The Force is indeed back!
Nostalgic Roe shares his thoughts on the latest Star Wars film
December 17th, 2015, I was among the thousands at 7:00pm to watch Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. 135 minutes later I was live on YouTube, doing my best to be spoiler free of my review.
So rather than retread all those thoughts, I’m going into spoiler territory for this part of the review. You’ve been forewarned, following the video is dark side territory.
First off, I loved the way they tied the characters together, specifically Kylo, Leia and Han. When we first meet Kylo, we don’t really know who he is, but he does have some new force powers we haven’t seen before. He has great mental manipulation abilities, as well as the ability to freeze not only people, but freaking laser beams! Immediately they established that he is a powerful Jedi, and stood out from other Sith Lords.
Later in the film, rather than dance around the subject, they dropped a bombshell about Kylo. His real name is Ben Solo…meaning he is Han and Leia son! Again, I loved this because instead of trying to get all ‘Empirey’, they just said it. Nothing until this point in the movie gave you any indication that he was any relation to the characters. Now his obsession with Vader that was teased in the trailers was justified and again, added a new layer to the story. The key to Star Wars is that it is a family soap opera, and this brings it to the forefront.
However, this also tipped the midichlorians flowing through me that Han would indeed die in this film, as long suspected. Once again, credit JJ for doing a great job handling this. It was pretty obvious the scene on the bridge that the scoundrel would meet his end by the hand of his son. The moment Kylo drove his lightsaber into his father made a huge impact, and Han placing his hand on his son’s face before falling off the bridge was heartbreaking.
It may seem like I’m a huge fan of Kylo, but he had one fatal flaw that as a whole really turns me off from the character and reeks of Lucas. He is a crybaby. He throws tantrums with his lightsaber several times and the end battle shows that he has a little work to do in the sabering department. Obviously JJ was trying to show that Kylo is conflicted and is struggling with the task of being a Dark Lord, and it ending up really weakening our main bad guy. Kylo is actually trying to live up to the standards of badassery that his grandfather set, but he’s got a long ways to go before I consider him a real threat.
The other major problem I had with this film is all the jokes. Seriously, a minute could not pass without a joke or quirky exchange. And every single one was cringe worthy. I sighed every time this happened, because it took me further and further out of the movie. Sure, occasionally Star Wars would have a zinger here and there, but never beat you over the head with them. When the credits rolled, I felt that I didn’t watch a Star Wars film, but a big budget summer action film.
And these jokes weren’t simply said be a few characters, every one of them had a some line. So apparently, 30 years after Return of the Jedi, everyone became a smart ass. The banter made all the characters generic and honestly had me wishing for the jilted dialogue of the prequels.
The perfect example of this would have been Finn. He was all over the place with his quips. One minute he’s scared out of his mind, the next Han is telling him to calm down after he unleashes Kevin Heartesk one liners on Captain Phasm. The only one not affected by this plague is Luke, simply because he doesn’t even have a line in Episode VII!
Another complaint is that TFA struggles to establish who the main character really is. Everyone feels like a sidekick. For all the talk of Poe, he barely has any screen time. Most of the characters share screen time, and eventually you figure out this trilogy is going to center around Rey. On top of that, all the hype of Captain Phasm and she is hardly in the film. Really a waste of space, and while they said she will be back in the next movie, why did we even need her? I get it that they had to try to not only get the original characters in, but set it up for future movies with the young cast, but just seems like they could have done a better job.
So, it may seem like I’m a big hater of this film. I won’t sit here and say it beats any of the original trilogy movies. Those are still far and away the best in this saga. But Episode VII certainly kicks the Bothans out of the prequels. The biggest draw to me was that JJ essentially eliminated the prequels and focused on what we originally thought of the battle between the Imperials and the Rebels. TFA breaks it back down to the basics, starting and ending with how he treated the power of the Force.
The prequels made it seem like Jedi and Sith were impossible to stop unless you were one yourself. This was not the case in the original trilogy. When Finn and Rey get their shots at Kylo in a lightsaber battle, both legitimately have a shot at defeating him. Gone is all the jumpy, twisty high speed prequels fights. With open arms I welcomed back the traditional battle of the blades.
Episode VII firmly lands in the middle of the previous six movies. Not god awful prequel, but not quite legendary original trilogy. Which I think is the perfect place for it. JJ did his best to get people excited for Star Wars and succeeded. Now, let’s hope that this is the worst one and they only get better from here.