Star Wars: The Force Awakens
More than any other work of fiction,
seeing Star Wars had an incredibly profound impact on me. I can't
remember a time before seeing Star Wars, and I can't remember a time
when I didn't want to make movies. So, I have a lot of affection for
the series, but I'm also able to roll with whatever ups and downs the
saga goes through. The original trilogy is always there, and the
quality of the prequels or the vast amounts wacky merchandise doesn't
change that.
I had mixed feelings about the whole
new movies venture. On the one hand, I was super excited to see the
original trilogy characters back on screen, and it's definitely a
universe with room for more stories to be told. However, there's
something a bit disconcerting about the joy that people take in
Lucas's departure from the franchise and perhaps the most deeply
auteur driven major franchise in film history becoming a studio
driven project instead. It's odd for the same fanbase that clamors
for Jack Kirby to be credited in Marvel movies to be so happy for JJ
Abrams to take over Star Wars.
And the weird thing, particularly after
seeing this movie, is that it's not even really Abrams taking over.
The next two episodes have different directors and writers, but the
way that this movie plays out, they would seemingly need to have a
pretty continuous storyline into the next one, and also someone
breaking out the larger mythology and backstory driving the series.
But, who is that person? It seems to be Kathleen Kennedy, but she's
more a producer than a direct creator, so who knows what will happen
in the future.
But, for now, we have Episode VII, a
film that I think certainly got the job done in terms of setting up a
new status quo and new characters that can carry the franchise far
into the future. And it was certainly one of the more exciting
filmgoing experiences I've had in a while.
As a film, The
Force Awakens does an awful lot
right, but also struggles in some ways that are not uncommon to
contemporary blockbuster cinema. I actually found the opening third
or so of the film to be its most compelling piece. You get a bit of
the same feeling as in A New Hope,
of being dropped into an unfamiliar world and gradually getting to
know its rules and new characters.
The casting in the film was spot on. Pretty much every new character
was compelling and realized, and there was a fun dynamic between
them. Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron had a lot of swagger and presence
that helped bring back the sense of fun the original trilogy had that
the prequels struggled to recreate. Finn had a bumbling charm, and
was funny throughout.
That said, like much of the film, Finn's journey was rather surface.
For a guy who's lived his whole life raised to be one thing and
believe in a certain set of principles, he sure abandoned them
quickly. And, there's little conflict in his turn towards good. It
was a fairly easy journey for him, and we never really get a sense of
the potential wonder of experiencing all this new stuff, or any real
remnant of this lifetime of military training he's undergone. Once
you hit minute 30 of the movie, he might as well have been a
Resistance fighter, or a smuggler, or anyone really.
His chemistry with Rey was great, and powers the most fun section of
the film, as they have a screwball comedy meet cute and head off in
the Millennium Falcon. Much like Finn, Rey is fun to watch, instantly
likable, and a great addition to the Star Wars canon. I loved the
silent melancholy of her early scenes on Jakku, and later in the
film, her gradual discovery of her aptitude for the force.
That
said, she's also way too perfect a character to be particularly
compelling beyond a surface level. Rey can not only pilot a
spaceship, and fix all its mechanical problems despite seemingly
never having traveled off world, but also defeat a trained Sith lord
in a lightsaber dual despite never having even touched a lightsaber
before. So, she's basically as strong as Luke and Han Solo combined
without any training whatsoever.
It winds up rendering her a bit of a Mary Sue character, with no
particular flaws or challenges to overcome. She has some kind of
mystery about her backstory, but that's a classic example of
contemporary blockbuster writing. Rather than let a character grow
and change because of what happens in the film itself, she's special
because of her past, and any character shading will come from the
revelation of her past rather than her experiences in the present.
Now,
I suppose you could voice similar complaints about Luke in A
New Hope. He's never flown a
spaceship before, but is able to blow up the Death Star, and rescue
Princess Leia from the Death Star. But, Luke also struggled a bunch
in the film, and I don't think we really saw Rey, or Finn, or anyone,
struggling to do much of anything.
