Am I the only one who things Kylo Ren looks badass?
Amidst all the holiday hoopla, I found some time to go see Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Monday. I went to a 2:30 p.m. showing, got there 45 minutes early, and still found myself at the end of a very long line. There were some stragglers who came in behind us, but it was a jam-packed auditorium after another 15 minutes. For some reason, there were a couple drunk guys next to me. They were entertaining, but being drunk by 1:45 p.m. on a Monday takes a special kind of dedication.
Hit the jump (only if you’re okay with SPOILERS). I have avoided all written reviews and discussion of the movie so I wouldn’t spoil it for myself, so I apologize if some of this material has been discussed ad nauseum by now.
First, I want to talk about the casting. Even from the initial previews, I was not fond of John Boyega (Finn) as a main protagonist. He overacts and looks clumsy running all over the place. He might as well have kept on the clunky Stormtrooper uniform for as awkward as he looked running at times. It was like casting a Wolf of Wall Street-era Jonah Hill as an action hero. And if this story were starting in 2015, Carrie Fisher (Leia) would not be cast as a general in the Resistance; she looked frail and weatherworn despite her obvious plastic surgeries, and she canted to her right, perhaps from a problematic hip or knee. Those were my two biggest qualms with the cast.
Surprisingly, I was okay with Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), whom I had previously known from Girls and late-night talk shows. He’s a genuine weirdo on Girls, but the former Marine inhabits a whole new persona when he’s on late night or here as Kylo Ren. I was very impressed with how he changes forms, and the physicality of his role suits him well. His acting during the Han Solo death scene was superb. I also really enjoyed Daisy Ridley (Rey), who outpaced Boyega with her athleticism and grace. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees her as a next-generation Keira Knightley.
As for the plot, I have to say I was disappointed. Obviously, it was a rehash of Star Wars with a modified Death Star. Instead of destroying one planet (Alderaan) in the original, this one destroyed five celestial bodies to show off its power. Then it took an aerial attack – along with help from the inside – to destroy the new Death Star. The movie also featured a son (Kylo Ren) killing his father (Han Solo) on a walkway, which was an awful lot like what Luke Skywalker did to Darth Vader. Add in the similarities between Anakin Skywalker and Rey (both work with junk for cruel, overbearing employers; both know mechanics inside and out), another foray for Han Solo into a Cantina-like scene, and some other nods to the prequels, and I kind of felt like we had been there and done that. The icing on the cheesy cake was when Rey found Luke, his deliberate and laborious removal of his hood showcased why maybe Mark Hamill didn’t get many acting jobs after the first three movies.
It was a good movie. It was fun. But I was disappointed in the writing and the acting. I generally like director J.J. Abrams, and he breathed some life into a somewhat stale Star Trek franchise, I think. I had high expectations for this movie, and when you have high expectations, you are generally disappointed. Even trying to temper my expectations, though, I thought Abrams could have done better.
Some final questions:
- Where did Rey get the ability to use The Force? Is she Luke’s daughter? Is she Leia’s uncle’s cousin’s nephew’s granddaughter?
- How the hell did Rey magically harness the power of The Force by just thinking about it for a few seconds, muttering a few words, and reaching her hand out for a lightsaber when it took Luke all kinds of time and a trip to Dagoba? Lots of time spent training he did.
- Are lightsabers that easy to use that Finn and Rey can pick them up and fend off a trained Jedi who has presumably spent hours and hours honing his craft?
- Are we supposed to believe that a guy who can stop a laser beam from a Blaster in mid-air cannot easily beat up a failed Stormtrooper who worked primarily in the sanitation department?
- Who is this Supreme Leader Snoke guy?
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Agree 100%.
I am 51 so Star Wars is a special memory. When it came out it was huge and the phenomena was amazing.
I don’t go to many movies anymore because it is a little expensive and most movies are remakes of themes from when I was young. I liked the first few comic book movies, but enough already.
However, I was excited for this one. Made the mistake of watching IV, V and VI the week before. I thought that would really get me in the mood but it made the storyline similarities between IV and VI so much more obvious. They get secret plans to destroy a deathstar like weapon, attack with an undermanned force and hit the bullseye. Don’t you think the bad guys would protect their only weakness with a little more force after getting screwed by Luke the first time?
Oh well. I still liked the movie and will see the next one.
On a different note, if you have not seen Creed, go. It is really well done. I went in expecting little and really enjoyed the movie. Once again they use the same theme, but they added so many elements to it and I have to say Sly is a far better actor than he gets credit for. Really liked this one.
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I agree with the comment on comic book movies, as well as comics themselves. You can only inspect the “This guy wants to rule/destroy the world” theme so many times before it becomes somewhat stale.
I want to go see “Creed” but mainly because I like Michael B. Jordan. I’m also a sucker for seeing guys (and girls) transform themselves physically, like Jordan did for this role, like Hugh Jackman does for Wolverine, like Christian Bale did for “The Machinist,” etc.
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Just to pile on a bit…..
Carrie Fisher has obviously not aged well, but the script does her no favors. In the original trilogy, she has a ton of spunk. You could believe that THAT Leia goes on to become a general, but not that THIS Leia is one.
