Movie Review: Star Wars - The Force Awakens

The films of the original Star Wars Trilogy are iconic, generation-bridging parts of science fiction lore and likely never to be supplanted from their place in history.  There have been other epic series' that have come since; the most impressive of which would be Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.  But given the fact that these were merely adaptations of existing works and not original stories it falls even that much more short.

Lucas, for all his later stumbles and faults, had a vision for Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  He scoped the arc of each character and developed the plot with an emphasis on drawing the audience in and making them genuinely care about Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, C-3PO and R2D2.  This is something that so many other filmmakers have tried to do and failed; he should be applauded for his creativity, vision and foresight.

With the sale to Disney the franchise was put in the hands of the most competent director in Sci-fi films right now.  Six years prior JJ Abrams had resurrected the basically dead Star Trek franchise with a new cast.  He forged his own path going so far as to put his version in an alternate universe from canon to maintain what had come before without letting it influence his vision.

Disney, perhaps in collaboration with Abrams, did a similar thing in the SWU - all the books, comics, etc. that had been produced since Jedi were expunged from canon.  I was among those fans who had hoped without reason that Episodes VII-IX would be the Timothy Zahn story; by far the best series of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (SWEU) but those hopes were dashed.  If you haven't read this series, known as the Thrawn Trilogy, I would highly, highly recommend picking it up.

Unlike restarting Star Trek, which had already produced numerous television series and nearly a dozen movies, Star Wars was living on the gasps of what the original trilogy could still command after the debacle that was the prequels.  There are certainly SW Fans who will stand by those films as they are zealots and ravenous fans too blind to recognize failure in their messiah.  I don't mean to cast aspersions upon all SW Fans who enjoyed episodes I-III, but if you can't see the obvious flaws, storyline errors and insanely contradictory plot points these films created you are not someone whose opinion on film that will hold any weight with me.

So here was the task set before Abrams: resurrect the Star Wars Universe, bring together fans of the original trilogy (meaning: don't ignore that which came before) and draw in a whole new generation while simultaneously set up a franchise which Disney plopped down $5.5 Billion (will a B).

I chose to keep myself rather distant from the rumors and stories out there about the film's plot, characters and story.  It felt important to me that I go into this experience with my eyes as unclouded as possible.  I watched the trailers, yes.  But I ignored all goings on and chatter out there.  When I sat down in that theater today I had an open mind and no expectations.

I've spent much of the day replaying the film in my head and even considered not writing anything up until I saw the film again; but initial reactions can be solid from a writing perspective.

Let's start with what I didn't like: I was definitely disappointed in the lack of screen time for Captain Phasma.  It is entirely possible that her character will play a much larger role in the subsequent films but for me her absence was noticeable.  The characterization of Luke was not to my liking.  A bad thing happens and he runs away?  That's not the Luke I knew from the original movies; which is all we're supposed to know.  As much as I tried to disassociate what I know from the SWEU the use of lightsabers by non-force trained persons was bothersome to me.  It's a hurdle I don't think I'm easy to clear.  Who's fighting who and why; there's an established government (the presumably good guys - The Republic), the First Order - who rose from the ashes of the Empire, and the Resistance...which is apparently the guerrilla fighting arm of the Republic?  It is not at all explained and we are left wondering why it was set up this way.

What I did like: the character dialogue was brilliant at times.  When Poe Dameron and Kylo Ren first meet, Poe's little glib remark, "Do you speak first, or do I speak first?" is spot on and hilarious.  Though Poe doesn't have an excessive amount of screen time this line is perfectly in line with who he is as the "new Solo" (calling it now).  The relationship between Rey and Finn - two people who have not lived the life they wanted and are drawn together by forces beyond their control make a distinct and pure connection.  The story of Han and Leia; its construction helps at a reality to the time that came before and puts a human face on the Universe-spanning story line.  The fact that unexpected things happen regularly and without fear of the repercussions; Abrams isn't afraid to anger or disappoint fans - which is the exact opposite of where Lucas had taken the franchise, I have to give him credit for that.

Because Star Wars has been such an influential and impactful part of my life and since I was left feeling burned and scared by the prequels I realize that judging this film too harshly is a very real possibility.  I remember walking out of Episode I thinking, "The next one is going to be awesome - this was the set-up move, like A New Hope and the next one will be dark and full of kickass fight scenes, like Empire" and that hope was not fulfilled.  So whereas there is absolutely no comparing the quality of The Force Awakens with the crap which was Jar Jar Binks and the trade embargo story of The Phantom Menace, there is still those lingering concerns.

I fully reserve the right to amend this review after seeing the film a second time if I come away with a much happier feeling.  But for now I leave you with this: Star Wars is alive and well.  And that is something we can all be happy about.

