Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens Review (Spoiler Alert)

The Force Awakens Review

 

     Three years after the announcement of Disney's 4.3 billion dollar acquisition of Lucasfilm, on December 18, 2015, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens premiered. It immediately shattered all kinds of box office records, and has grossed over $300 million as of December 23. In five days. This is going to be a whopper. After so much speculation and ideas floating in the air, the enigma that everyone talked about materialized on a movie screen. All of the possibilities that were put out by years of speculation were decided by the movie being shown. There can no longer be any rumors of the content of The Force Awakens, because they're all there in the film. This blog, which has served as an outpost of news and speculation for Episode VII, has served its purpose. But there is still one thing left to do. It is time to see what I got right, what I got wrong, and review the movie.

     I saw it. It's the first Star Wars movie I've seen in theaters, and it is drastically different on a large screen. It was more stunning that way. The tickets for opening night were sold out almost immediately, and for the next several days as well. The lines stretched out into theater parking lots, and they weren't for tickets. The anticipation was enormous. So, now to the movie. Before we begin, let me just say, I am not a professional reviewer or critic. I don't really even know what movie reviews contain. I'll just summarize the plot and give my thoughts on what was in the film and what wasn't, what worked and what I thought didn't, etc. Be warned, there are major spoilers ahead.

    

The film begins without the usual 20th Century Fox fanfare, and that was jarring and slightly sad. However, it immediately launched into "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." and then the standard opening crawl. The first sentence says it all : "Luke Skywalker has vanished." It goes on to explain how the FIRST ORDER (in all caps because we all love that classic Star Wars cheese) is trying to hunt him down and how Princess (Now General) Leia is trying to find him so he can help the Resistance, which I assume is the new Rebel Alliance. However, the movie also mentions the Republic, so I'm not sure how they're related. You would assume that the Empire collapsed, and that the Republic would take over, but somehow there's still a resistance. Anyway, after the fantastic title crawl, the action is directed toward the desert planet "totally not Tatooine" Jakku, where a bunch of First Order stormtroopers conduct a desert raid in order to capture plans. Max Von Sydow has a very short cameo. He gives Oscar Isaac's character Poe Dameron 

 

stolen plans before the main bad guy Kylo Ren 

shows up and slices him in half. Poe then gets captured, but not before putting the plans/map into a droid named BB-8, which escapes and wanders around on the desert planet. Sound familiar? So this new villain Kylo Ren seems like a Darth Vader cultist, because he dresses the same, has a red lightsaber, has a voice-changing mask, and does Force things for evil. He freezes a laser bolt in midair, and that's cool. During this night raid, a ton of Stormtroopers descend on a village and they kill everybody. However, one Stormtrooper refuses to slaughter the populace after Ren orders it. It was pretty evident that this was John Boyega's Finn (originally FN-2187)

, who, judging from the trailers, was a defecting Stormtrooper. He goes back onto a Star Destroyer, where Poe Dameron is captured and tortured, and breaks him out. The two do an awesome space battle with a stolen TIE fighter, and they become BFFs within four minutes. However, the fun is cut short when the fighter crash lands on Jakku. Finn finds the wreckage of the fighter in the desert, realizes that Poe is dead, and heads toward an outpost town. There he meets Rey

, who collects junk from fallen Imperial walkers and other vehicles. BB-8 wanders into her due to the plot requiring it, and there she meets Finn. There the First Order attacks them and they are forced to escape aboard the Millennium Falcon, due to the plot requiring it. They escape to space, but are quickly captured. And then, surprise, surprise, Han Solo and Chewbacca burst onto the scene. 

 

