Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

     It should be said up front: The Force Awakens is not going to be The Thing. It can’t be The Thing, because the original three Star Wars movies already were The Thing. Nothing can repeat what the original Star Wars movie (now known as Episode IV: A New Hope) was and what it did for both the art of cinema and for our cultural imagination. We simply cannot go back to a world without Star Wars in it (or even without the prequels in it – and some of us have tried) and experience it for the first time again. Now, with Star Wars references peppering everything from politics to sports, the movies bearing the name can only be regarded as part of a tradition. This is not a bad thing, of course (ask James Bond), but it needs to temper expectations of any new Star Wars films. Never again will they change the world. They might just be able, however, to provide (ahem) a new hope for some entertaining hours in a dark theater.

     There are thus two questions to be asked about The Force Awakens: is it a good movie, and is it good Star Wars? The much-maligned prequels faltered because they were mediocre on both counts. Stylistically, they exacerbated all the problems the original trilogy had in varying degrees: overreliance on spectacle, stilted dialogue, and a tendency to balance seriousness with silliness rather than genuine humor. Thematically, though they refocused the arc of the Star Wars tale on Anakin Skywalker in some interesting ways, they undercut the original mythology with pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and byzantine political plotting. The challenge facing The Force Awakens is avoiding such missteps while still maintaining some continuity with all that has gone before.

     So, first: Is it a good movie? Yes. The Force Awakens is as competently-made a piece of space opera as you could want. Like the trilogies before it, it is much less real “science fiction” (for that, may I suggest The Martian) than a Western/caper film/action flick gussied up and set in outer space. And this is as it should be, since Star Wars is what popularized this genre on our screens in the first place, just as Mr. Bond helped launch a thousand spy thrillers. All the elements are in place: exotic planetary locations, plucky heroes, ominously-costumed villains, spaceship dogfights that play fast and loose with physics, highly-technical macguffins everyone wants, and so on. There are thrills, and scares and laughs, and, yes, lightsabers. The Force Awakens shows that the Star Wars franchise still has the moxie, creativity, and budget to hang with, and outdo as needed, its genre progeny like Serenity and Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s a good time.

     The set-up is this: decades after the fall of the Galactic Empire, a kind of Republic has re-emerged, but complete peace has not been restored. The work of the Dark Side is still being carried out by a neo-Imperial army known as the First Order (similarity in name to the Third Reich being not at all coincidental). Led by the shadowy Supreme Leader Snoke (a motion-captured Andy Serkis) and mobilized by ruthless soldier General Hux (super-sneery Domhnall Gleeson) and Darth Vader acolyte Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, in a mask, of course), the Order aims to restore Imperial rule by any means necessary. Opposing them, with a nod from the new Republican government, is the stubborn Resistance (the name “Rebel Alliance” having been trademarked, one supposes) now headed by General (formerly Princess) Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and bolstered by the services of crack space pilots such as Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac, adding another piece to a very, very good year of roles). It is Dameron, by the way, who owns the supercute rolling droid you’ve already seen in all the merchandise. Both sides would love to know the whereabouts of the galaxy’s last remaining Jedi, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who has gone into hiding after the failure of his attempt to train new Jedi. A clue to Luke’s location becomes the macguffin in question, especially when, in the usual fashion, it ends up in the hands of a third party: desert-planet scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley), whose mundane existence is interrupted, in short order, by the arrival of both Dameron’s droid and disaffected stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega). How, why, and where these various players converge I will not say, in the interest of minimizing spoilers – but you already know from the trailers that Rey and Finn get an assist or two from old spacehands Han Solo (Harrison Ford, grimmer and grayer but still cocky) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew). Chewie, it should be noted, seems not to have aged a day.

     As events play out, The Force Awakens offers a fine space adventure. Yes, there are special effects galore, but they don’t overwhelm the action. I could generally tell who was who and what was what and where we were, even during frenetic battle sequences. Director J. J. Abrams and his crew also elected to go for a nice mix of practical live effects and CGI, which adds some extra reality to the look of things, and also provides a nice connection to the lower-fi world of the original Star Wars trilogy. The world itself, er, the worlds themselves look great as well, from Rey’s desert planet Jakku (everyone loves a desert planet, from Mad Max to the aforementioned Martian) to the icy surface of the First Order’s sinister base (everyone loves a fight in the ice, too, from Inception to Spectre) to what seems to be a Buddhist temple/pirate bar (yes, please). I also appreciated that the movie has time for little fun flourishes of world-building, like the way Rey sleds down a massive sand dune or Kylo Ren’s ability to stop a blaster bolt in midair. Even better are the times that The Force Awakens decides to be a real movie, and employ real, effective visual storytelling. Notice, for example, the way we’re able to track Finn through his first (and a markedly unfair) fight, even before he removes his helmet, or the moment in which the camera pulls back to reveal two distinct groups of people having very different reactions to some outcomes of the final battle. These touches help to balance the clichés and genre in-jokes, and give the movie a sentimental character that is also in line with its better predecessors.