Many reviews have commented on the laziness of the script. When Lucas used the “destroy-the-death-star” meme in “Return of the Jedi”, I thought it was once too many. And now, they’ve done it a third time. Sooner or later, can’t they think up another threat? And why does the Empire (or First Order) keep building gigantic weapons that always conveniently have that one flaw that a rebel bomber can exploit? You’d think they’d stop building ’em that way.
And yeah, it does seem that Rey learns the Force too quickly: in the original trilogy, Luke at least had some training before he faced Darth Vader the first time (and lost). I assume that Rey will turn out to be Luke’s daughter, although other possibilities have been suggested. She’s now already (practically) defeated Ren, so what do they do the next time they meet? Finn ought to have no chance whatsoever against Kylo Ren, but instead puts up a pretty good fight before succumbing.
Having said that, the film is well paced, and tugs at the heartstrings in all the right places. It just helps if you don’t realize that it’s practically a beat-for-beat repetition of the earlier films.
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Piling on some more… I agree, pretty much exactly, with the review and comments so far.
I was smiling at all the parts, as a reflex basically, that touched my nostalgia — “Ooh, look, there’s a crashed Imperial Star Destroyer!”, “And there’s the Falcon!”, “…and, hey…it’s Han Solo and Chewy!”, “Wow, look at those X-Wings” etc. The intro battle scene, with the human stormtrooper was exciting and had a good twist. I also liked the scavenging part.
But about the point when they got to the (stand-in) for the Cantina, I was a bit restless. When is something new going to happen? And then, they unleashed the freaking StarKiller (aka Death Star). What a major bummer — hadn’t we already been through this, twice? And they tried to get cute with Harrison Ford/Han Solo acknowledging that “these things blow up” but that doesn’t excuse it. For the rest of the movie, I was just watching it from a remove, as the (newish) cast went through the motions of (again) finding a small weakness and (again) blowing it up. Even Han’s death — you could see that coming from a mile away, as it was just a mix of the Obi-Wan/Vader scene from IV with the Luke/Vader scene from V.
And I specifically want to mention Leia, like oakapple did — while plenty of people are pointing out the major “borrowing” the new movie does, not enough is being made of Leia. No, not how she looked (everyone gets old; I don’t care), but her role, or lack thereof. She had no life, no strength, it seemed like she had been tranquilized. If she was suppoed to be sad, it was not good acting/directing. How is everyone in the Skywalker family (Anakin, Luke, Kylo Ren, Rey) has major fire, energy (not to mention major Force skills), and Leia just shuffles around? Hell, her son kills her lover/soulmate/his father at the end, and there’s no emotional payoff — just more slightly sad faces and lethargy.
I loved the set design, the effects, and thought the acting was, overall, quite good (a huge improvement from the wooden prequels). And it was great to see my old favorites in 2015 movie technology. But man, what a letdown — Star Wars, even the prequels always had a lot of new things (light sabers! AT-ATs! Cloud cities!). This one was a remake masquerading as a next chapter.
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Yeah, the prequels did have some poor acting. I’m not entirely sure how that happened, since Natalie Portman (a big culprit) is normally a good actress.
Also, thanks for finally signing up for the new site, RobPollard!
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After the horrible prequells, I set my expectations very low, so I guess that helped me be pleasantly surprised instead of disappointed.
It didn’t bother me much that Rey picked up on the force quickly. As Snoke (who will turn out to be Darth Plageius, the Sith master who trained the emperor) said, there was an awakening in the force, so maybe the force itself had something to do with it. And Luke had not been to degobah yet when he was on Hoth stuck in the ice cave, yet was able to tune into the force and pull his light saber out of the snow.
Also, having had some training in sword play, Finn did look like a guy who knew how to use a saber, in terms of defensive posture and attack technique. It’s not hard to believe a storm trooper who had been trained as a killer since childhood might have had all sorts of martial arts training and know how to handle a sword. Plus, Kylo Ren had just been shot by Chewbacca after cementing his turn to the dark side via patricide. When he shouted traitor at Finn, I assumed he was drawing the battle with Finn out to toy with him a bit and vent some rage. He was also not fully a Sith yet.
Apart from Alec Guinness and Harrison Ford, the original Star Wars didn’t exactly have good acting either. The biggest disappointment to me was Harrison Ford’s performance. He looked half senile, half mailing it in, which made it a lot easier to accept him being killed off.
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I thought Harrison Ford did okay. Truthfully, the guy is in his early 70’s and has no real business running around as an intergalactic hero. I didn’t expect much from him, and I got about what I expected. I’m also not sure at what point he broke his ankle, so perhaps some of his stiffness was due to recovering from the broken ankle at 73 years old (or however old he is exactly). He had more of a reason to be gimpy than Carrie Fisher, AFAIK.
I’m not expert on Stormtroopers, but Finn was just recently in his first battle and his main job was sanitation. You also rarely see Stormtroopers involved with hand-to-hand combat, because they’re usually firing Blasters or operating heavy firepower. Maybe there’s some information in the Expanded Universe about them being trained in martial arts, but I don’t really see why he would have learned to use a saber/sword at any point. I imagine if you handed a sword to an average Marine or infantryman, he would have no idea what to do with it in a battle. (I realize we’re talking about a galaxy far, far away and not the U.S. military, but I’m just speaking practically.)
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Went totally PC which turned me off, won’t watch another one ever.
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