I’d give my The Force Awakens review a 2.5 out of 5, and I wanted to give it more. After all the build-up, I knew what I’d be doing at Christmas, and I went in hoping this would be the one that got Star Wars right again. It was better than what came before it, but only very slightly. The whole sequence of the original three, then the early three and then the final three is a bit confusing for anyone, and I’d hoped this lot would clear it up. It’s a film I wanted to love, and the fact that I came out lukewarm is a bit of a letdown after all the buzz.
Thirty years later
The story starts thirty years after Return of the Jedi, with a new bad lot called the First Order hunting for Luke Skywalker, who’s vanished. The First Order is basically the Empire under a different name, with stormtroopers, big Star Destroyers and a mysterious Supreme Leader called Snoke. A Resistance pilot called Poe hides a map to Luke in his droid BB-8, which ends up with Rey, a scavenger on Jakku. She teams up with Finn, a stormtrooper who deserted after seeing a massacre, and they escape in the Millennium Falcon and run into Han Solo and Chewbacca. From there it’s chases and rescues and a big base that destroys planets, and it follows the first film closely, whether that’s a good thing or not.
It’s a lot like the original trilogy in shape. A droid carrying a secret, a desert planet, a bar full of aliens, a giant weapon and an attack on its one weakness, so you know where you are the whole time. I can see why they did it, and it makes for a smooth ride, but I kept noticing how many of the beats I’d seen before. It all felt a bit like they were playing it safe.
Jakku, the Falcon and Maz Kanata
The first act on Jakku is the part I enjoyed most. Rey lives alone in the wreck of a crashed Star Destroyer, scavenging parts and trading them for food, and there’s a good sense of a hard, lonely life that sets her up as someone to root for. When BB-8 comes into her life and the First Order closes in, the film kicks into gear, and the escape in the Millennium Falcon is a real highlight, with Rey flying it through the wreckage of old Imperial ships like she’s been doing it all her life. It’s fast and funny and it got a smile out of me. It was a good reminder of what Star Wars can do when it’s fun.
Then the group ends up at the castle of Maz Kanata, a tiny alien with huge glasses who runs a bar full of strange creatures, where Rey finds Luke’s old lightsaber in a basement and has a strange vision when she touches it. I could feel the film reaching for the old magic, and for a few moments it works. The scene in the bar, with the music and the mix of aliens, felt like the series I remembered, and the lightsaber is a nice moment. After that it all gets a bit heavy with explaining, and I lost some of my interest. From Maz’s castle the story splits. Kylo Ren and the First Order attack, Rey is taken, and the Resistance is called into action, with Han, Finn and Chewbacca going after her while Poe and the pilots prepare to hit the First Order’s new base. The base, called Starkiller, is built into a whole planet, and it fires on the heart of the Republic and wipes out a handful of worlds in a flash. It’s the Death Star again, only bigger, and the plan to blow it up is more or less the same plan as before. A small team goes in, brings down the shields, and the X-wings hit the one weak spot.
Along the way the film pays its respects to the older characters, with Leia, Han, Chewbacca and C-3PO all getting some time, and there’s a sense that these people have been through a lot since we last saw them. Han and Leia’s scene together, where they talk about their son, is the one place where I felt the weight of thirty years. It’s quiet and sad, and it’s the film at its best.
The new faces
Since the early three were pretty horrible, I did have hopes that this sequence would be better, and it was, very slightly. I think the new characters were the main reason, and getting rid of Jar Jar was a massive win all by itself. Rey and Finn are likeable, and Poe is good fun, and there’s a spark in the way they bounce off each other that the prequels never had. Seeing Han and Chewbacca back with the Falcon was a treat too. Legacy returns can work: Mad Max: Fury Road this year proved an old series can come back and feel new. Han is older and a bit tired, and he’s still the same smuggler underneath, and the moment he and Chewie step aboard the Falcon again made me smile.
I didn’t like Kylo Ren, though. He’s the masked villain who looks the part, but I couldn’t buy him as a threat, and every scene he was in left me cold. I had hopes that Finn and Rey would become Jedi or something, and that’s the story I wanted to see them go on and tell. When Kylo kills Han, his own father, on the bridge, it should have hit me hard, and it didn’t, and I put most of that on Kylo. Han’s death is meant to be the big emotional beat of the film, and I just wasn’t invested enough in the villain for it to land.
Poe Dameron, the Resistance pilot, is the other new face, and Oscar Isaac makes him an easy person to like. He’s the one who starts the whole chain of events by hiding the map in BB-8, and he gets captured by Kylo Ren early on, which sets up the rescue that brings everyone together. General Hux and the other First Order officers are the usual crowd of cold, uniformed bad guys, and Supreme Leader Snoke is a giant hologram who barks orders from a distance. Leia is there too, leading the Resistance as a General, and the scenes with her and Han are some of the nicest in the film, two old friends with a lot of history between them. It’s the sort of thing I’d like to have seen more of, and the film leaves it a bit thin.
The Disney dollars
The Disney dollars were obvious, however. There’s a polish and a size to it that tells you exactly how much money is behind it (the Age of Ultron problem this year, more stuff and somehow less film), and it borrows so much from the old films that it felt like a safe bet more than a new story. I’d have liked it to take a bigger risk. It wasn’t a bad evening out, and I’d see the next one, but I’m not rushing to buy a ticket to see this one again. The big new base, Starkiller, destroys a whole system of planets at the start of the climax, and you know the heroes are going to blow it up in the end. They do exactly that, with Han, Finn and Chewbacca going in to bring down the shields while the Resistance pilots fly the trench-run style attack.
Rey beating Kylo in the duel in the snow and finding Luke on that island at the end is a decent finish. It leaves me curious. But it doesn’t make up for how familiar the whole thing felt.
What I made of it
I wanted to like this more than I did. The characters are good, the new faces are a real improvement on what came before, and there’s a spark of the old adventure in the first half. But I kept coming back to the same two things: Kylo Ren, who never worked for me, and the feeling that I’d seen all of this before. A film that copies the first one this closely isn’t a bad film, but it isn’t the film I was hoping for either.
Do I want to see what happens next? Yes, I do. I’d like to find out if Finn and Rey turn out to be Jedi, and what Luke has to say for himself. That’s more than I could say about the last three films, and it counts for something. But right now it’s a 2.5, and it’s the Disney money that I notice most. Rating: 2.5 out of 5. Better than the prequels, but only just.
