Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I finally watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was certainly a movie with actors in it, huh? Look I'm going to spoil the crap out of this movie so if you haven't seen it then I guess don't read this.

I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, though I'm not a detractor either. I do love the world, a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy, a bit medieval and a bit futuristic. My first experience with Star Wars was probably Shadows of the Empire on the N64, and I was obsessed with that game. The soundtrack especially captured my imagination, and flying an X-wing or whatever the ship on Hoth was called, was really excellent.

I went back and watched the original trilogy with my dad and enjoyed them thoroughly, even knowing all the spoilers. They're pretty solid movies, right? Big ships, big explosions, big emotions. A slightly esoteric world with a very easily digestible plot. Perfect for kids to eat up with just enough depth to keep adults watching. And Light Sabers are just...really awesome.

The prequel trilogy was pretty much garbage to me, but I wasn't that excited for them in the first place. As stand alone movies, they are very much weird, messy, heavy things that don't really flow well or make a whole lot of sense. I did love the pod racers and I played the Pod Racer N64 game pretty heavily at one of my friend's house. Honestly the whole thing didn't impact me much, but I was definitely over my Star Wars thing at that point.

So The Force Awakens gets announced, generates a huge amount of hype, everyone's saying this will be a return to form. I'm thinking, what form? A big flashy movie with an easy-to-digest plot? I've always thought the most interesting things about Star Wars have been the side projects and weird fan creations, not the movies themselves. But still, I got a little excited.

It's telling that even in a short essay about this movie, I feel the need to describe my history with the franchise. This is very much in line with what The Force Awakens was trying to do: make a movie that stands on its own, but pleases people who are familiar with the world and characters. And it does that! It's fine! It's one of those movies that if I saw with no context, I probably would not give a second thought to. I would be confused about some plot points but mostly just write it off as "another action movie."

But it does have context! Lots of it! The original trilogy was about a rag-tag group of underdogs fighting against a largely established oppressive government. It was about a select group of magical people who controlled the destiny of the universe, for better or worse. It was about a laser blasters that looked like crossbows, and technologically advanced swords that could reflect bullets.

I felt the momentum of the original trilogy affecting The Force Awakens a lot, but...it didn't really make sense. The Force Awakens feels almost like a remake of A New Hope, but it isn't brave enough to disconnect itself from all the history and baggage that comes along with being a Star Wars Movie. This creates some weird situations. The heroes are a rag-tag group of underdogs, but they're actually sponsored by the established government. They're fighting against what would amount to a group of terrorists in the modern world, but they're essentially terrorists themselves. It's a mess! And it's not even discussed in the movie, except by the bad guys! Very strange.

And why are they calling themselves the Rebellion, except for historical purposes? What are they rebelling against?

And then there was the characterization of the returning characters, particularly Han and Leia. They were very charming, and I really liked their playful dialogue in particular. But again this aspect was dragged under by the baggage of being an Important Sequel. Their discussion about their son going to the dark side was about as emotional as a conversation about where to go for lunch. I didn't buy it at all. If they were new characters, then there would be no need for all this "what happened between movies" plot revealing dialogue.

I feel like a lot of this is informed by wanting to be completely unlike the prequel trilogy. Where the prequels are tackling the downfall of a ruling government, The Force Awakens is about underdogs fighting space Nazis. Where good and evil is a bit murky in the prequels, everyone is clearly on one side or the other in this movie. Where the prequels had about 6 million Jedis with their own Light sabers, there are exactly three Jedis and two Light sabers in this movie. Where the prequels had lots of dialogue about the plot, the new movie tries to jam a bunch of plot dialogue into as few lines as possible.

Look, what I'm saying here is that the movie should have picked one or the other. Be an interesting sequel to the originals AND the prequels. Tackle the idea of what the Empire would look like when it's weak. Show how the Republic would handle that now that they're in charge. Let us see how the characters we love have changed.

OR be a remake (or totally unrelated movie) and let us just live in the Star Wars universe with some fun, interesting characters that have no baggage. Fun dialogue, eye catching action, familiar ideas with new twists. Light and airy or heavy and serious, but no baggage please.

But trying to shoot right down the middle means that the movie is just...fine? Not bad, but not amazing. It doesn't have enough new ideas to be an amazing movie in its own right, but it doesn't take the old ideas to any interesting places either.

Also, is there any better indication that this is a by-the-numbers sequel than the whole "It's like the Death Star about 100x bigger!!" thing?