[HEADING=1]STAR WARS - THE FORCE AWAKENS REVIEW[/HEADING]
[small]this review was originally written for facebook, so any overly familiar statements are to be excused... enjoy =)[/small]
SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS
So, the moment we had not been waiting for until not so long ago when the movie was announced has finally come to pass - Chewie, we're home! JJ Abrams delivers a mercifully ego-free offering with a series of returning stars and well judged new characters, scenes, enemies and flashpoints. He seems to have correctly judged the balance and procession of the classic star wars films in terms of encounters and lulls in the action and as such this latest release sets itself apart from the prequel trilogy, which largely seemed to have it's own ideas about pacing and progression.
So, this review has a few spoilers (I'm not going to write out the whole plot but I will break a bunch of secrets) so that's one final warning for anyone who has not seen the movie to stop reading here.
Enter Kylo Ren, new Dark Jedi with a refreshingly original backstory. Ren, you see, is Ben, lost son of Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa (nee Skywalker). Ben was one of the first youngsters for Luke Skywalker, erstwhile hero now turned distant hermit, to attempt to train in the ways of the force, but his fall from grace and subsequent ruining of a now exiled Luke's work precipitated a new Dark Age for force users, with only a Sith lord and Ren to counterbalance the absent Luke. This all changes when a couple of unlikely allies - a shell-shocked newbie Stormtrooper (named Finn by Poe, the new Han Solo character of the series) and an innocent orphan girl named Rey - emerge as new champions of the light side.
The two intertwining plot arcs are roughly as follows:
On the side of Light, Finn and Rey are struggling to find their way to the Rebellion to deliver a section of a star map which points the way to Luke Skywalker. The map originated in the hands of Max von Sydow who appears to play Han Solo's father, Kylo Ren's paternal grandfather, and who is promptly bumped off by Ren. It is smuggled out in direct homage to A New Hope by a droid unit - BB8 - who, despite being the property of Poe Dameron Alliance Starfighter Ace (a new, less edgy and more directly lovable analogue to the Solo of the original trilogy, it would seem), comes into Rey's possession and sets off the chain of events already described.
On the other hand we have the story of an emerging reiteration of the Empire called The First Order, a vicious group of power-mad, racist, mass-murdering, totalitarian bastards who have developed an interestingly new-tech, very dastardly take on a Death Star, and their two Lieutenants, the force user Ren and the head of the army, General Hux. These guys operate under the control of one Supreme Leader Snoke, a new Emperor/Sith Lord, though he is never really mentioned under the later title - or indeed directly viewed - in this film. The Empire's various motivations have to do with waging war against the Rebellion, but they are told to us through the lens of Ren's private struggle to purge all of 'The Light' from his body and become a true dark jedi.
Ren is a very interesting character. Think about it. His dad was Han, his mother Leia, so while has father was a brave hero of the republic his grandfather was the most glamorous and famous of evildoers in the galaxy (only Luke and ourselves seem to know that Vader changed sides in the hour of his death) largely it seems due to a spate of horrible parenting decisions by Han and Leia, Ren has apparently decided to reject his father's brand of good and attempt to resurrect all that he perceives of the Vader blood on his mother's side and move in the steps of grandpa. Interestingly, Ren seems to have absorbed Max von Sydow's affected nordic accent to a great degree, and sounds very cool in his helmet, but never really anything like Han or Leia. This is interesting, and perhaps suggests something of his backstory with regards to his rejecting of his father and fall to the dark side: It would appear that he was raised by von Sydow's character, rather than by his parents (Han and Leia love each other but are separated, largely thanks to the trouble with Ren, and Leia mentions at one point that it was her fault that he went bad when she sent him away), and that this distance was what caused Ren to develop such a skewed and goofy - but deadly serious for all of that - misapprehension of the facts.
A little side theory of mine here, in which I speculate that the identity of Rey might actually be a second child of Han and Leia, abandoned for whatever reason in a similar way to Ren, only to a now unknown and apparently absent - at the time of the film's events - benefactor. This would explain her latent force talents. Furthermore, we don't know Finn's backstory at all - it seems Stormtroopers are brainwashed and indoctrinated from a very young age - but he has the force within him (a statement of Ren that he has 'awakened' seems to confirm this) and I would only point out that the only other black Jedi we seem to know of is Mace Windu. So, perhaps Finn is an impossible-to-verify descendant of Windu. This is obviously just wishful thinking on my part
He doesn't look anything like Samuel L. Jackson...
