The Force Awakens has reached a global box office close to 1.9 billion dollars after a month in movie theatres, and the critical response has been glowing in its praise for the seventh movie in the Star Wars series. I've seen it twice now (a third trip may be in the offing, I'm a movie wing man for several people) and I have to say that it's a spectacular film, with flawless effects, good performances and excellent cinematography, which does its best to balance between the old and the new - and, for the most part, succeeds, without falling prey to the errors of the prequels.
(Because I'm fully aware that there are still people queuing up at the theatres for tickets to Episode 7, I'll do my best to keep my comments spoiler-free - for a given value of the term "spoiler". I won't give away any of the big plot twists, but if you haven't seen it yet and you want a completely virgin mind when the Lucasfilm™ logo appears on the screen, stop reading now.)
Although I appreciated and liked The Force Awakens, I can't quite bring myself to say that I enjoyed it - for me, it was a somber first act from a larger story, with moments of personal emotion that outweighed the larger scenes of triumphant success. Some questions were answered, but many more were left unresolved, as you might well expect from the first film in a planned trilogy.*
To a surprising extent, the plot of The Force Awakens echoes the plot of A New Hope: a droid holds important information that everyone wants, it ends up on a desert planet in the possession of a young local who turns out to have an astonishing connection with the Force, a daring rescue is staged to release a captive from a gigantic enemy base equipped with a planet-killer weapon before they can reveal their secrets under interrogation by a helmed, black-clad villain, and said enemy base needs to be destroyed by a ridiculously small fighter squadron before it can eliminate their headquarters. (There are a couple of other similarities that I can't go into here, see above re: spoilers.)
Regardless of these strong similarities in overall plot, The Force Awakens has a completely different tone than A New Hope. If I had to sum up the overall theme of The Force Awakens in one word, that word would be "regret". Almost every major character is motivated by remorse in one form or another, which gives the film an unexpectedly solemn feeling. I re-watched A New Hope** before seeing The Force Awakens, and it felt completely carefree by comparison.
In addition to its more dramatic tone, The Force Awakens came across as somewhat incomplete. There's certainly a lot of action and resolution, but it also felt very much like one-third of a trilogy, a 136 minute dramatis personae in order to provide an introduction to the players, both new and old, who will appear in the next two films.
Almost everyone that we saw in the first trilogy makes an appearance*** to a greater or lesser degree, but the new characters are the focus of the action: ace pilot Poe Dameron, ex-Stormtrooper Finn, abandoned desert waif and potential Force adept Rey, and the villainous, traitorous Kylo Ren, who is hoping to literally don the mantle of Darth Vader.
The dynamic between the new trio of protagonists isn't as defined as the one between Luke, Leia and Han in the first trilogy, and it's actually very close to just being a partner act between Finn and Rey, whose relationship could easily develop into either a friendship or a romance.
However, let's take a broader view. If the writers really want to break new ground in this trilogy, let's not rule out the possibility of Finn and Poe building on their initial connection to create a love story - I think that science fiction cinema is long overdue for its own version of Brokeback Mountain.
- Sid
* It's a shame that George Lucas hadn't signed a three-movie deal for Star Wars before production began. If he'd written all three scripts at once he might well have avoided some of the more egregious contradictions from A New Hope, such as the incestuous love triangle between Han, Leia and Luke, or Obi-Wan's explanation of how Luke's father was killed by Darth Vader.
** Sigh...I watched the blu-ray edition, which contains far too many tweaks and adjustments to the original material. I should have gone with my bootleg download of the original cut...
*** With the exception of Lando Calrissian - hopefully the 78-year old Billy Dee Williams will stay in good health until his planned cameo in the next film.
