“Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens” Directed by J.J. Abrams

By on March 29, 2016

Director:

J.J. Abrams (“Star Trek”, “Super 8”, “Star Trek into Darkness”)

Main Cast:

John Boyega (“Attack the Block”)

Daisy Ridley (This is the first movie I’ve seen her in)

Adam Driver (“Lincoln”, “Inside Llewyn Davis”, “While We’re Young”)

Oscar Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis”, “Ex Machina”, “A Most Violent Year”)

Domhnall Gleeson (“True Grit”, “Ex Machina”, “Brooklyn”)

Harrison Ford (“American Grafitti”, “Blade Runner”, and his only Oscar nomination for “Witness”)

Max Von Sydow (An amazing body of work going back to 1949.  He has very little screen time here but his presence is a gift in any film where he appears.)

Running Time:  135 Minutes (11 of which are the end credits)

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the force awakens“The Force Awakens” was easily the most anticipated release of 2015 and, for many, the most anticipated release since 2005’s “Star Wars:  Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.”  Based on its Rotten Tomatoes (92%) and IMDB (8.3, #99 on the Top 250 list) ratings, the consensus is that it was worth the wait.   And, finally, A “Star Wars” episode number is the same as the film’s chronological release number.

Before I go into the other aspects of the film, I have to point out its bombardment of elements, situations and devices lifted from the original trilogy, especially the first film:

-The Empire (which essentially means “supreme authority’) is now The First Order.   Does this mean there are going to be prequels explaining why the Empire didn’t come back as The Empire?

-Ditto The Rebellion becoming The Resistance.

-An Imperial Cruiser is in the opening shot.

-In an opening scene, storm troopers maraud and shoot everyone in sight in clearing the way for their leader; a tall, imposing figure dressed in black armor, cape and a mask that synthesizes his voice.

max von sydow

Max Von Sydow as Lor San Tekka in “The Force Awakens”

-A legendary European actor who was the face of a legendary European director (Alec Guiness/David Lean and Max Von Sydow/Ingmar Bergman) appears early in the film as a wise old mentor figure dressed in brown monk’s garb.  That character is a significant part of the desperate effort to get vital information (stolen Death Star plans/map to Luke Skywalker) to the good guys while desperately keeping it from the bad guys.

alec guiness

Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi

– We see a hero character insert the device containing the vital information into a cute little robot.

– The cute little robot arrives on the planet of a young hero and they befriend each other.

-The imposing evil figure comments to the older figure about how old the older character has become before he cuts him down with his light sabre.

-Like with Luke’s aunt and uncle, the innocent villagers in the opening scene are mercilessly slaughtered to show how ruthless the villains are.

-A young hero is essentially slave labor for a slovenly and abusive junk peddler on a desert planet.  This plot point is borrowed from “The Phantom Menace”, whose chance to be a decent film was destroyed every time Jake Lloyd (and any of the kids) appeared on screen.

star wars double sunset force awakens sunset-A shot of a single sun setting early in the film mirrors the “Star Wars” universe-defining double-sunset that was so awe-inspiring in the first film.  (Even more so for me because I got to the drive-in late to see “Star Wars” the first time and it was the scene I saw as I was pulling into my spot.  In retrospect, it’s a wonder I didn’t plow into the space in front of mine.)

-A hero is taken hostage by the evil villain in black and tortured for information they don’t give up and is freed by another good guy in the guise of a storm trooper, who explains that he’s there to help the imprisoned good guy.

-The best pilot in the galaxy/Resistance (nobody’s ever #3 or #5 or #20) teams with a young hero, starting with them facing in opposite directions in their two-man space ship and blowing up bad guy fighters, celebrating exuberantly (and like current-day Americans) as they do it.

-The heroes are threatened by creatures similar to the leech-like mynocks from “Empire” but bigger and wilder, as though mynocks were bred with tasmanian devils (the Warner Brothers cartoon character, not the actual animal).  One even attaches itself to the front window of the vessel of the good guys like the mynocks did.

– A seemingly impartial citizen rats out the young heroes to storm troopers in a public place.

-The young heroes, having stolen the Millennium Falcon without realizing it, come across Han Solo (who says he “used to be” Han Solo) and they enlist his help in their quest to find Luke Skywalker the same way Luke enlisted the help of an apprehensive Obi-Wan Kenobi who, at the time, was similarly retired from fighting the bad guys.  He even “used to be” Obi-Wan by changing his name to Ben.

