Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Good day all. Like about half the planet, I saw the new Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens yesterday, (January 1^st, 2016).

I’m not going into major spoiler details here, although there might be a few, so be warned. Still here? Ok, here we go. To begin with, I went with the Angry Brother Inlaw and the Enraged Sister, along with a few friends. We went to the local Chunky’s for food and adult beverages, of which copious amounts were consumed. (Considering the hangovers the others were dealing with from the previous nights celebrations, this was surprising)

The Angry Brother Inlaw ordered the tickets online, however since I am the closet to the theater, I was the first to arrive, a good hour early. This was a good thing since the line was long even for the prepay crowd. Once I got in, I was able to get a reasonably good table and secured our seats, then went out to the lobby to deliver the tickets to the others. Once we were settled, the consumption of mass quantities of food and beverage began, along with the movie.

My impressions of the film. Long and short, I liked it. The graphical effects are obviously greatly improved over the first Star Wars movie from 1977. As to the acting and the script? Well, in my opinion, it could have been a lot better. Harrison Ford reprises his role as Han Solo, and it was like he put on his old suit. He was excellent and seemed comfortable in the role.

Carrie Fisher, to put it bluntly, didn’t look comfortable. She just looked old. I haven’t seen her in anything in quite a while but I was shocked at just how much her voice had changed. The years of smoking showed. I won’t say she was bad, just not as good as she was originally.

As to the new actors, well, they are starting out and they are a new generation. The entire film was set up as an introduction to them, with a little to much “mystery” in my opinion. Yes, the evil antagonist is Han Solo and Leia Organa’s son who went bad. Really bad. However, the other new star is Daisy Ridley who plays Rey. She is the one with the mysterious background, and without a doubt this was intentional on the part of J.J. Abrams part. She turns out to be “Strong but untrained in the Force” and grew up on a desert planet. (Not Tatooine)

One question I have. What is it with the Star Wars universe and desert worlds? Planets that are marginally habitable would not be colonized unless there was something really useful there. Getting back to the review, Daisy Ridley is quite inexperienced as an actress, with this being her first major role. You can see she is putting her heart into it and with experience and good directors, will be a major star down the road.

Then we have Finn played by John Boyega. He plays the character Finn, who was a First Order stormtrooper who deserts rather than follow the orders to destroy a village. In some ways, the character he plays, Finn, is a bit of comic relief for Rey, but I do see serious growth potential for his character down the road.

Now, I will say that the writing was a hair on the weak side. There wasn’t a lot of the back story you would expect to get the latest trilogy going. However, it seems that George Lucas was quite unhappy with the new film, which, not to put to fine a point on it, is a major point in it’s favor. The good news is, No JarJar Binks! That mess of a character was happily forgotten, (Much to Lucas’s disappointment I understand)

We also have Kylo Ren, played very well by Adam Driver. He turns out early in the film to be Ben Solo, the bad seed son of Leia Organa and Han Solo. He is strong in the force, but turned to the dark side early on. This broke up Han and Leia’s relationship since Han blamed himself. Kylo has taken on the mantel of Darth Vader, but he isn’t quite as competent as Granddaddy Darth was. We shall see how he turns out in future films, but murdering his father doesn’t bode well for his future.

Oh yes, spoilers! Han Solo won’t be coming down for breakfast. His son drove his light saber right through his heart and Han fell off a catwalk into the exploding core of the planet. Stick the light saber in, Han’s all done with Star Wars.

This leaves us with the final character, Luke Skywalker. As we all know, he’s played by Mark Hamill. He has disappeared and all through the movie people are looking for him. Rey finally locates him right at the end of the film. Mark Hamill has no dialog in this film, and his role consists of turning around, pulling his Jedi hood down and looking at Ren. He has a tired and old face. I’m sure we’ll find out more of what Luke has been up to in the next film, along with the answer to the question of just who Ren is.

So, all in all I did like the film. It is number one for the year, although that is a bit misleading since it’s also the first film I’ve seen this year. I do recommend seeing it, and I will probably buy it on DVD when it comes out. (Amazon has already listed it for pre-purchasing believe it or not) If you aren’t a die hard fan of the Star Wars franchise, you might want to wait another week or two for the crowds to finally thin out. This one is well on it’s way to being a record breaker at the box office. Go and see it and just sit back and enjoy it without trying to analyze it.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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