Review: STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

Here it is finally.  It's been a pretty busy past few weeks, what with the holidays and the fact that I work at a movie theater and what's shaping up to be the biggest movie of all time just opened, so yes, this post is pretty late.  Normally, after taking so long, I might not publish at all, but it seemed wrong to not post a review for this movie, even a belated one.  In regards to the still unpublished retrospective essays on ATTACK OF THE CLONES and REVENGE OF THE SITH, they may still find their ways out there eventually, and I shouldn't be surprised if a similarly more in-depth essay on THE FORCE AWAKENS comes about too, but at the moment, I'm not applying an especially strict time table to those.
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS  (ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY)
3 out of 4 stars
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Starring: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Domnhall Gleeson, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, Max von Sydow
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence.
135 minutes
Verdict: While it lacks the mythic story qualities and emotional "oomph" of George Lucas' filmmaking even at his otherwise worst, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS injects the series with great new characters and worlds, and most importantly, it really is Star Wars.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS IF YOU'RE BREATHING.

As the first film in the Star Wars series to be made without the input of George Lucas, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS raises an unexpected question: what makes a movie a Star Wars movie?  Obviously it has to be set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and there's the Force and the warriors who wield it, be they Jedi Knights, Sith Lords or some variation on them.  There ought to be droids, blasters, spaceships and exotic alien beings.  The 1977 original STAR WARS is pulpy, swashbuckling high adventure that amalgamates numerous pop culture conventions with slightly mythic tones, and with THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI, the series further inflates those mythic aspirations into a robust, epic saga.  I'd disagree with the fans who argue that Lucas' prequel trilogy doesn't feel like Star Wars.  There's an obvious disconnect between the two trilogies, and the prequels are severely lacking in regards to characters, dialogue, acting and visuals, but the themes, thrills and emotional potency still come through in spite of all its technical shortcomings (or maybe it's just my own personal experience with them, but as obvious as their shortcomings are to me now, they've not yet lost so much upon recent reviewing).  THE FORCE AWAKENS is a perfectly solid blockbuster fantasy film, but ironically, it's almost too successful in distancing itself from the prequels and lands on the opposite end of the spectrum; technically proficient, introducing some great new characters, strong performances, visual panache and sharp dialogue, but in the midst of all the high adventure and nodding to the original trilogy, it never manages to land that emotional "oomph" that the previous films delivered, regardless of their other flaws.

George Lucas stitched together his fictional universe using a wide array of genre conventions and age-old world myths, resulting in something that seemed altogether new and exciting despite being largely unoriginal, however, as he drew too many characters and events together too tightly in his prequel trilogy, his vast universe began to look too small. An unmistakable priority of Abrams and his team is to differentiate themselves from the much-maligned prequels as clearly as possible, but ironically, while they create an impressive new assortment of exotic planetary locations and new characters, they're no longer drawing from Lucas' wide-ranging palette of genre and myth, and instead are creating something meant to be much larger, but with the much more limited palette of the original Star Wars trilogy.  The makers of THE FORCE AWAKENS, most of them life-long fans of those movies now let loose with the reins to the universe, want to answer the demands made against the prequels, and they really, really want to remake the original trilogy in some sense or other.

THE FORCE AWAKENS takes the original Star Wars trilogy and affectionately throws it into a blender on puree, although perhaps not quite as long as it should be, resulting in a Bizarro World mirror of those films, most especially of 1977's STAR WARS (also known as STAR WARS: EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE).  Our mechanically-inclined main hero, who also happens to be a natural pilot, is introduced on Jaaku, a Tatooine-esque rural desert planet, like Luke in the original, except that this time, she's quite keen to wait for adventure to come to her.  Rather than Han and Luke disguising themselves as Stormtroopers, a Stormtrooper disguises himself as rebel, and both our heroes and villains are in pursuit of a crucial piece of information held within a rascally little droid.  The villainous evolution of the Imperial forces, the First Order, possesses a planet-destroying weapon like the Death Star, but far, far bigger and comprehensively more powerful, and the young heroes being introduced into this epic conflict are joined and guided by a veteran general from an earlier, famous war.  It's not so dissimilar from Lucas' own notions of "echoes" and "visual rhymes" when he made the prequels, however, in the tradition of fan-favorite EMPIRE, THE FORCE AWAKENS takes a more lyrical, deliberately paced approach to the story beats of the fast and thrill-oriented STAR WARS.

