This essay on Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens is filled with spoilers. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, STOP HERE and come back once you have!

Foreword: My review is not entirely positive about this movie and Star Wars in general. If you don’t want to read anything negative about your beloved saga, you don’t have to keep going and please don’t post death threats in the comments! If you stick with me, remember that no movie is perfect, and THAT’S OK.

Here you will not find any J.J. Abrams bashing as I feel he did his best job in years and many of the problems with TFA come from the process of bringing this new Star Wars movie to life and cannot be blamed on a particular individual.

Like any sequel to a deeply loved movie, Episode VII is born from the combination of two competing requirements: trying to please hardcode fans that are familiar with its universe and traumatized by the prequels, while serving as a gateway to the Star Wars universe for people not familiar with it yet. In 2015, it will most likely be the younger generation that did not experience the prequels in theaters, and somehow managed to not watch the Clone Wars or Rebels TV series.

Side Note on merchandising.

There is actually a hidden third constraint. The good thing about movies that are set in an entirely different universe is that they don’t feature any product placement on screen: If you’ve rolled your eyes while seeing a close up on James Bond’s wrist to see an Omega watch for the thousandth time or for the Pepsi commercial at the end of World War Z, there’s nothing like this here.

However, it does not mean that Star Wars does not try to sell you anything: the entire movie can be seen as a product placement for the merchandising (action figures and toys) associated with it. Right from the start, it had been something that’s been taken into account by its makers, sometimes to the detriment of the story.

That’s why from one movie to the next the same characters always have a slightly different look. In TFA, C3PO features a red arm and cracks a joke about Han not recognizing him (which is funny) but we know it’s to sell us a new action figure. Besides, the Clone Wars miniseries that aired on Cartoon Network in 2003 includes a very similar joke. Another instance of that is when they make such a big deal about Chewbacca’s weapon.

What Star Wars means to me.

As you can probably tell by now, I love the Star Wars universe. I’ve grown up with the original trilogy and watched it countless times on VHS as a child.

I could easily relate to Luke’s thirst for adventure at the beginning of A New Hope. The Force was an amazing concept making everything possible. I’ve religiously listened to Yoda’s words of wisdom of not being driven by emotions, and tried to avoid anger and fear as they lead to the dark side! The epic battles, Lightsabers, the mythological aspect; all was to love in this universe.

I have a deep emotional bond with the original saga that goes way beyond the movies (the books from the Expanded Universe, video games, everything was Star Wars, YAY!), and no other movie going experience will ever have the same effect, so there is no point in asking for that.

But as the new generation discovers this universe, they can be moved by most recent Star Wars iterations as well (yes, even the prequels), as even with their many flaws, they are more easily accessible than the 1977 version. In this sense TFA is made mostly for them, not for us.

The big financial interests at stake –especially for the first installment of the new series which is supposed to keep options as open as possible for the later ones– harms every attempt at telling a compelling new story in a familiar universe, and rather gives the same story in the same universe, throwing elements of nostalgia in the process to keep the fans interested. Which leads me to my next point as we can’t talk about TFA without talking about A New Hope.

A (New) New Hope.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: A New Hope is not a good movie by 2015 standards. It’s an amazing piece of innovative cinema from 1977, turned into pop-culture that is dearly loved by millions. But for today’s audience, it’s a loosely acted retake with dated special effects of something they’ve seen better versions of. Yes, I use the word retake and I stand by it, as most of the younger generation has only seen Star Wars AFTER they saw other movies that copy ideas from it (but that’s OK, because everything is a remix, and Star Wars was already a retake/mashup of countless number of movies that preceded it, from Kurosawa to Kubrick), and when the copies end up better than the original, then the original feels like the copy.

Besides, filmmaking did not stop innovating for 30 years, and so when you release a new Star Wars movie today, it does not only have to compete with the original trilogy and the prequels, but with every single other movie that came out, which is freaking difficult, and increasingly harder over time.

Now let’s talk specifically about TFA. Many things have been said about it already, and I’m going to quickly mention them and link articles that tackle these subjects so I can focus on what I have not heard so far:

Yes, half of TFA is a retake, attempting to fix A New Hope, (also featuring parts of Empire and Return).

Yes, some characters are not developed enough, largely because the movie spends too much time on getting the older cast back. And don’t get me wrong on this, I loved every scene with Han Solo, he was needed to pass the torch on to the new characters and it was great to see him again, I just wished it was more subtle.

