Movie Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

There has been a lot of anticipation for this movie, and I completely understand why. Long time Star Wars fans have waited too long for the next episode of the movies, and now that this one is finally out, they won't have to wait much longer for another. It is also out of respect for the people who hate spoilers that I have delayed posting my review for a couple of weeks.

WARNING: this review may contain spoilers that you may or may not want to read. Do not read the next three paragraphs if you don't want spoilers about the beginning of the movie. But other than that, I hope you enjoy my review on Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

The movie starts with the iconic "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." then the Star Wars logo with the scrolling text move along the screen. It then goes to the planet Jakku, where Poe Dameron (played by Oscar Isaac) is getting a map to Luke Skywalker (played by Mark Hamill) from Lor San Tekka (played by Max von Sydow). Poe and his droid, BB-8, walk out of the hut only to see First Order ships attacking the village. A V-winged ship lands to set stormtroopers and Kylo Ren (played by Adam Driver) out of it, which then start destroying the town. Poe puts the map in BB-8 for safekeeping, then runs to his X-wing with the droid. After firing a shot at Kylo, who uses the force to stop it, the stormtroopers blow up his ship. Poe sends BB-8 off into the desert with the map, then Poe gets captured. The stormtroopers are then ordered to kill the townspeople, so they start shooting. However, one of the stormtroopers, FN-2187 (played by John Boyega) does not shoot at the people.

While BB-8 rolls through the desert, it sees a girl, Rey (played by Daisy Ridley) riding through on a sandspeeder. Rey is going to old wreckages of Star Destroyers for spare parts to trade for food at a junk dealer. BB-8 follows her around until it gets netted by someone. Rey sees this and lets it out of the net, and continues onto the village with BB-8. When Rey gets to the junk dealer to trade for food, the dealer offers 60 portions for BB-8, but Rey refuses and keeps the droid.

On the First Order ship, FN-2187 gets interrogated by Captain Phasma (played by Gwendoline Christie) about why he didn't shoot. Afterwards, FN-2187 goes to the cell that Poe is locked in and lets him out. FN-2187 and Poe steal a TIE fighter to escape, and Poe decides that FN-2187 is too hard to say fast, so he renames him Finn. However, while escaping, their ship got shot and crash lands on Jakku. Finn wakes up in his part of the wreckage, with Poe nowhere to be seen. He takes off the rest of his stormtrooper armor and starts searching for Poe. Finn eventually finds the other part of the ship, but with no Poe inside, just his jacket.

The movie really tied together with the other movies, but the scenes also went together very well. Though there is a resemblance to Episode IV, I found that (not trying to offend anyone with this) it had a little more of a plot in it than the other movies. Disney probably made the movie like this so that they could focus more on character development rather than plot. The new Characters they introduced to us were so well integrated into the story that, even though we were left with some questions, we did not feel cheated in knowing who they are. There were also some twists where, even though they follow the original story line, I did not see coming. However, I will say that there will be a lot of very sad people around the world, just from one scene (no spoilers). I commend J.J. Abrams for his brilliant re-imagining of this beloved franchise. I do not think they could have picked anyone better for this.

The acting was great. I have noticed that when actors come into a highly established franchise, they always seem to work much harder to really bring their characters to life. I thoroughly enjoyed watching new comers Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, and John Boyega bring life to new characters to love or hate. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher did not disappoint, and held their own to stay in the light of fan favorites. 

Overall, the acting was as expected and better, but the plot was too similar to Episode IV to give it a full 10. For these reasons I would rate this movie 9.5/10.

Though the movie took a while, my review should not have. The post would have been out sooner, but other things got in the way, and not just the people who worry about spoilers. And due to these complications, I am going to apologize and promise to work harder and not let this happen again. I hope you readers understand.