"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Review (100th Post!)

The Force Awakens is A New Hope for 2015.

In a year that's brought us Creed and Jurassic World, two sequels to popular franchises that balance well the need to reinvent and the need to maintain the spirit of its predecessors, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens comes out on top as not only a worthy successor to Return of the Jedi or one of the best entries in the franchise (in my mind, second only to Empire), but as a well-crafted, thoughtful, intelligent, and exhilarating story, that along with recent movies Ex Machina and The Martian, bring about a rejuvenation for science fiction.

Set 30 years after Jedi, the galaxy is threatened by the First Order, a fascist regime led by the ominous Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) and his menacing apprentice, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) leads the Resistance, searching for her missing brother, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), to gather his help. Leia sends her best pilot, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), along with his droid, BB-8, to the planet Jakku to retrieve a potential map to Luke's wherabouts. The First Order attacks Poe's hideout; he and BB-8 get separated, but not before Poe gives BB-8 the map. The droid comes across an ex-Stormtrooper named Finn (John Boyega) and a scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley); and together, they work to bring BB-8 back to the Resistance, find Luke, and stop the First Order before they dismantle the Republic, piece by piece.

So we have a courier droid with valuable information teaming up with a group of misfits to stop a corrupt empire led by a ruler cloaked in shadow and his masked, Force-using apprentice. Sound familiar? I can't ignore the Internet's backlash on how similar the plot is to A New Hope, but I'm the child of the school of Ebert. It's not about if it's been done, but how well it's done. For The Force Awakens, God is in the details.

There IS an intragalactic battle going on - they don't call it Star Wars and spend the first hour debating trade negotiations - but in a move for the wiser, director J.J. Abrams focuses on the internal conflict rather than the external, placing the characters at the forefront. Bolstered by a multitude of smaller scenes, with solid performances from Boyega, Isaac, and Driver, and a star-making performance from Ridley, The Force Awakens achieves a rare kind of intimacy seen in epics of this scale. Through these people's interactions, their motivations, fears, and conflicts weave together as the bulk of the drama. Don't mistake the movie for a character dissection the likes of a Christopher Nolan piece - Abrams is making a family film, after all - but through these actors, these simple characters shine through; Finn, Rey, Poe, and Kylo Ren are destines to join Han, Leia, and Luke as household names.

Speaking of household names, Daisy Ridley is brilliant, easily holding her own in scenes with Harrison Ford. Rey runs the emotional gamut, from a staff-wielding bad-ass to an emotionally insecure young woman, due to childhood abandonment from her parents. She's engaging in every one of her scenes, serving up the film's best laughs, lines, fights, and heart.

Adam Driver's Kylo Ren is another performance of note, an example of the character overshadowing the performer. This is no fault of Driver's; from the first trailer, Kylo intimidated and excited fans, old and new, curious to see how he stacks up to Vader. Kylo is more explosive, responding to any failure with Force torture or a lightsaber to the face. His mastery of the Force is nigh-unbelievable, performing feats that literally cause me to blurt out "Woah!" Add a psychotic obsession with following Darth Vader's legacy, and you've got one hell of a villain, played with charm, menace, and insanity by Driver.

The original trilogy (Episodes IV-VI) featured X-wing and lightsaber battles, but some scenes  pale in comparison (*cough cough* Obi-Wan & Darth Vader) to modern, briskly-paced action. On the flipside, the prequel trilogy featured more action, but there was so much CGI littered throughout, I and many audience members felt we were watching a video game we couldn't ever play. Abrams finds the happiest of mediums, blending practical effects (just look at the sparks when the Stormtroopers fire) with new techniques and cinematography. In one scene, The First Order ambushes our heroes in a forest-like planet (not Endor), and the camera seamlessly weaves back and forth from the battle on the ground to the skies, giving a fantastic vantage point to all the action. Gone is the shaky cam, gone are the flashy fights. Everything is shot smoothly, but the choreography is muscular, dirty; these remind me more of scenes from this year's Macbeth, and it feels right. Soldiers and warriors don't do backflips and crazy twirls, is all I'm saying.

The movie begins with text that reads: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...", followed by a burst of brass, watching the title "Star Wars" appear and zoom into a black starry background (...spoiler alert). As I sat in the smack-dab middle of the Thursday night 10:30 showing in the biggest auditorium of my theater, I, like many of my costumed, T-shirt repping, Chewbacca-impersonating friends, waited, on bated breath, to see that title card, to feel the punch of the fanfare rip out of the speakers and send chills up my spine. There was always going to be a level of fan service in The Force Awakens that A New Hope would never have; this isn't just a blockbuster, this is a cross-generational cultural event. So, whenever an old character is revealed, with all the bells and heart-tugging whistles; or when a character references something from Episode IV, Abrams and crew do part of their job, by sending chills of nostalgia and love for these staples of many people's childhoods through their bones.

However, for all the good of nostalgia, the fan service is laden throughout, and ultimately makes this weaker. Sometimes the execution is so obvious, almost a fourth-wall-breaking wink to the audience, it pulls me out of the story. This disconnect isn't felt all the time; when done right (typically, that word is synonymous with 'subtly'), it gets a bigger, and often, more jubilatory reaction from the crowd. It replaces a tease with pleasant surprise, and it's easier to bring myself back to the scene in question. This issue doesn't harm the movie in any major way; I agree it's a nitpick. However, it's in no way the most persnickety of the nitpicks you'll find on the Internet (god help you if you decide to browse a forum in the next few months), and it's something that could have been handled a tad smoother.

All right, let's bring it back full circle. Before The Force Awakens, I would rank the movies in the following order, from best to worst - 5, 4, 6, 3, 1, 2 (Attack of the Clones is an ungodly bore. The Phantom Menace offends me, but at least I have something to say about it). So, I can only assume you, like the many others who've asked me over the weekend follow this statement with, "How do you rank this one?" Well, I, like others I've talked to, rank it just behind The Empire Strikes Back. I know there are some that say this is the best; don't think me a curmudgeon.

I mentioned at the beginning I think this film is comparable to A New Hope. With further reflection, I find it better. I think the acting and direction are miles ahead of the original. I'm enthralled by the action, and there are shots composed so beautifully, it demands to be seen in a theater, if only so you can feel yourself sinking into the screen. I think the storytelling goes down different unique, thought-provoking angles that could be great to explore even further, expand on the mythology. Why do I not call this the best? Because it's only the beginning.

A good trilogy doesn't jam all of its story into the first installment. Flash back to first grade, kids - a story has a beginning, middle, and end. With Episode VIII coming in 2017, new director Rian Johnson (Looper) and his team will be taking these characters further, pushing the action, pushing the story in new directions, on a path that seems like an honest-to-god mystery. The landscape is still unpredictable, and I'm excited. Reader, meet my inner optimist - the only reason The Force Awakens isn't the best Star Wars movie is because the best is only yet to come.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.