Star Wars: The Force Awakens Review

This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I review whatever movies I see.

I have seen this film once before. I watched it before going to see The Last Jedi at my local theater. It took me a long time to get sucked in, but at a crucial character moment involving Han Solo and Kylo Ren (if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about), I realized why these characters were so special and absolutely adored the intense lightsaber climax. However, rewatching it after seeing the original trilogy, I am inclined to believe that as a film on its own merit, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has pretty good acting and characters overall, fantastic production design and top-notch special effects, making it a very entertaining and enjoyable movie. As a Star Wars film, however, its story really doesn't match up to anything supplied in the previous trilogy.

There are many more glaring character moments in this movie than in any films in the original trilogy, most notably why Ray is suddenly able to possess the Force with no training at all whereas it took Luke Skywalker two movies to start learning to master it and three to actually learn it and use it wisely. Another glaring moment is that while Daisy Ridley does a good job overall, she seems to have the same exact expression in certain emotional scenes, including during a conversation she has with Finn in a cantina bar where she never changes her facial expression at all despite going through multiple emotions as a character. Also, I'm gonna be honest, I didn't like the character of Poe. He's certainly not terrible, and the chemistry between him and Finn is fantastic, but, I mean... he's a really good pilot and... that's it. What else are we supposed to like about him as a character? There's no true depth given to him and it's never explained how he made it out of a particularly terrifying and dangerous situation. It's just glossed over completely. Also, Finn is a Stormtrooper who snaps out of his programming because of one death on his first battle (this happens early in the movie, so that isn't a spoiler). Um... excuse me? He's a Stormtrooper!

Other than that, though, it is satisfying to see Han Solo and Chewie back again. Their chemistry is as strong as ever, and it's clear that whoever wrote this movie truly understood the characters of Han, Chewie, C-3PO, R2-D2, and Leia because they feel just as fresh now as they did in the original trilogy. Kylo Ren is, in my opinion, a really interesting villain. I like how when his mask is on, he airs confidence completely, while when his mask is off, he seems to hesitate a little bit more about the things he's doing. Adam Driver is fantastic as the character, and I think he serves as a very good cinematic presence. I'll be completely honest, good music that comes from a movie makes even the worst movies of all time worth their existence in my eyes because I love some great music inspired by or written for a film. In my opinion, John Williams' score in this movie is some of the best of the four Star Wars movies that I have seen over the past few days (I'm probably going to watch The Last Jedi again tomorrow and we'll see how well that holds up, both in music and in story).

Overall, if this movie was taken separately from the Star Wars trilogy, it would truly be a fantastic movie with great music, special effects, acting and characters throughout. However, as a continuation of the Star Wars franchise, the new characters don't feel quite as fleshed out as Luke, Leia, and Han (even though I do legitimately love Finn as a character), the story sometimes seemingly breaks the continuity of the original trilogy, and the situation in this film doesn't feel as urgent as any of the original trilogy. I recommend this movie if you haven't seen it and you like Star Wars, but it's not quite as strong to me as the original trilogy (although you gotta admit, the scene where Ray and Finn fly the Millennium Falcon is a truly fantastic action sequence.

Letter Grade: B+