Read more about this here.

Big chunks of the plot don’t really have a logical explanation other than being needed to advance the story (Finn’s deflection as a stormtrooper, Poe’s disappearance and later reintroduction, Han’s sudden appearance out of nowhere).

The Good, the bad, the unexpected.

The Good

From the images that leaked during the early stages of production to the last trailer before it was released, this movie made a promise to go back to the roots of Star Wars: more practical effects and more respect towards the base material of the first trilogy. The prequels were highly criticized for various choices that felt off: Yoda twirling a lightsaber at the expense of contradicting everything the character stands for, Jar Jar doing silly things, child or robotic acting, overuse of CGI (even if the movie still features a fair amount of CGI characters that were not that necessary). You won’t find any of that here.

What you will find is compelling 3-dimensional characters that you can’t wait to discover more about. The new cast (Rey, Finn, Poe and Kylo Ren) are spot on (just the right amount of fame so that their real-life persona disappears in favor of the character).

The acting is impeccable, shot beautifully and the new John Williams score is nothing less than amazing (and actually has lots of things to say about the story). The opening scene is probably the best beginning of any Star Wars movie (but it gets a little weird when they manage to steal a Tie Fighter that somehow has an air supply, can fit two people and is equipped with an hyperdrive).

Kylo Ren is a good example of thematic resonance: he looks like Darth Vader at first but turns out to be a very different character. This whole idea that even when you embrace the Dark Side you can still be haunted by the Light adds a very satisfying symmetry to the Star Wars mythology.

The Bad

While Finn’s defection is an interesting idea, there’s no explanation for it that makes sense other than it being needed to advance the story. Some will say that they might provide an explanation for this in later movies, and maybe they will, but it’s not very satisfying and I’m not against keeping certain explanations for later or for never (yes, I’m talking to you, midi-chlorians). But in that instance, showing him having doubts over a longer period of time before he decides to run would have made it more believable.

In the same vein, Han and Chewbacca’s appearance out of nowhere just at the right time was a little hard to accept, but he’s Han Solo so that’s cool!

We don’t need another Death Star (or Star Killer, or whatever). I was far more interested in the story involving Luke looking for the first Jedi temple. But I guess it’ll be developed further in the next one.

We don’t need more manichean nazi-like empire-like-but-not-quite threat, more big emperor-like-hologram master figure, or literal father-son one-turned bad relationship once again. Lucas said « Star Wars is like poetry, it rhymes », but the good thing about poetry is that it’s not literal: repetition of themes is not the same thing as literal repetition of entire sections of the plot from previous movies. The former is a good way to make the story resonate, the later is lazy filmmaking and insulting to the audience.

The universe depicted in this movie feels small. We only see a few places, traveling between them is instantaneous. The prequels did many things wrong, but to their credit the universe in them felt huge.

The perception of time is skewed: 30 years passed and some characters do not seem to have evolved as much as they should have (Han and Leia, especially). We don’t know when Luke tried to start a new Jedi Academy, we don’t know when his attempts were destroyed by the knights of Ren and how long he’s been missing for. I’m not expecting exact dates here, but at least for it to FEEL long. Problem is that it is not in the movie, Luke could have gone missing for a few months prior to the beginning of the story and it does not make his disappearance as powerful of a driver as it could have been.

The Unexpected

I don’t mean « unexpected » like when something suddenly happens (which can be good as long as it does not come out of the blue and has been properly set up), but in the sense that the filmmakers introduced an interesting idea that had unexpected side effects. We see a stormtrooper die in Finn’s arms. Then he decides shooting innocent people and burning down villages is not for him and he escapes, blasting his old mates in the process! I’m not sure it was expected but it works! You feel conflicted about stormtroopers dying (as some of them could also be having doubts), which adds a bittersweet element to every fight scene between the rebellion and the new order. In previous episodes we could not care less when a stormtrooper dies.

Reasons to hope

Smaller stand alone movies with smaller financial stakes will probably grant more liberties to its makers, allowing for the bold decisions needed to make a movie that does not feel like a copy.

Star Wars became part of the pop-culture a long time age. No matter what you will see next, it will have some of Star Wars in it (Guardians of the Galaxy is a good example of that). At some point, we might get a copy that is better than the original, and delivers what the 1977 Star Wars did for its audience at the time: an independent and unexpected piece of innovative cinema; something that Disney and its stakeholders will never be able to do.