     Which brings up the second question: Is The Force Awakens good Star Wars? Well, mostly. As I said, my hopes for it were similar to my hopes for a good Bond film: it would hit the proper beats, avoid fatuousness or jarring missteps, and do something fun with a world and characters I know and love. This it does, though with varying levels of success. Most happily from my point of view, the film returns to a more strictly spiritual understanding of the Force. This may just reflect my own bias in favor of pseudo-Daoist talk over pseudo-genetics talk, but I was quite pleased that no one mentioned “midichlorians.” The movie deals better with the Force than a number of the previous outings, both in how it dramatizes the unseen power in action, and in how it lets the Force be a matter of connection, a way for people to know things they might otherwise not about others or themselves. This, too, increases the sense of The Force Awakens as a throwback to the 1970s and 1980s films rather than the prequels. Complete missteps are few. There is no Jar-Jar-Binksian clowning, for example. Humor is allowed to come from situations and wry dialogue, much of it delivered by Ford (the dialogue is overall less stilted than ever before, which is good, though it sometimes achieves this with modernish colloquialisms, which sound ever-so-slightly odd in a galaxy far, far away). Finn and Rey have a wonderful exchange or two about who exactly is helping whom, and there is a scene which shows that perhaps Stormtroopers have finally learned how to handle the tempers of their Dark-Side-embracing superiors. One of the things that The Force Awakens has in common with the first trilogy is an overall sense of fun. The events in the film are important in the film, but it doesn’t take itself as seriously as the prequels seemed to, in their rush to fill in gaps and Set Everything Up. Good Star Wars is good entertainment, and this installment certainly has that going for it.

[Warning: if you want to be completely unspoiled, here’s a good place to stop, knowing that yours truly feels generally favorably about the film, is cautiously optimistic about future installments, and thinks that, if you have an interest in space opera overall or Star Wars in particular, it’s worth a few hours of your time. What follows brings up some plot points in a general way.]

     Still here? OK, then let’s get to the hitting the proper beats question. Does it ever. Almost, in fact to a fault. The Force Awakens so leans into the “reboot” feel of a new creative team tackling an old franchise that it pretty much steals plot points from Episodes IV-VI. There is a droid with key information. There is a planet-wrecking superweapon with a dangerous design issue. There is a space creature bar. There are emotional losses and perilous escapes. There is a fraught father-son relationship and a key confrontation between that father and son. On a space-station catwalk, no less. If the movie has a weakness, it’s that it verges on being an homage to the point of retread. And Abrams’s exuberant style sometimes makes this worse (“Look! Look! It’s a cool escape in the Millennium Falcon, just like in that earlier movie! Eh? Eh?!”) But, of course, if you’re going to steal, you may as well steal from the best (as Return of the Jedi did from A New Hope). The nod to what has come before is clear, as is the traditional aspect – these sorts of things are what happens in the Star Wars universe – and in its better moments, the familiarity helps create a variations-on-a-theme feeling, as though we really are starting in a place we know, but in a different key, and with different characters. Plus, in a series whose spiritual base (when it remembers it has one) is in Eastern traditions which emphasize cyclical time, repetition of events may not be exactly a vice.

     The redeeming factor is character. Early on, it’s hard to really care about anyone in all the running about, but the more time I spent with the new characters, the more I liked them. By the finale, I was genuinely moved and thrilled by their endgames. The repetition of elements makes it tempting to play matching games – who’s the new Han? Who’s the new Leia? And so on. But this is to be avoided. After all, the movie still has the old Han, Leia, and Luke kicking around. One place The Force Awakens succeeds is in making the newcomers interesting. They look like new versions of old characters, but slowly emerge in their own right. I liked the way Rey obviously figures things out as she goes along, and is both ingénue and adventurer. I liked the way Poe Dameron was a Top Gun-style adrenaline junkie who seems into his job less for political conviction than for the joy of flying (Isaac and Boyega make a great buddy-pair, too). I liked the way that Finn humanized the Stormtrooper trope, and was equally charming and out of his depth. There’s also something very interesting about Kylo Ren, whose tall, imposing presence and Sith-like powers are undercut by what I can only describe as a streak of immaturity. He starts as a clear and self-conscious Vader knockoff, but turns into something more complex. Handled the right way, he could become someone like Wilson Fisk from Netflix’s “Daredevil” show. There seems to be real interest in making these people real people, with imperfections and weird quirks. The supporting players are also good, if sometimes underused (as in the case of Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma, or the weird brief appearance of Max von Sydow) with Serkis and Gleeson probably giving the performances closest to Star Wars cliché – though I was glad to see General Hux be less cowed by The Force than most of his uniformed predecessors. Also of note is the increased diversity of the cast in terms of ethnicity and gender. The obligatory pans through crowds of alien critters is nice, but it’s good to see the real breadth of humanity represented as well, not to mention an uptick in the overall girl-power quotient from General Leia to Rey to female First Order officers and Resistance pilots.

     It’s very hard, of course, to know where any of this will go. This feels like a set-up chapter, which it is. The filmmakers have given themselves decent material to work with. The key to making a new crop of successful Star Wars movies will be to take the seeds of newness here and push them forward. We’ve had the fun little nods to the past this go ‘round, so hopefully those will diminish (I dearly love C-3PO and R2-D2, but I’m not sure we still need them around, for example). Abrams and company have shown they can stay true to the letter, now they need to remain true to the spirit of the Star Wars world. This they have done in part here, largely by reasserting the series’ emphasis on adventure and fun. The original films resonated, I believe, because they were primarily Saturday-morning-serial adventure pieces elevated by the mythic touches George Lucas was savvy (or lucky) enough to include. The massive success of the franchise has made it tempting to see them the other way around, as mythology occasionally dragged down by genre-movie elements. That is unfair, and leads to the self-seriousness that crept into the prequels. The Force Awakens is a nice reminder that Star Wars was always first and foremost a thrilling escape to another time and another galaxy. More than that at times, sure – but that at the least. Like many a Jedi apprentice, this movie has a lot of ability, but also a lot of room for future refining. May the Force be with it…er, them…er, us…well, you get the idea…

P. S. – I got great joy from noting that, in what may be the film’s most meta move, Rey is seen to be the owner of a cloth doll dressed like a New Hope-era fighter pilot – thus making this the first Star Wars movie to feature, in the movie itself, a Star Wars toy. My inner kid is grinning.