"Star Wars:The Force Awakens" review

"Star Wars:The Force Awakens" review

Despite the glamour of the superb 3D battle scenes, digital mastery of vision and sound, and the fast full-packed action,  J.J Abrams and Disney may have failed in living up to what really mattered in the original Star Wars saga. 

Before I go any further, let me point out that I think J.J. Abrams is a gifted director, he has proved this over and over; but I have this feeling that, as opposed to the heartbreak he seemed to have given many Star Trek fans in the re-launch of the franchise, he was more concentrated on pleasing the Star Wars fans here, that he almost -almost- missed the point… "Star trek" and “Star Wars" are two very different worlds, and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens” -at least for me- was a superficial, temporarily-fan-pleasing disappointment.

We all know the oldest trick in the book about pleasing the customers, but then again, there's this wisdom that you can never please everyone. There will always be criticism around works of this size. 

Let me start from where I think the general point was missed. Star Wars was always about the simple idea of the eternal war between good and evil; aka the light and the dark side of the force that binds all things; in classic Star Wars, the temptation of the dark side was all about thinking you're special; that you have special powers that people don't appreciate, but that can bend the cosmos to your will and restore order. That, until you face up to your "Hybris", and a younger, better apprentice takes your place. It was never about feeling guilty and weak because you can't live up to a greater-than-life image of a "Dark Lord". Greater dark lords who had been so strong in the force were often killed by an apprentice who was seeking more... The dark side characters in ST:TFA were shallow and sketchy in this respect. Yes, they used anger and emotion as proper dark side characters are supposed to do, but then again, anger, hate, and emotions were only roads to the darkside, as Yoda got tired of pointing out over decades, I did not see something fundamental and original in where these tools were leading Kylo Ren and Snoke.

We all knew Vader wasn’t going to be in it. Well, the world has to go on despite his central role in the cosmos (and the saga). But, what will be left of the essence of the saga without him (despite the presence of the Skywalker line)? , he who has become one of the ultimately best portrayed villains in the history of Cinema, and a central point in the whole saga. Did this dilemma enhance or weaken the final creative work?

How they dealt with this dilemma was the issue: The way in which Vader’s “vacuum” was filled just did not work for me…I know it is very difficult to fit into Darth Vader’s shoes-or mask, for that matter- but Adam Driver, as Kylo Ren, wasn’t very convincing. Not only did he lack , as Christensen before him,  the imposing physique of David Prowse, and the vocal outstanding performance by James Earl Jones (that has made the character legendary worldwide), but he was also shallow, superficial, and without purpose. (Christensen's Anakin was shallow, but at least he had purpose) The character (not just the actor) suffered that long haunting shadow that the writers themselves were battling with, and their solutions did not work for me...

I guess the mistake was in attempting to create a “parallel Vader” (just as in the case with the parallel Star Trek Characters, but that’s another story!) Hayden Christensen was struggling to fill in the shoes of Vader, but at least this was cleverly handled by the writers, through concentrating on a side of the dual-natured Vader that we have never seen before; AKA : Anakin Skywalker. Christensen, tripping all the way, managed at least to get us to believe him, despite his shallow performance, since  it was his own character to create; his own faults to make; he didn’t have figures larger than life to be compared against. This, unfortunately, did not happen here. This is one instance in which being true to the original characters did not work well, unfortunately. Poor Adam has to create his own villain from now on, if he wants to make it. There was a hint at that, when he killed his father, which took him to a turn from Vader, but we need to wait and see how this turns out to be. He may yet surprise us with an original well-played, convincing villain-with a purpose.

Vader aside, let’s get back to the general picture; the theme, and the story line.

What was new in “The Force Awakens”? Almost  NOTHING, really. J.J Abrams relied almost always on borrowing heavily from the original trilogy, to please the fans, that his work ended up a clone of previous episodes in the saga, only with better visual and sound effects:

• The death star is now bigger and more powerful, but then what? It’s destroyed in the same old way (less convincingly this time)

•  The rebels are still the rebels with the same X-wing fighters doing the same maneuvers, shooting at the death star (or whatever it gets called) the same old way. Good to keep to the old way, but give us something new!

