So much to talk about! As Paul mentioned,
spoilers lie ahead, but I'm not going to refer to all of them overtly.
Anyway, Paul and I have talked about The Force Awakens before and we both really enjoyed the movie. The new actors are great and their characters are highly likable. The effects are mostly very good-- perhaps more CGI than I was expecting-- and the story's fairly compelling. I'm glad, too, that at least the broad strokes of the Expanded Universe are canon, although a lot of the details have changed, e.g. Han and Leia having just one son instead of two sons and a daughter and swapping the name "Anakin" for "Ben" (the name of Luke's son in the EU). Luke still started a new Jedi Academy, there was a New Republic, etc., etc. Slate did a cool little article showing how The Force Awakens mirrors the Expanded Universe in a lot of ways:
www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/12/16/how_the_force_awakens_remixes_the_star_wars_expanded_universe.htmlI think my favorite part of the Force Awakens was all the character work. I'll start with the new folks: Rey, Poe and Finn have a very natural chemistry (some might say too natural, since they start getting along very quickly, but I was mostly sold on it), and their actors really make them seem real. You can feel Rey's fatigue when her hard work scavenging yields few rewards, and Finn's uncertainty about himself and his role in the universe is very relatable. Poe Dameron manages to be over-confident without succumbing to arrogance, and his friendship with Finn feels genuine. Finn's attraction for Rey perhaps happens a little too quickly, but it doesn't come out of nowhere, either. I'm looking forward to how the friendship between the three progresses in later films.
Then, of course, you have the villains. Kylo Ren's an interesting character-- love the Force trick he does with blaster fire at the beginning-- and I like how, despite the visual similarities, the people who worked on the film really went out of their way to differentiate him from Darth Vader. I've had some friends who've called him a "mopey, emo teenager," but I feel that it works for the character. He is a man who is trying his best to emulate Vader, but he's unsure of the path he has chosen and struggles with the Dark Side, which he finds at times to be a burden. In a way, he's almost like a stand-in for J.J. Abrams: they're both ambitious men trying to live up to the legend of their predecessor. Rey's line, "You are not Darth Vader" sums up the character's-- and in a way, J.J.'s-- big challenge in the film. Kylo is trying his best to be like Vader, while J.J. is trying his best to make both a film and a villain that does the Star Wars legacy justice. General Hux is terrifying-- a far extremist version of Tarkin-- who grew on me as the film progressed. Captain Phasma had such an excellent voice for a character who should've gotten way more screen time. She's sort of the Boba Fett of the original trilogy, right down to having an unceremonious end (trash compactor, ouch), but since that happened off-screen, it's very possible we'll see her again. Supreme Leader Snoke seems like a generic (and gigantic) angry villain so far, but hopefully the sequels will flesh him out and make him interesting.
As for the returning characters, everybody did a pretty solid job. It was frustrating that Luke had no lines and does little more than turn his head and stare at Rey at the film's end, but I suppose J.J. and Lawrence Kasdan wanted to give their successor as much leeway as possible when it came to determining how that moment would play out in the next film. Similarly, I would have liked to see Leia in a bigger role, although I really liked the scenes she was in. The previews implied that Carrie would use the feigned English accent she did in the first Star Wars film, but she sticks to her natural way of speaking instead, which I think made the performance stronger. C-3PO was hilarious, and it was great seeing Admiral Ackbar and Nien Numb again, although I totally wanted more Ackbar lines! You can never have enough Ackbar!
For my money, though, out of all the actors (both the new and returning ones), Harrison Ford stole the show by reprising his role as Han Solo. You can see Ford's enthusiasm in the way he effortlessly infuses the character with the same charisma and humor we saw from Han in the original trilogy. I watched a lot of interviews of Harrison both before and after watching The Force Awakens and it's pretty clear that there was more than just good acting involved-- Harrison was clearly happy to be back in the role. One reason might be because Han gets the fatethat Harrison wanted for him in Return of the Jedi, but I think that's not the only thing fueling his happiness. I think he really liked how J.J. and Lawrence Kasdan chose to evolve those character, those new layers to Han's personality acquired in the last 30 years since saw him. Outwardly, Han is a character who remains very much the same, but in reality, he has changed very much since the first Star Wars trilogy. When he appears at the beginning of the film, he seems to be the same charming, carefree rogue we saw in the original films, but as the story progresses, we learn that it's a role he reverted to because of the guilt and helplessness he felt over losing his son. It's something that we don't really see weigh on him outwardly-- Han seems to be the master of the poker face-- until he finally faces Kylo/Ben aboard the Starkiller Base. There, we see Han in a role we've NEVER seen him in: that of a loving father. It was new territory for Harrison to explore, and he absolutely nails Han's final, heartbreaking moments with his son. Peter Mayhew also did an excellent job with Chewbacca, both in the funny and heartbreaking moments-- I may not have been able to understand what Chewie was saying, but the emotions behind the roars were clear as day.
