Hey everybody! I have been trying to avoid sharing spoilers on my bizarrely popular social media presence, but it seems safe to share my thoughts here. What follows are my takes on what most everyone is talking about, but not in any specific order.
By way of background: I’ve seen The Force Awakens three times now and am genuinely excited to see it again. I’m hard pressed to come up with another movie since Wing Commander that I’ve felt that way about (though I doubt I’ll break the five-times-in-one-day record I set back then!) And I don’t especially say that as someone who went in wanting to like everything… but I also can’t think of the last time I truly wanted to know about scenes that were cut and things in the background and to speculate about what’s next. I have no memory of coming out of the prequels with anything but moderate contentment and a hope that the next film would move the story forward a bit.
That said, the first time I saw Force Awakens on opening night, I wasn’t sure whether or not I liked it at all. A LOT of the flaws everyone has mentioned stuck out on the first viewing vanish by the second or third. For all the fury everyone (myself included) made of not spoiling the film, knowing the emotional beats beforehand going in the second and third time helped a LOT. Leia and Han’s awkward conversations go from being poor exposition to meaningful emotional beats, for instance. After all, think about how you watch previous Star Wars movies: you go into them knowing what happens by rote, but still incredibly excited to see what you know is coming. Watching the original trilogy, you’re constantly both enjoying the part you’re in and you’re counting the time to the next familiar favorite part. The great, classic Star Wars movies are sort of like a really, really good five-course meal. I still watch the original trilogy with that mindset: I love this part, but I can’t wait for the next sequence, and I can’t wait until the five seconds my favorite character shows up! And so on. (The prequels fall down there; there’s brilliant stuff in there, but there are also sequences that you just want to be over with.)
I loved the new cast, and desperately want Episode VIII to focus on them instead of the old guard. Which is a pretty impressive feat for a movie, as the big selling point up until last week was getting to see Han and Leia and Luke again. Now I want them gone and I want to see Rey and Finn and Llewyn Davis having galactic adventures. Heck, I desperately want them to do a 1970s-style Marvel series about their quest for Luke between the movies. (I have never come out of a movie wanting MORE EU than I did this one.)
Carrie Fisher was clearly the weakest part of the cast, to an unfortunately noticeable degree. Please Jar Jar her into the background the next time around. (There’s one incredibly awkward cut during one of her conversations with Han that suggests that’s the case… where they must have recognized she was doing such a bad job that they couldn’t make a mid-conversation cut better hidden.)
As most have noted, the Starkiller base came off as a major failure of the imagination. I should say I might have had the same criticism of the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, but I that film did a much better job of establishing the threat. If anything, Starkiller base feels like something everyone involved, including the characters in the universe, were embarrassed about. Where RotJ opened with an establishing visit to the Death Star II, TFA didn’t even mention it in the first act (or the crawl!) despite following a character who apparently has intimate knowledge of the thing. The end result is ‘oh by the way there’s a Death Star,’ which is unfortunate (down to the passive aggressive ‘no, no, it’s bigger, just look at this chart!’ in the briefing.) In spite of all that,
I don’t hate the base or the battle, though. The idea of one-upping Jedi by having a file battle that’s one seamless battlefield instead of three simultaneous set pieces is pretty cool… they just needed to set it up better. It’s a very satisfying visual (with appropriate immediacy) when the lightsabre fight and the covert operation and the space battle are all literally/visually overlapping. And I was impressed by how non-toyetic it all was: X-Wings and TIE Fighters, no new fleets of ships we can buy in plastic form (genuinely; I went in expecting we’d see the TFA version of the A-, B-, Y-Wing and any variety of other TIEs.)
What I DO hate is Abrams’ aggressive post-twee ‘science doesn’t matter!’ attitude that gives us a weapon that isn’t explained with effects that don’t make sense (everyone in the galaxy, look up, in the sky! There’s a laser!) It’s one thing to tell myths surrounding murky impossibilities and another to continually glory in your ignorance. The latter is a pretty lame leitmotif (and one that already did structural damage to the Star Trek universe, what with red matter and cross-galaxy beaming and instant warps to everywhere.
Were I in Kasdan’s place, I probably would have reversed the ending and in the process explained a little more seamlessly the state of the galaxy in the movie. Why not have the First Order rushing to interrupt some movement of the Senate, dispatching their forces to stop a vote or the activation of a peacekeeper force or some such?
I have some harsh words for the score: it was boring. God bless John Williams, but I didn’t leave the theater humming anything and I’m still hard up to identify a particular new piece of music. He did such a good job with the prequels, his work made then inordinately better and you left with it in your head… but it wasn’t up to snuff here.
Looking back at the original movies, the first three do each have a distinctive flavor. Just compare the three sword fights to see it; Star Wars feels wide-eyed and new, full of potential… Empire is this brilliantly shot, smoky, artistic piece… and then Jedi is dark and utilitarian. I do think that having each episode come from another director is the way to go; the prequels sort of slosh into a single cube of indistinguishable prequel goo for lacking that touch.
On the whole, though, it was wonderful. And Admiral Ackbar! Woo! I feel like the last four months of catching up on the Star Wars canon was worthwhile, and I'm so excited about what's next. That's a pretty good start to this thing!
Already read it! I'm totally caught up on my EU. Actually, if anyone is interested, I've been keeping a spreadsheet to track it all: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MmpxlGkotnqlWWRkJxpMWaImH-9JXxH5Ixt642oVq-w/edit?usp=sharing
Of course!