I have set up the general gyst of the plots and key characters, but this is a review not a plot summary so I won't go any further into events in the film. Suffice it to say that this film plays out like a modern homage to the original trilogy, as any sequels/prequels should have.
The acting and casting is all pretty good. There is one character who seems like they have been lifted from the prequel trilogy - just a yellow CGI blob of a shriveled old alien woman who comes out of nowhere and seems to know everything about everything in a manner slightly reminiscent of, but less acceptable than, Yoda - but besides her every character is either likable, respectable or utterly detestable, which could be summed up as being a feat of casting and writing. I may be missing one or two off-colour performances (I think the Carrie Fisher of today is closer to the one who had a cameo in 30 Rock than the one we see in this film, and the performance and her general appearance consequently seems a bit manufactured, but her overall character rings true) Han and Chewie are both back and continue on pretty much exactly as they left off, though Han clearly has a bit more baggage this time around.
The filming is great. I actually had a moment during one chase/action sequence where I turned to my fellow film-goer and puffed my cheeks, gave a thumbs up and said "that wasn't bad!". A bit of the CGI gets old in a way that is reminiscent of the prequel trilogy - some monsters chasing Han and Chewie, the yellow old woman, some of the scenery - but in other areas the CGI is used to very great effect, in a very contemporary fashion. The blast of the new Death Star iteration is a seriously cool visual event.
I have written a series of reviews recently in which I have discussed the realities of derivative film making. The Martian was derivative of Apollo 13 and that excused a lot of the plot's more goofy moments. Spectre, the latest Bond movie, was obviously a procession of recycled moments which lost very little of it's impact despite this. The Force Awakens, then, is also a derivative experience, but to a far greater extent than The Martian or Spectre this film has taken it's roots and spun a tale that holds a heck of a lot more intrigue, originality and elaboration than it does derivation. This is a far greater film than the other two here mentioned contemporary blockbusters.
I'm really really happy with this film. I'm itching to trace the tail of Kylo Ren, and cannot even say for sure if it is going to end in his doom which is a wonderful spin on the usual treatment of overarching villains - one which is reminiscent of the Darth Vader story, and that is only a good thing. Can't wait to see what happens with all the characters, and indeed a certain new and crucial character who is only seen for a very short span of the film.
10/10
[small]this review was originally written for facebook, so any overly familiar statements are to be excused... enjoy =)[/small]
SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS : SPOILERS
So, the moment we had not been waiting for until not so long ago when the movie was announced has finally come to pass - Chewie, we're home! JJ Abrams delivers a mercifully ego-free offering with a series of returning stars and well judged new characters, scenes, enemies and flashpoints. He seems to have correctly judged the balance and procession of the classic star wars films in terms of encounters and lulls in the action and as such this latest release sets itself apart from the prequel trilogy, which largely seemed to have it's own ideas about pacing and progression.
So, this review has a few spoilers (I'm not going to write out the whole plot but I will break a bunch of secrets) so that's one final warning for anyone who has not seen the movie to stop reading here.
Enter Kylo Ren, new Dark Jedi with a refreshingly original backstory. Ren, you see, is Ben, lost son of Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa (nee Skywalker). Ben was one of the first youngsters for Luke Skywalker, erstwhile hero now turned distant hermit, to attempt to train in the ways of the force, but his fall from grace and subsequent ruining of a now exiled Luke's work precipitated a new Dark Age for force users, with only a Sith lord and Ren to counterbalance the absent Luke. This all changes when a couple of unlikely allies - a shell-shocked newbie Stormtrooper (named Finn by Poe, the new Han Solo character of the series) and an innocent orphan girl named Rey - emerge as new champions of the light side.
The two intertwining plot arcs are roughly as follows:
On the side of Light, Finn and Rey are struggling to find their way to the Rebellion to deliver a section of a star map which points the way to Luke Skywalker. The map originated in the hands of Max von Sydow who appears to play Han Solo's father, Kylo Ren's paternal grandfather, and who is promptly bumped off by Ren. It is smuggled out in direct homage to A New Hope by a droid unit - BB8 - who, despite being the property of Poe Dameron Alliance Starfighter Ace (a new, less edgy and more directly lovable analogue to the Solo of the original trilogy, it would seem), comes into Rey's possession and sets off the chain of events already described.