-The villain in black has an ironic father-son relationship with one of the good guys and their big confrontation is on a bridge over a seemingly bottomless chasm.  (Hints:  1-Han and Leia, now a General, ­have a son and 2- Evil skips a generation.)

death star starkiller base-A much bigger version of the Death Star named “Starkiller Base” (both right but not to scale) is an ultimate weapon that blows up multiple planets at once.  Two guesses on its fate.

-The older hero issues a warning to the younger ones before they enter a bar full of criminals in order to meet someone that can help them in their cause.  (Curiously, the music playing in the bar is reggae.)

-The villain in black confers in the dark with his boss, who appears as a huge Wizard of Oz-like hologram.

– A young hero hallucinates they are in a forest facing off with the villain in black.

– For a backdrop that spans a galaxy, the same people manage to bump into each other a lot.

Enough of that.  I could have gone on but you get the point.

star warsThe screenplay was written by Director J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan (“The Empire Strikes Back”) and Michael Arndt, who left his job as Matthew Broderick’s assistant to write the Oscar-winning screenplay for “Little Miss Sunshine.”  In pointing out the similarities “The Force Awakens” has with its predecessors, it seems like the writers wrote a list of story elements from the original film that the audience would like most then patched them together.  They clearly figured the quality of movie-making would more than compensate for the lack of original ideas.  At the same time, I’m sure they wanted to avoid anything that would remind the audience of the justifiably much-maligned prequels.  I know fans were clamoring for the series to return to its roots and their voices were clearly heard, and to an extreme.  Like I said with “Jurassic World”, if the predecessors had never been made, “The Force Awakens” would have been an unquestionably great film.

There is an obvious time gap between “Return of the Jedi” and “The Force Awakens”, which leads me to believe the story line holes will be filled in by one of the next sequels.

millennium falconThe saving grace of “The Force Awakens” is the quality of the film’s storytelling and production, and its Oscar nominations (Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects) are well-deserved.  I’m not even going to itemize visuals (or sounds) that stood out because the film is technically seamless and impressive, if not precedent-setting.  Watching the film made me even more impressed with the original “Star Wars”, especially considering the way they invented the effects as they went along and did so on a comparatively limited budget.  After the sterile and cold CGI-bloated visuals of the prequels, it was a satisfying relief to see actual locations (and some beautiful topography), natural light, actual people filling background scenes, and actual fires, smoke and explosions.

boyega attackI found the casting of John Boyega (British-born son of immigrant Nigerian parents) in the lead role of storm trooper-turned good Finn odd, considering I’m sure it was his performance in Joe Cornish’s 2011 alien-invasion “Attack the Block” (left) that got him the role.  The characters are nothing alike.  Where Finn is fumbling and bumbling (and, like Oscar Isaac’s character Poe Dameron, much too 21st century American sounding), his “Attack the Block” Moses is a strong, focused, and unflappable leader of a gang of thugs who not only fight off alien invaders but other gangsters as well.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t remember back to the complaints of the original “Star Wars” not having any black actors and thought this was a way of the film makers still trying to over-compensate 38 years later.  I did like how the storm troopers were humanized in Finn’s explanation that most of them were taken from their parents.  When the cloning of storm troopers ended is another question that may be answered later.

isaac driver

Isaac and Driver with Justin Timberlake in “Inside Llewyn Davis”

Each time I see Guatamala-born Oscar Isaac, I’m more impressed with his work in the Coen Brothers “Inside Llewyn Davis”, where both his singing and acting are convincing.  Again, after the stilted, cold and humorless dialogue of the prequels, I can understand why the writers would try to incorporate a Han Solo-esque looseness to some of the new lead characters.  I do, however, think Poe Dameron’s dialogue in the initial confrontation with Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren (the two shared scenes in “Inside Llewyn Davis”) in the opening scenes of the film is too cutesy to be believable and I found it annoying and either an ominous or appropriate way to set the movie’s tone.  It’s easy to be a smart-ass in the face of death when you know the script says you’ll live at the end.  I still laughed at his “So, who talks first?  You talk first?  I talk first?” though, which is indicative of the conflict I faced throughout the movie.  I also chuckled at Boyega’s “Droid, please!” in asking BB-8 for help in making up a story to tell Rey (Daisy Ridley).

