Star Wars: The Force Awakens (A Little) — My Two Republican Credits
I’m a Star Wars geek… so here’s my two cents after much thought.
Avast! Spoilers ahead!
I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens with my son a couple of weeks ago. I liked it. But some parts were amazing and some were kind of so-so. I wasn’t floored by it because as much as the prequels were flat, too expository and relied too much on CG, the new one felt a bit too derivative of the original. Meaning, it was like it was a remake of A New Hope instead of a continuation of Return of the Jedi. But it did make a boatload of money so who am I to argue with it? (I’m sure when the boatloads of cold hard cash started rolling in, J.J. Abrams turned to the nearest Disney exec and quoted Jaws: “We’re gonna to need a bigger boat.”I know I would have!)
Ultimately, The Force Awakens (are we shortening it to SW:TFA yet? Yes? No?) got right what the PT got wrong: The story was a rolicking adventure in space, the acting and dialogue were very good, the characters were believable and likable, the use of traditional effects made it less sterile than the prequels and it was genuinely funny at times. Yes, I LOL’ed. I just thought that it paid a little too much homage to the originals and didn’t show anything amazing — same Death Star-ish superweapon, same setup and payoff and almost the same settings except with some new names and some old names.
That said. I will probably see it at least once more in the theater and I have high hopes for Episode VIII.
I want to see where they go with the Finn, Kylo, Rey and Luke Skywalker stories — hopefully they don’t waste Han Solo’s death and the plotlines they did not resolve in this one and characters they haven’t fully developed yet like Brienne of Tarth.. er… Captain Phasma. One thing I will say is that Kylo is a much better bratty Jedi than the pale Hayden Christensen who played Anakin, his grandfather, though I see that whiny, brattiness runs through the Skywalker family lineage as much as the Force does. What a temper that guy has!
For the next movies, I want new things and new planets. That’s what made Star Wars great. It was a classic tale with really lovable characters thrown into the most absurd and mind-blowing settings and situations — a desert planet, a moon-sized weapon, a garbage compactor with an alien living in it, an ice planet, a cloud city, an asteroid field, a little hermit wizard who lives on a mystical jungle planet, a carbon freezing chamber, a giant monstrous mouth in the sand, a big gangster slug and an evil little emperor/wicked witch nemesis controlling everything with his dark magic who gets defeated by the love of a son for his father and vice-versa. And Ewoks. Ewoks helped too.
So, yeah. Will I see it again in the theater? Yes. Will I buy the DVD/Download? Yes. Will I sit through all three trilogies one day in one showing? Unfortunately, yes, I probably would/could/will. Will I browse the Disney store in the mall wishing I had a big showroom in my house to display all the action figures I would love to buy? Yes. TMI? Probably.