On the other hand we have the story of an emerging reiteration of the Empire called The First Order, a vicious group of power-mad, racist, mass-murdering, totalitarian bastards who have developed an interestingly new-tech, very dastardly take on a Death Star, and their two Lieutenants, the force user Ren and the head of the army, General Hux. These guys operate under the control of one Supreme Leader Snoke, a new Emperor/Sith Lord, though he is never really mentioned under the later title - or indeed directly viewed - in this film. The Empire's various motivations have to do with waging war against the Rebellion, but they are told to us through the lens of Ren's private struggle to purge all of 'The Light' from his body and become a true dark jedi.
Ren is a very interesting character. Think about it. His dad was Han, his mother Leia, so while has father was a brave hero of the republic his grandfather was the most glamorous and famous of evildoers in the galaxy (only Luke and ourselves seem to know that Vader changed sides in the hour of his death) largely it seems due to a spate of horrible parenting decisions by Han and Leia, Ren has apparently decided to reject his father's brand of good and attempt to resurrect all that he perceives of the Vader blood on his mother's side and move in the steps of grandpa. Interestingly, Ren seems to have absorbed Max von Sydow's affected nordic accent to a great degree, and sounds very cool in his helmet, but never really anything like Han or Leia. This is interesting, and perhaps suggests something of his backstory with regards to his rejecting of his father and fall to the dark side: It would appear that he was raised by von Sydow's character, rather than by his parents (Han and Leia love each other but are separated, largely thanks to the trouble with Ren, and Leia mentions at one point that it was her fault that he went bad when she sent him away), and that this distance was what caused Ren to develop such a skewed and goofy - but deadly serious for all of that - misapprehension of the facts.
A little side theory of mine here, in which I speculate that the identity of Rey might actually be a second child of Han and Leia, abandoned for whatever reason in a similar way to Ren, only to a now unknown and apparently absent - at the time of the film's events - benefactor. This would explain her latent force talents. Furthermore, we don't know Finn's backstory at all - it seems Stormtroopers are brainwashed and indoctrinated from a very young age - but he has the force within him (a statement of Ren that he has 'awakened' seems to confirm this) and I would only point out that the only other black Jedi we seem to know of is Mace Windu. So, perhaps Finn is an impossible-to-verify descendant of Windu. This is obviously just wishful thinking on my part
He doesn't look anything like Samuel L. Jackson...I have set up the general gyst of the plots and key characters, but this is a review not a plot summary so I won't go any further into events in the film. Suffice it to say that this film plays out like a modern homage to the original trilogy, as any sequels/prequels should have.
The acting and casting is all pretty good. There is one character who seems like they have been lifted from the prequel trilogy - just a yellow CGI blob of a shriveled old alien woman who comes out of nowhere and seems to know everything about everything in a manner slightly reminiscent of, but less acceptable than, Yoda - but besides her every character is either likable, respectable or utterly detestable, which could be summed up as being a feat of casting and writing. I may be missing one or two off-colour performances (I think the Carrie Fisher of today is closer to the one who had a cameo in 30 Rock than the one we see in this film, and the performance and her general appearance consequently seems a bit manufactured, but her overall character rings true) Han and Chewie are both back and continue on pretty much exactly as they left off, though Han clearly has a bit more baggage this time around.
The filming is great. I actually had a moment during one chase/action sequence where I turned to my fellow film-goer and puffed my cheeks, gave a thumbs up and said "that wasn't bad!". A bit of the CGI gets old in a way that is reminiscent of the prequel trilogy - some monsters chasing Han and Chewie, the yellow old woman, some of the scenery - but in other areas the CGI is used to very great effect, in a very contemporary fashion. The blast of the new Death Star iteration is a seriously cool visual event.
I have written a series of reviews recently in which I have discussed the realities of derivative film making. The Martian was derivative of Apollo 13 and that excused a lot of the plot's more goofy moments. Spectre, the latest Bond movie, was obviously a procession of recycled moments which lost very little of it's impact despite this. The Force Awakens, then, is also a derivative experience, but to a far greater extent than The Martian or Spectre this film has taken it's roots and spun a tale that holds a heck of a lot more intrigue, originality and elaboration than it does derivation. This is a far greater film than the other two here mentioned contemporary blockbusters.
I'm really really happy with this film. I'm itching to trace the tail of Kylo Ren, and cannot even say for sure if it is going to end in his doom which is a wonderful spin on the usual treatment of overarching villains - one which is reminiscent of the Darth Vader story, and that is only a good thing. Can't wait to see what happens with all the characters, and indeed a certain new and crucial character who is only seen for a very short span of the film.
10/10