Much of the power of the original trilogy's best entry comes from
watching our heroes get utterly annihilated. Luke battles Darth Vader
before he's ready and gets beaten thoroughly. And dealing with that
struggle makes him stronger. Perhaps the next Episode will be that
darker piece, but it seems like Rey is so powerful already, if she's
trained, Kylo Ren should pose no threat for her whatsoever.
All that said, it's a testament to the work that Abrams and Kasdan
did that the new characters are who I'm talking about and thinking
about after the film. It does feel like a legitimate handoff and
though it was fantastic to see Han Solo and the other returning
characters back, it didn't feel like only their movie.
Among the minor characters, Chewbacca and C-3PO were both great.
C-3PO continued his record of interrupting Han and Leia at key
moments, and Chewbacca got more of a spotlight here than in most of
the original trilogy.
Han fit pretty neatly into the Obi-Wan Kenobi role, and was a lot of
fun bouncing off of the new characters. And, considering this looks
like the end of the line for him, it's nice that he got to do more
than stand around, like Leia did.
For me, the film loses steam and momentum as it goes on, as it
becomes more and more obvious that what we're looking at is
essentially a remix of the first Star Wars, a beat for beat
incorporation of what worked there into a new story. While on the one
hand, this does give a more satisfying, familiar universe than we saw
in the prequels. Getting that 70s handmade sci-fi aesthetic was
fantastic, and I think the design work in giving us the same, but
different looks was great.
However, much more so than the prequels, the film explicitly
invalidates a lot of the original trilogy. For me personally, I don't
really care. It doesn't take away the original trilogy for me, and
there's always going to be a disconnect between my imagined ending
for these characters and what we see here.
But,
if you are looking at this movie as a straight up sequel to the
original trilogy, there are a lot of issues. For one, every
development in the first three films is essentially invalidated. On a
larger scale, the First Order (the Empire in all but name) is in
control of the galaxy. What was the point of the Rebellion's
victories if they're now in such dire straits that they're hiding out
in the same exact kind of jungle base they were at in A New
Hope. It's a little
disheartening that thirty years have passed and Princess Leia is
doing the exact thing she was doing in the first film. And Han Solo
also has reverted to the role he had in the first film.
I think the idea is supposed to be a bit of an after the fall feel.
Like, there was a time of peace and success that ended and sent
everyone back to their old roles, but from a narrative point of view,
it results in a sense that the first three movies were a waste of
time. We're right back where we started, which is great if you want
more stories in that milieu, but also constrains the characters into
old familiar roles rather than letting them grow more naturally.
If you boil it down, the plot is so close to the first film. From
specific details, like firing the planet sized weapon to destroy a
Republic outpost, before targeting a Rebellion base they will almost
destroy, but ultimately fail to do so, to having the whole movie set
in motion when a droid carrying key information for the rebellion
crash lands on a desert planet and finds its way into the possession
of a lonely dreamer with a mysterious past who comes into contact
with a relative's lost lightsaber.
We've also got a dark side lord who's being trained by a Sith master
who appears via hologram with taunting information about the family
member he's denounced (admittedly from Empire rather than ANH), and
in this film is controlled by an Imperial general who smugly reports
on the impossibility of Rebellion victory even as his men abandon
him. Han Solo maps pretty closely to the Obi-Wan Kenobi role, the
only surviving legacy of a time of wonder and magic that has since
been lost. You get the idea.
And
on a larger scale, the status quo of the galaxy has reset to what it
was back in A New Hope.
But, I feel like we don't get a great sense of how it got there or
what happened. That's not important in A New Hope
since it's designed to be our entry point into the story. This film
is only being watched by people who've seen all the other films. I'd
like to get a bit of clarification about how we got to this point.
It's not strictly necessary, but without that clarification, it feels
like a straight reversion.
One of the most interesting and fresh elements of the film is Kylo
Ren. His raw emotion and swaying between good and evil offer us a
look at what a young Anakin might have been like. In fact, it makes
you wonder how compelling Adam Driver could have made the prequels if
he'd brought this same intensity to Anakin. We've never seen a Sith
quite like this, and his scenes with Rey were the high point of the
second half of the film. He's able to give a great sense of the
journey this character has been on in a relatively small amount of
screen time.