• The storm troopers evolved from being clones to being kidnapped kids with some hope of identity recognition. That’s a good idea that was poorly handled, and hastily done. Hope remains things could improve in future episodes, if this new theme could be explored further.

• The Empire is now the “First order” but then, there’s the cloning of set-ups, performance (to the little detail of dialect!), and characters that kept trying very hard to be Admiral Piett or  Emperor Palpatine…

•  The same “battle in orbit/explosives+suspense on the ground, used in the same old manner.

I’m sure I can get more of these, but I’d rather leave it here, and get into the familiar, and new faces:

The familiar faces:

•        Harrison Ford was a welcome sight as Han Solo, so was Carrie Fischer as Princes Lea. But if anyone thought getting the cakes off the sides of her head was an improvement, I’d say they missed the point. Fischer did not bring anything new, and the only good scene with Ford was the one in which his son kills him which was intense and clever, but could have been better. Fischer could have been given something better to do, after Solo’s death, but the timeline was tight, it seems. Too much stuff to fit into 120 minutes of the action-packed work, it seems.

•           Chewbacca was great. Peter Mayhew is to be commended.

•           C-3PO didn’t bring anything new, though he could have.

•          Mark Hamill was a welcome sight as well. Perhaps it was wise of Abrams to save him for the cliff-hanger. The fact that he did not get much screen time may have saved him a lot of criticism. I hope he can contribute to fixing the mistakes of this episode, later on, and pull the storyline back into the fundamental core themes of Star Wars: Family bonds, the superiority of nature over technology, the mythical aspect of the hero, and the two-sided face of life the balance/imbalance of of which marks existence...these core values that made Star Wars. 

The new faces:

• Kyloo Ren having been discussed, let's take Andy Serkis’ Supreme leader Snoke. This new villain was struggling, more or less, with the vacuum of his predecessor Palpatine, failing the test. Changing his size, and putting this aura around him did not serve much. 

•      Daisy Ridley did very well as Ray that I can even forgive the writers the hasty way in which they introduced her to the force. But the manner in which she beat a trained dark side knight, and skillfully handled an unusual weapon (the light saber) should have been thought, written and played better.  Things I hope the producers will work on in future episodes.

•       John Boyega was fun, but still shallow. A lot of work was essential on his transformation from a defected-by-fear-and-guilt storm trooper to a hero-rebel. It was SHALLOW. Then there’s this issue of his use of the light Saber, that can either be explored and built upon in future episode, or left as a mistake as it seems so far.

•  Oscar Isaac was great as Poe Dameron. He could be developed further,Though. I guess his escape from the aircraft blast was ill-done. How did “Finn” get the jacket anyways?

•  I guess some of the new stars were the new droid BB-8, and Lupita Nyong’o’s character Maz Katana. There was a new design idea here,  somehow new developed characters.

•   Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma could have made a new cornerstone as a female villain, but she was unfortunately written as a cardboard soldier that did not leave much impact. Hope that can be improved in future episodes. (That if they did not kill her off)

I just have this feeling that the 10s and 20s of this century are severely lacking in the fields of arts, literature, and music. Is it the digital revolution, I wonder? Or just a mark of the times? I’ve been watching the faces of my niece and nephew (both born into these digital times), who came with me for the premiere,  to look for signs of recognition, emotion, or appreciation that I thought I did not have (being born in different times), but I did not find much; One was asleep during the first 20 minutes, and the other after 40 minutes or so that he lived through with the help of “the force”, I think… My generation, at the tender age of these two, did not sleep during a Star Wars movie, without the sound effects, perfect wide scenes, and digital mastery, mind you. It must be, then, that it was cleverer in our times, closer to touching the inner human concerns, and deeper, truer, and better portrayed. Otherwise, the new works would not have had to clone the older ones…

This said, I'll sign off with an odd observation: Along with the Lukas Arts package, it seems George Lucas gave Disney an irony: Remember why the Clone Wars started, and how? It was because the public could not decide; The senate that represented the republic fell under the greed of the Commerce trade (The giant corporations that run the business maybe?) turns out in the end that both were -unknowingly- controlled by the dark side, and the Jedi didn't even know it!