Tb

Being a Star Wars Fan

Courtesy of Disney & Lucasfilm

Courtesy of Disney & Lucasfilm

Being a Star Wars fan of my age is a bit terrifying right now.

I grew up on the original trilogy. I consumed them frame by frame, imagining myself on Hoth battling AT-ATs, running through the halls of Cloud City and the forests of Endor.

I spent inordinate amounts of money on the Star Wars CCG and Role Playing materials (though the stories that came from those experiences I will treasure forever).

But I had never seen a Star Wars film on the big screen until the mid-90s "remastered" films. I was still relatively young at the time so my level of angst was minimal (don't worry, it grew quickly) but even then I was annoyed at the tinkering. I was expecting to see a higher quality big screen version of my favorite films. Instead I saw randomly inserted new creatures and ridiculous dance scenes.

Proof that NOBODY liked the tinkering is that when they finally released the films on DVD they were a package deal. To buy the original you gotta get this new shit too. I've never once watched those versions.

Then Phantom Menace is announced. I remember buying tickets to see one of the Analyze movies with Deniro because the new trailer was being shown on that movie specifically (talk about a ridiculous crossover of audiences) and when that music started up and that first scene appeared: chills.

My friends and I sat in line for 6+ hours opening night to watch that pile of garbage with 6 minutes of great Jedi on Sith action. Afterwards, sitting at the Dunkin Donuts we discussed how, like A New Hope this had a slow start but the next one...the next one will be great!

Those dreams died very quickly with Attack of the Clones (which had no attacks of clones or by clones).

I'm not even going to spend time on Revenge of the Sith.

Cast and Crew of SWEPVII Meeting to discuss the film
Courtesy of Disney & Lucasfilm

Things are different now. Lucas has sold his influence away. Disney has kept the key players from Lucasfilm in place to guide the ship and they went out and got Abrams who resuscitated the Star Trek universe with grace and a tip of the cap to all that had come before.

But still I proceed with cautious fear/jubilation. They're saying all the right things; separating themselves from Lucas' vision for this next trilogy and are centering the film on new characters with a nod to the original star warriors.

It's not just about Ep VII though. With Disney at the helm they are determined to get their 5Billion and then some out of their investment in the greatest science fiction saga in film, screen and page.

Spin off films are already in the works and the sky is the limit.

Over-saturation is a common concern I have heard coming from a lot of fans but if done well the myriad films have the ability to do in movie form what the books of the Expanded Universe have done for years: create a more well rounded and magical view of the Star Wars Universe.

New characters are good and important. When I originally head the original cast was returning but they weren't using anything from the EW canon and were in fact dissolving that canon to allow these movies to exist with the encumbrance I was frightened. Old Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie battling the empire seemed cliche and interminable.

But you add in fresh faces to alter the course and boom; magic restored.

I have a lot of hope left in me and I am thankful for the opportunity to still believe in the magic of Star Wars.  No longer will I utter the words, "I have dreamed a dream and now that dream is gone."  The dream has returned and with it comes lightsabers and wonderment. 

Below are some images from the The Force Awakens in Theaters December 18th

Courtesy of Disney & Lucasfilm

Courtesy of Disney & Lucasfilm

Courtesy of Disney & Lucasfilm

Courtesy of Disney & Lucasfilm

Courtesy of Disney & Lucasfilm

Star Wars The Force Awakens First Official Trailer

Back in November of last year Lucasfilm/Disney released the first teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens (SWVII) to rave reviews and mass speculation.  Who was this prominently featured storm trooper?  Why was that girl riding a Popsicle?  Wait, did that lightsaber have hilt blades?

Now the first official full-length trailer has been released and my first reaction is "JJ Abrams has restored all the faith that Lucas had, sadly, pissed away.  This film will be outstanding."

There isn't going to be any JarJar's in The Force Awakens.  It looks like the dark, gritty space-drama Ep II should have been.  

I don't want to go frame by frame and talk about the trailer.  Mostly because I think that's boring but also because if you want to do that there are plenty of other options out there.  Instead I want to hit on the high points, questions raised and speculate on what this all could mean.

From the beginning: we are once again on Tatooine (presumably - though there are other sand-planets in the Star Wars Universe, it seems most likely that they would return to their roots).  The opening scene shows a speeder in the background racing across the landscape with a downed X-Wing in the foreground and a crashed Imperial Class Star Destroyer half buried in the sand.  

Now, we all know that the story is meant to take place several decades after the end of Jedi - in keeping with actual time-space continuum logic to explain the main characters ages - and it seems evident that even though the Emperor and Vader fell at the battle of Endor the Empire still holds sway in the Universe.  It also makes sense that, if this is Tatooine we are seeing, that battles would have raged here.  Tatooine is a planet in the outer-rim section of space.  If the Empire, spread to the winds after Endor, would regroup in areas further from the Capital and harder to maintain control for the fledgling republic.  (hard to confirm Coruscant became the Republic's capital since all canon was vacated from reality last year - but for the sake of argument we will assume).