Set 30 years real time past since RETURN OF THE JEDI, legendary Jedi warrior Luke Skywalker has mysteriously vanished, leaving the galaxy to descend once again into war between the fascistic remnants of the Empire, now reformed as the "First Order", and the New Republic's "Resistance", with the forces of both sides eager to obtain data that holds the secret to Luke's whereabouts, data which has been stored away in the droid BB-8 on the desert planet Jaaku.  Rey (newcomer Daisy Ridley), a scavenger stranded on Jaaku as a child, and Finn (John Boyega, from ATTACK THE BLOCK), a contrite Stormtrooper, discover BB-8 and with the First Order's forces in hot pursuit, resolve to bring the droid to the Resistance leaders.  Along the way, they run into none other than the legendary war hero, Han Solo.

Although it was somewhat surprising that Harrison Ford even came back for another film, considering his notorious derisions toward his part in the Star Wars legacy, it is entirely unsurprising that as the fan favorite character, Han Solo has the most substantial part out of the original trilogy's players, and so many years later, with the assistance of returning EMPIRE/JEDI screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, Ford remarkably slips right back into character as the roguish smuggler, albeit admittedly grayer.  The rest of is no less impressive; in addition to also bringing back Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa (now with the title of 'General' in place of 'Princess') and Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Oscar Isaac (of INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS) appears as renowned Resistance pilot Poe Dameron, Lupita Nyong'o (who won an Academy Award for her role in 12 YEARS A SLAVE) as Maz Kanata, an ancient and wise alien being, Gwendoline Christie (of Game of Thrones) as the Stormtrooper commander Captain Phasma, Max von Sydow as a village elder on Jakku with a key piece to the secret of Skywalker's whereabouts, and Adam Driver (from Girls and LINCOLN) as the movie's big bad, Kylo Ren, a lightsaber-wielding devotee of Darth Vader's legacy and warrior of the dark side of the Force.  In her first notable film role, Ridley is excellent and reminiscent of Keira Knightley, but perhaps with a slightly harder edge, as a tough orphan who fends for herself in an unforgiving watering hole at the edge of the known galaxy by selling scraps taken from desert wreckage in exchange for food.  Boyega is her haunted yet often comedic counterpart on this journey and a likable male lead, while Driver is a standout in a role that could use more fleshing out and less recycling from the previous films, but into which he embues a surprisingly potent humanity and menace.  Isaac, half-heartedly pitched as the third member of the new trilogy's central trio, has the feel of a '70s character actor and feels like a natural in this universe, but is unfortunately greatly under served by the script that isn't sure what to do with him in when they already have Han.

The best new character has already been successfully marketed into icon-hood by the Disney marketing team; BB-8, an intriguing design realized with impressive technical prowess combining assorted practical effects including a motorized remote control version of the droid with an R2-D2-style head perched atop a rolling sphere.  Like R2 in the original films (a character uncomfortably shoehorned into this film), BB-8 is thoroughly expressive without a line of dialogue beyond a few beeps and boops, and gets a few of the movie's biggest laughs.

The only aspect of the production that falls uniquely short is the musical score, written by returning legendary film composer John Williams, who composed the scores to each film in the series to date, but comes up kind of dry this time.  Reprises of the series' classic musical themes are disappointingly limited to only a few moments, while the new signature theme of the film, "Rey's Theme" or "The Scavenger" is good, but not on the level of any of the previous films' new pieces with the exception of RETURN OF THE JEDI (which brought the lackluster "March of the Ewoks" and "Luke and Leia", the latter which is given a couple of subtle reprises).
In comparison to those unduly dreaded prequels, it's a very different beast, but its very different shortcomings ultimately balance it out.  The dialogue, acting, production and world-building has improved, but the story and mythic qualities are somewhat lacking.  It doesn't help that the movie is clearly so much set up for later installments.  THE FORCE AWAKENS is perhaps not the sudden breakthrough in the franchise we've been awaiting since the prequels failed to meet expectations, but it's very good, and most importantly (certainly for the people who grew up with the series), it's still definitely Star Wars.

Images via Lucasfilm