That said, putting him in the same dynamic as Vader and the Emperor
feels like a missed opportunity to do something more unique. Where
does this Supreme Leader come from, he seems quite old, but sat out
the events of the original trilogy? One of the burdens of a film like
this is carrying the weight of the old movies, and questions like
this. I normally don't like to nitpick stuff, but when you're making
a film that is explicitly the continuation of a series, you have to
deal with plot issues like this.
Joss Whedon famously said don't give the audience what they want,
give them what they need. This is a film that gives people what they
want, a return to the status quo and aesthetic of the original
trilogy, but just a little bit different to keep it fresh. And seeing
it did make me appreciate what Lucas did with the prequels.
It's
a bit frustrating since this film did well pretty much everything
that the prequels failed at. The dialogue is snappy and fun, the
effects are grounded and give the world a lived in feel that flows
pretty seamlessly with the original trilogy (with the exception of
some lame CG wrathtars), and the new characters feel alive, human and
more relatable than the prequel folk. The actors aren't fighting
against the film, they're given plenty of opportunity to be fun and
pop. And particularly for Adam Driver, there was an intensity I never
saw during the prequels and only rarely in the original trilogy.
But, the movie stumbled in the areas were Lucas excelled. The action
sequences in the film paled in comparison to every previous Star Wars
movie. For many directors today, action seems to be something you
just struggle to get through. You put a bunch of stuff exploding on
screen, shoot a bunch of different angles and hope for the best. I
was unclear about the logistics of the battle, and everything felt a
lot smaller than every previous Star Wars ending, both emotionally
and spectacle wise. The editing just wasn't clean and the
storytelling and stakes were muddled.
Lucas is a master of assembling clean and easy to follow action
sequences. The space battles in Jedi and A New Hope, or the
speeder/AT-AT fight in Empire have clear stakes, great escalation and
amazing visual spectacle. The same holds true for the lightsaber
battles, even in the prequels. You get a lot more storytelling than
in the fight between Rey and Kylo Ren.
At their best, the prequels had moments that felt tapped into the
mythic subconscious that the series at its best aspires to. Thinking
about the wordless sequence of Anakin and Padme across the city from
each other as he hurtles towards the dark side, or the apocalyptic
final dual between Anakin and Obi-Wan. It dug deeper and hit harder
than anything in this movie because it's coming out of something more
real than a love for a forty year old movie.
That said, those movies also contain so many dumb CG characters,
abominable lines of dialogue and baffling performances, it's hard to
say which is better. This is an immaculate cover band, giving you
exactly what you want out of a Star Wars movie, except for that
intangible something else. It makes me really wish that you could
have made the prequels with Lucas in the sort of godfather role he
was on Empire, involved in editing and masterminding the story, but
with Kasdan or Abrams on the ground to write the script and direct
the actors.
And, in the end, it's a bit frustrating for me for the movie to end
on such an unresolved note. Considering the different directors and
writers, I was hoping that each of these movies would be more or less
standalone, but we've got more of a cliffhanger ending here than in
any previous Star Wars film.
The ending is a bit frustrating to me since it felt very rushed.
There's no real acknowledgement of Han's death on an emotional level.
We feel it for a bit in the middle of the fight, but it would be nice
to have that Vader funeral pyre style moment where we lay him to rest
and absorb the loss. There's also not really a larger celebration
that most Star Wars movies end with. The movie just kind of wraps up
abruptly without giving you a big emotional beat.
That said, the final moments are fantastic. It's frustrating to me
that the whole film is framed as the search for Luke Skywalker, and
he's not even found until the final moments to set up the next movie.
Not to mention, the sloppy writing of having R2-D2 suddenly wake up
at the end for no reason. But, the visual payoff of his appearance is
worth it and definitely gets you amped for the next stage of the saga
and Luke taking on a Yoda role.
So, was The Force Awakens a trilogy invalidating shameless retread of
Star Wars past? Or was it a fresh, fun relaunch for the franchise
with great new characters that has me eagerly anticipating the next
episode? It's both!
