Fan Wars
Episode VII
A New New Hope
The opening crawl is exciting and sets up an adventure. It also
sets up that Luke has disappeared and gone into hiding, more on this later. The
opening scene is great and is different from what we’d seen before and gives
fans hope because, unlike the prequels, it exists in a tactile world. An old
man hands a secret message to a pilot… much like Leia giving R2 a secret
message at the beginning of Star Wars. We see we’re on a desert planet like Tatooine
but this isn’t Tatooine we promise.
Kylo Ren shows up and is a total badass. Dressed in all black
with a cool and intimidating helmet, not unlike Darth Vader. He stops a blaster
laser in mid-air, nice. A stormtrooper seems hesitant and does not shoot the
innocent people like ordered. This is interesting.
From here I think I’m just going to discuss this movie in
general terms because we all know what it is and even though I feel most people
didn’t like this movie when it came out because it was wholly unoriginal and
just a remake of A New Hope. Fans hated Rey and used the misogynist term “Mary
Sue” in order to describe her. Pretty much the only thing people seemed to like
was Han, Chewy, Leia and Poe. More on all that later as suddenly people
defended this movie and JJ Abrams after The Last Jedi came out.
The Force Awakens is visually stunning. JJ Abrams does know
how to shoot a movie and is very good with action scenes. He knows how to make
a thing exciting. He has his talents. He even managed to back off on his usual
lens flare, knowing that doesn’t really belong in a Star Wars movie. The chase
scene with the Millennium Falcon and the Tie Fighters on Jakku is thrilling and
fun and exciting to see a favorite and iconic ship back in action after so many
years. The battle at Maz Kanata’s is fun as hell, gives us a solid laugh line
and a heaping dose of fan service when Han uses Chewy’s crossbow blaster for
the first time. The whole final act on the Death Starkiller Base is a ride and
a half.
I personally loved Rey from the moment she showed up on
screen. She had a great look when we first see her rummaging through a downed
Star Destroyer. She seems self sufficient and able to handle herself. It’s quickly
indicated that she has grown up in this rough environment and knows her way
around. Then there’s the scene of her sitting outside her “home” of a fallen AT-AT
wearing a rebel helmet looking at the stars wanting more, reminiscent of Luke
watching the double sunset on Tatooine and the beginning of IV. Daisy Ridley
plays this character brilliantly. When stormtroopers show up trying to take
BB-8, she shows that she has fighting skills. I personally do not need an
explanation. I do not consider her a “mary sue” at all, not to mention I hate
that term. I feel the movie does a good enough job implying that while growing
up she had to learn to defend herself on this planet. Easy enough for me,
apparently. Anyway, I loved the character arc for Rey in this movie. Learning
she was force sensitive was great. The fight with Kylo was fantastic.
Finn is a great idea brought to life by John Boyega. It is
an amazing concept to include a stormtrooper who doesn’t want to be a stormtrooper.
Someone who doesn’t want to mindlessly kill others. However, to hint at discussions
to come, this movie does not make him out to be a hero necessarily. He is
constantly just trying to get as far away from the first order as possible and if
that means helping out the resistance at one point, then fine.
Poe is an awesome but slightly underdeveloped character in
this movie. We know he’s an amazing pilot (I wonder if HE is related to the Skywalkers),
motivated, head strong and makes cringy jokes, not in that they are inappropriate
or anything, just bad and flat. But that’s it. I know after this movie I hoped
for a relationship between Finn and Poe.
Kylo Ren is an intimidating and terrifying villain. First, I
would like to say that I loved the helmet right up until he took it off. Once
the helmet is off and it reveals Adam Driver’s perfect face and long flowing
locks, there is no reason to ever put that helmet on again. Driver gives the
kind of performance we all needed out of Hayden Christiansen for Anakin, he’s
brooding, he’s emotional and it doesn’t come off as whiny, it comes off as
slightly frightening. I, personally, like his freakouts, it shows that he is
unstable and if you or something upsets him, it could end very badly for you if
you’re just near him. He lets his anger get the best of him and he just reacts.
I also thought it was a great touch to reverse the usual and show someone on
the dark side trying to resist the light.
General Hux is also a great villain. He is angry. He hates
the enemies. He wants power and he wants everyone to kneel to the first order.
Played brilliantly by Domnhal Gleeson who really gives it his all when
delivering his speech. I also like the sibling like rivalry between him and Ren
fighting for the affection of Snoke.
Supreme Leader Snoke… What is there to say about this character?