gleeson isaac vikander

Gleeson and Isaac with Alicia Vikander In “Ex Machina”

Driver has the highest billing after “Star Wars” originals Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher and is never overstated in a role I’m sure everyone involved put a lot of thought into.  Domhnall Gleeson ˗ who keeps adding great performances in wide-ranging roles to his resume and who co-starred with Isaac in “Ex-Machina” ˗ is intense, evil and fearsome as General Hux, the polar opposite of his thoughtful, humble, romantic character in “Brooklyn.”  Daisy Ridley as Rey (Latin/Spanish for “king”), the film’s heroine, gives it her all in a role for which she has to be counting her blessings every day.  I’m not sure what stood out more, her feistiness or her Britishness.  Andy Serkis gives his usual solid motion-capture cloaked-in-CGI performance as the hologram of Supreme Leader Snoke, the film’s version of Darth Sidius/Emperor Palpadine.  Oscar winner (Best Supporting for “12 Years a Slave”) Lupita Nyong’o, as pirate-turned-tavern-owner Maz Kanata, is equally hidden by CGI and I honestly have no idea how to gauge her actual performance.  Physically, her character is reminiscent of Yoda.  I liked the inclusion of Ken Leung, who played the “No problem, just rush hour” evil guy in “Rush Hour” and the guy who buddied up to Junior Soprano in the psych ward on The Sopranos, only to beat the hell out of him.

ford fisher force

Fisher and Ford in “The Force Awakens”

Of the original cast members, Ford (accompanied by Peter Mayhew reprising his role as Chewbacca) has the largest and most integral role and his presence is more than welcome as he gets to play loose without getting goofy like he did in “Jedi.”  Fisher ˗ more famous now for her personal and drug problems than for her acting ˗ is in and out of the movie just enough to remind you she’s in it.  (SPOILER ALERT) We don’t see Hamill until the film’s final scene, where he says nothing.  Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker as C3-PO and R2-D2 don’t appear until late in the film and, like the other four, are a welcome and nostalgic sight.

boyega ridley bb8

Ridley, Boyega and BB-8

With my summary analysis out of the way and fighting to ignore all the self-plagiarizing as I watched it, I enjoyed “The Force Awakens” because I like each new reason to be immersed in the “Star Wars” universe and, again, the film was very well made.  (The video games, animated series and everything else hold no value for me.)  The real test for me is my desire to see it multiple times.  None of the sequels (nor 99.999% of all movies) can surpass “Star Wars” (I am not one of the many people that think “The Empire Strikes Back” was the better movie.), which I’ve seen at least one hundred times.  I bought the original trilogy on full-screen VHS, widescreen VHS, laserdisc and DVD but I don’t own any other “Star Wars” memorabilia and never attended a sci-fi convention or Comic-Con, so my allegiance has its limits.

star wars vhsI don’t want to put the pressure to meet the “Star Wars” high bar on the new films, although comparisons are inherently unavoidable, especially since we’re forced to do it with this movie because of the similarities.  Still, while I enjoyed “The Force Awakens” in the theatre, it might be the first “Star Wars” movie I don’t buy on DVD.  It’s all dependent upon how sweaty my palms get as the DVD’s release date (April 5) approaches.

See?  I’m still conflicted.  Asking me if I like “The Force Awakens” is like asking me if I liked living in New York City.  It’s not a yes-or-no question.

DPW

March 29, 2016

If you want to stream a perfect copy of the film now, go to the yify.tv web site.  Here’s the specific link to “The Force Awakens.”  Click only on the right arrow superimposed over the Yify Player logo in the middle of the black screen.  If a pop-up appears, get rid of it as you would any browser window.  Avoid clicking on any buttons that will download anything.

http://yify.tv/watch-star-wars-episode-vii-the-force-awakens-online-free-yify/

About Dan Walker

As part of an Air Force family, I went to elementary school in Great Falls, MT, junior high in Cheyenne, WY and high school and college in the San Francisco Bay Area, graduating from San Francisco State University with a degree in business. I was fortunate to have worked for great companies in Silicon Valley (Oracle Corp) and Hollywood (Miramax Films). I also lived and worked (primarily in financial services, which has no great companies) for eight years in Manhattan, New York City. I now reside in New York's beautiful Hudson Valley.

One comment on ““Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens” Directed by J.J. Abrams

  1. Jeremy on said:

    Great review. You brought up very good points of the similarities from the original that I did not catch.

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