I think one of the things that really sold me on the new characters, as well as part of the reason why Han's return was so much fun, was the dialogue. It was very funny, and, in the case of Han Solo, spot on-- you would have never guessed that Lawrence Kasdan hadn't written the character in three decades. I've heard people say that the dialogue was at times perhaps a bit too modern or wisecracking, but I rather liked that. I think it's important for the "voice" of Star Wars to keep up with the times and modernize, while at the time being true to itself. The snappier exchanges show that the way people talk in a galaxy far, far away has changed a bit in the past 30 years, which makes perfect sense.
Then there's the story, which had a lot of thematic meat to it: The Force Awakens, much like the original trilogy, it's about family, redemption, corruption and, most especially, legacy. This was all about fusing old and new, embracing and incorporating the past while moving forward. Rey is clearly meant to be the next Luke Skywalker, with a bit of Leia thrown in. BB-8 is like R2-D2, with perhaps even more heart. Poe Dameron is basically Han Solo. And Finn... well, he's something different altogether. Aside from the fact that he's also a failed Stormtrooper, Finn has little in common with Han, or just about anyone else that came before him. And in a way, you see that reflected in his character. He is a blank slate, something we haven't seen before, trying to figure out who he is.
So yeah, we have a mixture of new territory that simultaneously revisits a lot of familiar ideas and themes... which brings me to the film's plot. Which is almost note for note "A New Hope," and frankly, I don't know how I feel about that. Both movies begin with a fierce battle (Empire versus Rebels, First Order versus Resistance) that introduces the big bad (Darth Vader, Kylo Ren) and ends with a member of the rebel faction (Leia Organa, Poe Dameron) getting captured. A droid among the rebel group (R2-D2 and C-3PO, BB-8) escapes carrying a key piece of information (Death Star plans, map to Luke Skywalker) that the Empire wants and encounters a young farmer/scavenger (Luke, Rey) on a desert planet. Said individual and the droid(s) find an older master (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo) who sees the individual's innate abilities (the Force, mad piloting skillz) and takes him/her and the droid(s) to a seedy bar (Mos Eisely, Maz's Castle) with distinctive music where the gang meets a person extremely instrumental in moving the plot forward and who either is a pilot or is in a place where there are pilots (Han, Maz and the two pilots Finn almost goes with). An evil high-ranking official (Grand Moff Tarkin, General Hux) uses a giant superweapon (Death Star, Starkiller Base) to blow up a planet-- or several-- and appears to be on a similar standing to that of the central villain (the difference here is that Hux puts down Ren much more overtly than Tarkin ever did Vader). Our heroes then find themselves having to infiltrate the villains' base to save one of their own (Leia, Rey) and the elder master (Obi-Wan, Han) encounters the film's villain (Vader, Ren), who carries a red lightsaber, wields the Force and has a very personal connection to said master. The villain definitively defeats the master (the key difference being that Vader did not hesitate) and a major X-Wing/TIE Fighter dog fight takes place, and the superweapon is eventually destroyed. The main villain is conquered by the young farmer/scavenger character-- albeit under very different circumstances. The ending is probably the one part where The Force Awakens diverges from A New Hope (well, Maz's inclusion kind of does, too, as she is basically Rey's Yoda), as the latter had a much more final and upbeat finish, while The Force Awakens borrows from Empire and sends its main character to train with a Jedi Master who has secluded himself from the rest of the galaxy (Yoda, Luke). Other than that, though, it's a very faithful homage-- revisiting-- whatever you want to call it-- of the first Star Wars film, for better and for worse. Even a trash compactor's involved in both! I will say that the destruction of the Starkiller Base seemed much less impactful than that of the Death Star... almost an afterthought. And I think this may actually be how the film saves itself from being a retread. The plot may be almost exactly the same, but the characters are different, which changes the audience's focus. We're not supposed to care nearly as much about the destruction of the superweapon in The Force Awakens as we're supposed to care about what happens to the older "master," a.k.a. Han, for example.
It's interesting, too, how the film manages to basically end up with what Gary Kurtz said was George Lucas' original intended ending for Return of the Jedi. Han's removed from the picture, Luke is in Exile and Leia has to lead the Resistance on her own (although she seems to have been doing that for a while, anyway)-- decades after the original trilogy, everyone other than George Lucas got the ending they wanted.
I was also quite a fan of the music. John Williams's new scores maybe don't quite as showy as, say, "Duel of the Fates" was in The Phantom Menace, but I think Rey's Theme is phenomenal-- it's catchy, whimsical and, just as the Force Theme did when played during that scene in "A New Hope" where Luke stares out into the horizon, it gives you the sense that the titular character in humble surroundings is about to be thrown into a great adventure. Williams remains as masterful a film composer as ever.
So yeah, on the whole, I enjoyed the movie. I have to admit that part of me wishes I hadn't seen it, however, as the emotional climax between Han and Kylo hit me hard. I would have much preferred Han to be able to have more adventures in what is currently the "present" of the Star Wars Universe. He's one of the franchise's best characters, after all! Still, it was very well done and I'm glad the film reignited Harrison's-- and I think everyone's-- interest in the character and Star Wars on the whole. I'll miss the parts of the Expanded Universe that I liked that have been kind of negated, but I'm also glad that not all of it has been, either-- hopefully the best parts will be reworked into the new canon. Here's hoping Episode VIII, IX and whatever Star Wars films come next are amazing!