We then experience a voice over from Mark Hammel (as Luke) giving the same speech he said to Leia on Endor about the force being strong in his family.  Curiously it refers to his father in the present tense and not the past...foreshadowing???  Probably not, seems really REALLY stupid to "resurrect" Vader; can't see that happening.  Most likely just a choice in language with no specific purpose or value.  Part of this sequence shows what appears to be Luke handing a lightsaber to Leia.  In the books Leia was never able to achieve significant Jedi powers and handling a lightsaber, though not impossible even for a Jedi with limited powers, seems like an interesting choice for the direction of the film.

It's after the voice-over sequence that the trailer really takes off.  Lots of fast-cut scenes showing X-wings in formation flying low over a body of water, A dark Jedi wielding a lightsaber in battle.  Ranks of Storm Troopers on an ice planet standing before a raised stage with a leader that can't quite be made out clearly.  The tie-fighters present on the ice planet have white wings (instead of the traditional dark gray metal color) presumably to blend in better with the surroundings.  Space flight scenes.  A badass Storm Trooper in chrome armor.  And of course a scene of the Millennium Falcon flying through a crashed spaceship on Tatooine, presumably the same ship we see earlier in the clip, being chased by a TIE Fighter.  

The trailer ends on a scene showing Han Solo and Chewbacca on the deck of the Millennium Falcon in such a way as to lead the viewer to believe that this scene is reflective of the first time they've been on the ship in some time.  They are both brandishing weapons which leads one to wonder what they were expecting to find OR what they had to do to get on board in the first place.

The trailer is everything you'd expect it to be.  I imagine this feeling is similar to what people felt when seeing the first trailer for The Empire Strikes Back in theaters back in 1982.  The pure joy of anticipation is never stronger than at this moment.  

If you haven't seen it, or just want to watch it a few dozen more times, check it out below!

Tb

The Most Anticipated Movies of 2015

Courtesy of StarWars.com

When I first started developing this article I wanted to take the angle that 2015 was one of, if not the most, anticipated movie year ever.  But when I thought about what that meant I realized that…well duh, of course it is – with social media and the 24 hour a day news cycle everything is hyped to the nth degree at a near constant rate.  So, instead I took a look at the list of expected and potential blockbuster movies coming out in 2015 and wanted to A) compare that against a period in history and B) dig into what Hollywood has become.  I’ll start with the latter.

This year should prove to be spectacular with the myriad of comic book, sci-fi, action and adventure movies coming out.  But when you take a step back and look at the laundry list of films on the docket for 2015 you see a very specific trend: retread.  This is most assuredly nothing new for Hollywood – but this year seems particularly pervasive.  For example we have new: Jurassic Park, Friday the 13^th, Mad Max, Terminator, Fantastic Four and Star Wars movies coming out.  Now, don’t immediately mistake my comment of retread as all bad…Star Wars alone makes my slip into a mild excitement induced comma all by itself; but with some of these series (FF & Terminator – as of recent) that were failed attempts the last time(s) out it’s frustrating to see Hollywood fall back on such titles to fill an already jam-packed year with movies that will most likely fail utterly in the face of their competition. 

Looking at Friday the 13^th and Mad Max; the elder-statesmen of the bunch and their respective reboots have the potential to be grand gestures to their genre…but this is unlikely and again – where’s the originality?  I never much cared for the SAW movies, but at least they were trying to be different for their time.  These two films are trying to get tickets sold on name recognition alone and that is a bad formula.

Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Then we have Jurassic World and Star Wars; undoubtedly the best two films of this group and I even hesitated to put them in this category but facts are facts.  Jurassic World will be the 4^th installment of the series and this time the park is FINALLY OPEN!  Clearly with all the kinks worked out (at least enough to get the park up and running this movie will probably be pretty boring, right?  Just two and a half hours of smiling people hanging out with dinosaurs!).  Nope; apparently they went and bread some new super smart dinosaur that can like do calculus and your taxes while you wait…plus eat people.  The cast is outstanding and I wait with bated breath. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is pretty much the holy grail of retreads.  People have long anticipated the continuation of this classic saga.  But that anticipation was mostly riddled with fear that George Lucas would once again take a giant shit on our childhoods and we’d be forced to suffer through more trade embargo debates while watching whiny children sob about their intergalactic troubles.  Not much is known about the story of the seventh installment with only most of the cast known and a mere teaser trailer to go off of; and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  This movie SHOULD be shrouded in mystery; it SHOULD be something that when you walk into the theatre your eyes and ears are working at peak efficiency to soak in every morsel of what it’s about to partake of.

As retreads go 2015 has some definite possibilities for quality flicks and I sincerely wish them all the best at the box office.

Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

If you’re wondering why Spectre – the next James Bond movie isn’t in the retreads list it’s because this series (aside from the occasional hiatus for recasting) has been ongoing and would not fall into that category.

The other avenue that is popular in Hollywood these days is: stories that are for kids turned into movies for adults.  The Avengers movie is something that huge swaths of people will see, millions and millions – of which only a fraction will have ever read an Avengers comic.  Years ago this would have angered me intensely; like when Episode 1 of Star Wars came out and people all went to see it, but I was still the geek kid outcast for being a fan and reading the SW EU books…because that makes sense.  But now it’s exciting and I am hopeful that even a small percentage of them will become interested in the comics and keep that industry thriving.  Marvel is also doing another classic “let’s take a not-so-popular/totally unknown character and make a movie” bit with Ant-Man.  I don’t mean to come across annoyed at the direction the company is going, especially considering how much better a job they are doing than DC in that department overall, but they may as well have made a Moon Knight movie.  The only hope for this movie is that they make significant Avengers overtures throughout with the plan to be for him to join that next installment. 

Then there are the teen novels that are rolling out into theatres: Insurgent, Hunger Games, Paper Towns.  I’m super happy that teens are able to experience the books they enjoy in another medium and in the case of Paper Towns, a book I personally am a fan of, very happy for the author as well.  This explosion of the last few years was no doubt ushered in by the success of Harry Potter and we will have to see what direction this goes in the future.

In the annals of history 2015 may stand alone with so many top-flight movies on the horizon; but let’s take a look and see.  For consistency’s sake I decided to limit my spectrum to ten-year increments starting with 1985.

As years for movies go ’85 was pretty damn good.  It had a solid mixture of teen related films (sound familiar?) with The Breakfast Club, Better off Dead, the Goonies and Mask.  There was a splash of Sci-Fi with Back to the Future and Re-Animator (and to a much lesser extent Cocoon).  1985 also saw the release of the second Mad Max movie as well as The Color Purple.  By far the best comedy movie released was Fletch which helped solidify Chevy Chase in the hearts and minds of America’s youth.  And it saw the second-to-last Akira Kurosawa movie, Ran. 

Skipping ahead to 1995 we start to get into epic territory; here’s a breakdown: The Usual Suspects, Casino, Leaving Las Vegas, Braveheart, Toy Story, Apollo 13, Seven, Heat, 12 Monkeys, Kids, Mallrats, Dead Presidents, Friday, and many others.  Now, it’s easy to look at this list and say: wow, clearly 1995 was the greatest movie year ever!  But you may be looking at this with the eye of hindsight.  For example: the Usual Suspects wasn’t some highly anticipated blockbuster – this is pre-Xmen Singer and 1995 was Kevin Spacey’s leap onto the Hollywood stage – before that he’d done little in the way of big movies.  Leaving Las Vegas was a surprise drama hit and shocking winner of Academy Awards.  Toy Story was one of the first of its kind in the full-length animation stories from not pre-existing characters and no one knew if a non-Disney movie would be received.  Seven, Heat and 12 Monkeys are all kind of out there movies; and though in retrospect their casts look amazing – at the time the main stars (other than Heat) weren’t that well known.  Kids, Mallrats, Dead Presidents are all on the independent, not for everyone side of movies but have become cult classics. 

So that leaves us with Casino, Braveheart and Apollo 13.  These are the blockbusters of the year – these are the movies everyone was waiting for.  Gibson. Spielberg, De Niro.  Hanks.  This is where the real rivalry with 2015 lives.  At this point I’d still take Avengers and Star Wars over these three…but we’ll have to see how it all plays out.

And finally, 2005 where a more artistic turn in moviemaking appears with films such as: Brokeback Mountain, Good Night, and Good Luck, Capote, Munich, Broken Flowers and Thumbsucker.  But there were also blockbuster movies this year: King Kong, Batman Begins, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Sin City, V for Vendetta and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.  Amongst the “blockbuster’s” it was pretty hit or miss.  Batman Begins was a shockingly great movie – I say shockingly because of where the Batman franchise had been left previously would not have led anyone to believe it could be revived so amazingly.  Harry Potter continued that fantastic series and was expectedly very good.  V for Vendetta blasted (pun intended) onto the scene and continued to push Hugo Weaving into stardom.  King Kong, Sin City and Star Wars III were all disappointments; each would have been better off never having been made.

It’s fair to say that each of these periods in history have claims to fame and quality movies that were released.  In the end, though, it boils down to the confluence of quality that 2015 is bringing to the table.  It would be hard to argue that 2015 does not have a healthy lead – at this point – in expected quality movies and whereas 1995 could give it a serious run for its money in total great movies, we will have to wait and see what surprise films come out and make a big splash. 

For now, sit back and enjoy the year ahead.