plot. Carrie Fisher has little to do except be a concerned wife and Mother, and Hamill, who appears for ten seconds without any dialogue at all, inexplicably gets second billing in the cast list. Plot wise, the collapse of the Empire has given rise to a new Fascist order, The First Order, though coming after the trade federation and the Empire it is really a Third Reich. It is led by Andy Serkis’s Supreme Leader Snoke a giant made to look like a distant cousin to Voldermort and clearly a new Emperor in all but name. Snoke has been grooming Han & Leia’s son, Ben Solo, (a moody nutjob played by Adam Driver) as a new Darth Vader figure renamed Kylo Ren, and as he has already slaughtered all the trainee Jedi Luke found and started training, everything has gone wrong. A sulking Luke has retreated to hermitage hiding on an outer Hebrides style island on a remote planet while Han & Leila have split up, with Han returning to his life of space piracy, while dreaming of somehow rescuing his son from the Dark Side. Rebels pursued by The New Order find clues that could lead to finding Luke and put them in a BB-8 droid, much as Leila did with R2D2 in A New Hope. The rolling ball with a separate head piece that somehow stays upright, ends up drawing the various scattered heroes together. Fey even steals the Millennium Falcon from a scrap metal dealer before uniting with Solo, who has been smuggling a shipment of Cthulhu monsters which handily wipe out the latest bounty hunters on his tail. The First Order has a mega-Death Star, able to wipe out galaxies, but the same design flaw that led to the end of its predecessors. Oddly it has a terraformed surface and atmosphere though that ultimately disintegrates like the Genesis project world in Star Trek Three – The Search For Spock. The big shock is of course the fate of Han Solo, the biggest defining moment since Luke found out who Daddy was. The fight, chase and space battle scenes are great, and there are brilliant flashes of humour. As when two storm troopers hear Kylo angrily smashing his office, and simply walk away in silent agreement not to get involved. The story is coming round in a cycle yet again; Luke has retreated and aged just as Obi-Wan and Yoda did, and the question of getting an evil relative to turn good again is once more central to the plot. Kylo seems irredeemable and sociopathic though. Much of the second movie is likely to involve Rey’s formal Jedi training. Some of the planets seem oddly familiar though different. When seeing the desert world fans are bound to think it is Tatooaine , but it’s called Jakku. Characters have been allowed to age and look weary, even Admiral Akbar looks older. With so much centring on the new BB-8 droid R2D2 and C3PO get precious little to do, with R2 even refusing to activate in the absence of Luke so we get little of their banter and even then the new droid is part of what is now going to become a metallic Three Stooges grouping. Overall, a joy to watch the series recover its mojo after the dire prequels and ewok adventures. The merchandizing industry is going to be very happy too. Arthur Chappell