Then they are all caught in a humorous confrontation with smugglers, and of course some rathgars get loose. What are rathgars? Don't question it; it's Star Wars. So after the monsters kill the smugglers, Han, Chewbacca, Finn, Rey, and BB-8 escape aboard the Millennium Falcon, and go to a Resistance stronghold planet. Han unsuccessfully offers Rey a crew position aboard the Falcon. Onward, to the There they meet CGI Lupita Nyong'o, an old, wise alien whose name eludes me. She also has this weird thing for Chewie, which both made me curious and repulsed. So Finn, trying to escape the First Order, splits up with Rey and tries to get a flight to the Outer Rim. This sounds familiar. Rey then stumbles into a basement and DIRECTLY INTO LUKE SKYWALKER'S OLD LIGHTSABER, has a vision, passes out, yadda yadda she's a Jedi. Then there's a third Death Star (golly gee) and it kills five planets at the same time. The First Order invades the Resistance stronghold, Kylo Ren captures Rey, also Poe is somehow alive and is killing Stormtroopers in a sick X-Wing. I just realized this is basically a blow by blow of the film, not really a review. I'll speed it up. So Rey is interrogated, and we learn that Kylo Ren is less of a Darth Vader character and more of a jerk who tries to emulate him. So the Resistance, with the main characters and Leia (yeah, of course Carrie Fisher's in this movie) plot to blow up the third Death Star (it's not called that, but that's what it is). Han, Finn and Chewie sneak onto the Death Star in order to do the thing that helps destabilize the combobluator compressor boom thing. At the same time, Rey escapes from interrogation. Han sees his son, Ben Solo, who is now Kylo Ren. He goes out and pleads with him to come back to his family. Kylo Ren responds by SHOVING HIS LIGHTSABER STRAIGHT INTO HAN SOLO, 
AND WATCHING AS HE FALLS INTO THE ABYSS. I FRICKIN HATE THIS GUY. LOOK, I KNOW HARRISON FORD HATED STAR WARS, AND THAT I PREDICTED THIS HAPPENING, IT STILL SUCKED. So Chewie goes ape, shoots the bastard, blows up the stuff, and runs off. Rey and Finn escape into the forest on the planet the weapon is built into, searching for the Falcon, but looks who shows up. Giant A-hole With a Lightsaber wants to fight. Finn pulls out Luke's lightsaber and is almost immediately sliced and diced. Rey has a fight, vanquishes Ren, and escapes aboard the Falcon with an unconscious Boyega and Chewbacca. Then the Sun Crusher or whatever blows up into a star and Rey meets Mark Hamill, who stands around like a tool for about thirty seconds before the credits roll. So that's Star Wars. I have some opinions on that. For verification, I was correct in assuming that Han Solo would die. Surprisingly, Making Star Wars was pretty accurate in its leak, although not completely. I saw some of J.J. Abrams' characteristic lens flare in the beginning, but it was way more toned down than in Star Trek. I found it odd that Max Von Sydow was in this movie, given that he dies five minutes into it. I really loved how new worlds were introduced in the Star Wars universe, with the exception of Jakku, which was a Tatooine ripoff in every way, minus Sand People and the like. Rey was a god. Seemingly omnipotent, really, using the Force with zero training. Chewbacca seemed waxed. Carrie Fisher has definitely not acted for a while. Mark Hamill is awkward. I can summarize the plot very briefly. The bad guys want some information that is contained inside a droid, which wanders around on a desert planet before finding a budding Jedi-to-be. The Jedi leaves to help the revolting faction, the main character meets some people in a bar who can provide transportation, the bad guys' space weapon destroys a planet, Han Solo and Chewie run around said space weapon shooting Stormtroopers, an important character is sacrificed by the main red-lightsaber masked baddie. The heroes blow up the space weapon, with Leia overseeing the operation,  and Luke Skywalker is useless until the very end. This was my main beef with this film, it was very similar to the first Star Wars movie. It had a ton of elements from Empire, and it used many, many references. Thankfully, they were regulated. I really enjoyed this movie, because it kept a ton of the elements of Star Wars and used them in new ways that we haven't seen before. J.J. Abrams did a fine job directing, and the actors were perfect for their roles. Captain Phasma doesn't do anything. Domhall Gleeson doesn't do much. I wish there was more Poe. Mark Hamill did actually nothing. Harrison Ford stopped being able to do stuff two-thirds of the way through the film. In conclusion, the epic three years of anticipation did not end in disappointment. The film balanced between old and new remarkably well. It was not a nostalgia fest; it was a Star Wars sequel. Rian Johnson really has his work cut out for him. See you on May 26, 2017. 
I have some small questions left:
- Why is C3POs arm red?
- Why was Captain Phasma in this movie?
- Why doesn't the Empire learn from its mistakes?
- Is Supreme Leader Snoke really fifty feet tall?
- How on Jakku did someone manage to find Luke Skywalker's lightsaber after it was thrown down Cloud City's reactor and into the atmosphere of a gas giant? And if they found the lightsaber, do you suppose they found Luke's hand? If they found Luke's hand, can they clone him oohhh cewl
- In the film, the Republic and the Resistance are separate entities, but both are fighting the First Order. This is weird.
- Where the rathgar did Ren get the burned-out Darth Vader mask? If that method involved destroying the forest moon of Endor and all of the Ewoks, I approve.
- WHY DID YOU KILL HAN SOLO?!?!?!?121111/1/!?

     This is the end. I'll miss the speculation, but Star Wars news marches on.

     Even without Han Solo.