Movie Review 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens': Skywalkers & Starkillers
Cast: John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Harrison Ford, Oscar Isaac, Carrie Fisher, Domhnall Gleeson, Gwendoline Christie, Max von Sydow, Mark Hamill, Andy Serkis
Director: J.J. Abrams
Rating: 3 stars
Three decades have passed since Return of the Jedi. The heroes of that conflict have established a New Republic after the downfall of the Emperor and Darth Vader. By the time The Force Awakens starts, however, a new organisation called the First Order has arisen. They attack villages and planets without restraint, and their violence leads one of its soldiers, Finn (John Boyega), to abandon their cause and rescue a resistance member Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). They land on a desert planet where Finn runs into Rey (Daisy Ridley), a young scavenger and orphan. The three embark on an adventure to find the legend Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Joining them on the quest is renowned smuggler and war hero Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and pursuing them are the First Order, led by the evil Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).
The Force Awakens is the first Star Wars movie to be made without any involvement by George Lucas. How closely the film fits in the fabric of Lucas films is a question best answered by Star Wars aficionados. For the general public, they can take care in the fact that J.J. Abrams has worked on TV and genre movies like Star Trek and Mission Impossible, so he has an instinctive grasp for the appeal of these films. The Force Awakens manages to convey some of the freshness and excitement that audiences might have had when the first Star Wars movie was released in 1977. It has a sense of timelessness and simplicity. Most movies set in outer space feel cold and austere, with a great deal of time spent in explaining the equipment, the dangers of space travel and the pseudo-science. Star Wars instead treats outer space like the wild west.
Accordingly, The Force Awakens has a fast moving plot — a collection of showpieces moving from one location to another. Where a film like Avatar or The Martian were content with showing one planet, Star Wars shows us six planets with glimpses of others in one montage. The film is restless in its excitement to show us how vast the world is and how many people and places there are. This represents the charm of Star Wars but it also typifies its lack of depth. The fate of the galaxy, the fate of trillions of lives inevitably get overshadowed by the family romance that comprises the film’s plot.
The plot of The Force Awakens, a new generation of heroes trying to live up to the old generation, mirrors J.J. Abrams and Disney taking over George Lucas’ creations. It joins several 2015 films this year — Mad Max: Fury Road, Terminator Genisys, The Peanuts Movie, Jurassic World — in its desire to revive an old franchise for a new audience. If it isn’t as successful as Fury Road, it is, at the least, an appealing entertainment that doesn’t rest entirely on nostalgia for its appeal. It’s a big galaxy and hopefully future instalments in this new trilogy will take the story to newer directions while maintaining the Star Wars charm.
The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society
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