Admittedly, I was a skeptic about the movie the new direction of Star Wars as a whole. Big changes were occurring, and Star Wars ceased to be a classic saga and was once again thrust into the limelight. In the years preceding The Force Awakens, the Star Wars canon had been unceremoniously shelved in favor of a proclaimed clean slate (something I'll be writing further about in the future). In my eyes, the brief track record with Disney at the helm indicated that a story near and dear to me was heading due south at top speed. Even though I had purchased my ticket on the hype train long before the movie was released, trailers and teasers excited me but failed to instill faith.
Cynical me was in for a real surprise. I was glued to my seat, surrounded by other enthusiastic fans, watching everything play out on the screen with the same wonder I felt during other Star Wars movies. Even so, that first encounter with the new Star Wars couldn't crack my hardened shell of doubt. Fueled by frustrations with other moviegoers (who would cheer and whisper throughout the movie), I jumped the gun and, while recognizing that I did in fact enjoy the movie, immediately picked apart what I didn't like. But I was assured that The Force Awakens got better upon repeat viewings, so I went to see it a second time.
All of my doubt vanished after that second time. Free from the stimulus overload and excited crowds of opening night, I was able to watch the movie as I preferred to: comfortably. I saw then that The Force Awakens has the core elements of what makes Star Wars: lovable characters, breathtaking settings, and epic scope with distinct movie-making flair and elements of a familiar sci-fi universe. To date, I've now seen it four times, and I'm sure I'll lose count after finally getting my hands on the blu-ray.
There is so much that is fantastic in The Force Awakens. One of the key things to note is that the movie felt like Star Wars should. Scenes alternated between exciting sequences of conflict and tension. There were varieties of different locations and characters to illustrate the vastness of that galaxy far, far away. The movie was paced incredibly well; its lengthy running time seems to fly by. There are even classic screen wipes for scene transitions!
One of my favorite parts of The Force Awakens is its cast of characters. Rey and Finn are interesting and compelling characters brought to life by phenomenal acting on the part of Daisy Ridley and John Boyega. Adam Driver's Kylo Ren has a fascinating struggle with the Dark Side fraught with emotion that adds layers of character, a spiritual successor to Jacen Solo of the old canon. Oscar Isaac made a likeable hotshot pilot. It was also good to see that the old favorites Han and Chewie were integral in the plot of the movie rather than shoehorned in for nostalgia.
The icing on top of the cake, the thing that solidified The Force Awakens as a Star Wars movie, was the John Williams score. As a huge lover of music, I'm convinced that I wouldn't have enjoyed the movie as much without it. Wonderful new themes combined with years of experience produced the best piece of movie scoring in many years (no matter who got the Oscar for it). The masterful craft of John Williams sealed the deal: The Force Awakens is the real thing.
While it is a product of a name-recognition reboot movie scene, The Force Awakens feels nothing like a cash-in on a beloved series. Everyone involved with production seemed to care immensely about adding to the Star Wars story over simply structuring the movie around profitability. While The Force Awakens certainly drew from the flowing well of fond memories, it isn't reliant on them. For the most part, the movie stands on its own without too much support from previous material.
However, it's the support of previous material that I find to be the main weakness of The Force Awakens. The chief complaint of many is based on the plot similarity between this movie and A New Hope. Because it's a tried and true format, The Force Awakens certainly works very well as a movie. It was different enough that it doesn't feel like a rip-off of the original Star Wars, but the parallels are impossible to ignore. Why is Jakku a desert planet? Couldn't Rey have been a scavenger somewhere else? Why does the plot hinge around an important droid? Kylo Ren is a masked Dark Side user with significant familial relations to the previous generation. There's a cantina scene. The First Order is a remnant of the Empire, but the movie does nothing to establish how it was able to wrest control from the victorious Rebellion (instead relying on incomplete spin-off materials to accomplish this), setting up a familiar underdog scenario that doesn't feel very practical.
The element of The Force Awakens that I couldn't take seriously at all was Starkiller base. It's an obvious callback to the Death Star, but has no real significance in the story (it didn't help that my brain automatically refers to it as "laser moon"). The Death Star is critical to the plot of A New Hope: under the looming threat of its power, the Rebels steal the plans in hopes of engineering its destruction. BB-8's map to Luke has nothing to do with Starkiller base, so its appearance halfway through the movie makes it feel awkwardly shoved in as an obligatory superweapon for the good guys to blow up.
The decision to mirror A New Hope was a conscious one, a two-pronged maneuver to provide fans with familiarity and to prove to critics of the prequels that Star Wars has moved past a rut. This was an incredibly smart business decision. However, it's a weakness to the overall story of Star Wars. It really sticks out when viewed alongside fresh new characters and ideas from story-driven perspectives evident in the movie's production.
The Force Awakens is a movie that means a lot to me. Having the opportunity to experience the movie with my family, full of excitement and wonder, reminds me why I love Star Wars and other stories so much. After seeing The Force Awakens, I look forward to Episode VIII with renewed faith and a content smile.
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