Played through CGI by the best CGI performer out there, Andy Serkis. He looks,
honestly, like a placeholder, like they couldn’t decide what he should look like
so they quickly threw out this design then made him a hologram to hide this
fact and made that hologram huge to try to imply that he is to be feared. I
found him uninteresting and I never cared who he was or where he came from. Those
questions didn’t even occur to me until the fans started to bring them up.
Then there are the legacy characters. Han is his usual Han
self. This is the first time in probably 20 years that I feel Harrison Ford
actually showed up to set. He seems excited, focused and into it. That moment
that Han and Chewy walk onto the Millennium Falcon brings you right back to
your childhood. It sucks that Abrams killed him for seemingly 2 reasons: 1) Han
was essentially the Obi Wan character in this New Hope reboot and 2) Fan
service specifically so Abrams could show Harrison Ford that he knew Ford wanted
Lucas to kill him at the end of Empire.
What really needs to be said about Leia. She was my favorite
character growing up. She was the princess who kicked ass. I like that even
though we learn that she is force sensitive in Empire then more so in Jedi,
Abrams shows that she chose to instead follow the military career she had
started and is now a general. Carrie Fischer is everything I needed her to be
in this movie. The moment for me in this movie that truly took me back to my 7
year old self was when she showed up. I also love having her daughter, Billie
Lourd, in these movies.
On to the character that will be discussed at length in the
next installment, Luke. He is absent the entire movie. He is discussed because
he is the last jedi and they believe that bringing him out of his self-sentenced
exile will bring hope back to the resistance. When we do see him in the final
shot of this movie, he is older, he still looks badass but he also looks upset
and like someone who wants nothing to do with any of this because he put
himself in exile for a reason. The last shot goes on way too long and the
helicopter shot is honestly just annoying.
Those are all the things I really enjoyed, onto some of this
movie’s faults.
This movie takes place years after the Empire fell and the
New Republic is in charge. So then, why is Leia leading “the resistance?” Wouldn’t
that just be the army of the republic? It’s clearly only called the resistance
because it’s as close to Rebels/rebellion that he can get in order to reboot A
New Hope.
It is not very well explained that the planets Starkiller Base
destroys are the New Republic. Also, so the entirety of the republic is in one
system? And that system doesn’t include Coruscant?
Again I have to emphasize that it is very dumb that Kylo ever
takes off his helmet.
R2D2 shows up at the end of the movie as a literal Deus ex
Machina.
Why does Leia hug Rey and not Chewy at the end after Han’s
death?
Missed opportunity when Han tells Leia he loves her, she should
have said “I know” that is fan service I would have appreciated.
Abrams should have brought all 3 legacy characters together
for at least one scene, instead he kills Han thus making it impossible for that
to ever happen in these movies. This is something the fans blame Rian Johnson for
and that baffles me.
Abrams unnecessarily creates a series of mystery boxes. The Star
Wars series has never been about mysteries. We know Luke’s father was a Jedi
but it is never presented as a question that needs to be answered. When Vader
reveals himself to be Luke’s father, it is not an answer to a question, simply
a twist reveal. Same with Leia. Instead Abrams writes and directs this movie in
a way so as to have the audience clamoring for answers. Things like “Who are
Rey’s parents?” “Who is Snoke?” “Where did Maz get Luke’s lightsaber?” “Who are
the Knights of Ren?” and many others. In my opinion this doomed the other filmmakers
(Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow at the time) because fans would spend years
debating these questions, building fan theories and taking sides and if/when
other filmmakers confronted these mysteries they would either end up being one
of the theories, thus dividing the fans and being called unoriginal and just
pleasing the fans, coming up with something original, which risks being crazy
or uninteresting and thus dividing the fans, or ignoring them which could also
upset the fans.
However, to me, the biggest offense of this movie is simply
that it is unoriginal. It is the safest possible route when making a new Star
Wars movie because it is just, beat for beat, the story of the original Star
Wars movie with everything turned to 11. It is a good movie and is fun to watch
but that’s because it is familiar, it doesn’t really introduce anything new, it
doesn’t challenge its audience in anyway and is basically just comfort food.
There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that and when restarting a
franchise might be a smart way to go about it in order to bring in the old fans
and try to bring in new fans as well.
Overall, The Force Awakens is a fun and enjoyable entry in
the Star Wars saga. Just don’t look to deep into it and take it for what it is.
It is very competently made. Brian Posehn put it best once when he described
this movie as mashed potatoes: it doesn’t break the mold but who doesn’t love
mashed potatoes?
