And the movie’s big twist, clearly intended to be a moment of Shakespearean grandeur, is handled clumsily: Instead of allowing a significant figure to have his grand moment, Abrams cuts to other characters expressing shock and dismay, as if he didn’t trust the audience to know what to feel. There’s the expected climactic battle between X-wing starfighters and TIE fighters, which is mildly exciting and nothing more-the fact that it’s punctuated with dumb dialogue like “General! Their shields are down!” “Prepare to fire!” and even the classic, “It would take a miracle to save us now,” surely doesn’t help. But as the story moves forward, Abrams becomes more mired in the task of keeping the plot mechanics in gear. The early scenes have a relaxed, assured pace. and Lena Horne.Īnd yet The Force Awakens adds up to something less than the sum of its parts. Abrams also introduces a delightful minor character, wise old barkeep Maz Kanata (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o)-she’s a CGI creation who looks like the love child of E.T.
And the reappearance of Han Solo’s freighter ship, the Millennium Falcon, is majestic to behold: It has the look of a classic automobile that’s fallen on hard times, slightly rusty and with a fender or a piece of chrome missing here or there, but somehow keeping all its dignity intact. Everything looks a little dusty and dirty, including BB-8, whose white-and-orange chassis is so smudged you could almost write “wash me” on its surface with your finger-it’s a marvelous touch. Chewbacca hasn’t aged a bit Han, on the other hand, looks like he’s been ’round the galaxy a few hundred times, but damned if he doesn’t wear it well.įor a while, watching The Force Awakens, it’s enjoyable enough to sink into the film’s relatively low-tech production design. But the wry, grizzled soul of the movie is Han Solo (Harrison Ford), who returns with his furry sidekick Chewbacca. The new characters folded into the mix include Finn (John Boyega), a renegade Stormtrooper who becomes an accidental hero, and stalwart Resistance fighter pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). Luckily, the Resistance is ready to fight back: Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is now a general her brother, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), the last Jedi and a key player in the struggle, has gone missing, and she’s desperate to find him. The First Order hopes to destroy… everything. Darth Vader disciple Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is one of the chief baddies, answering to Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), a giant, scary, noseless dude who sits placidly in an oversized chair like a dark-lord version of the Lincoln Monument. The fascist First Order has risen from the remains of the old Empire. The story takes place 30 years after Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Anyone coming to the Star Wars universe cold will be able to follow the story-the script was written by Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt (based on characters created by George Lucas), and they’re more interested in clarity than exclusivity. He’s taken care to do certain things right: The plot is relatively unencumbered by complicated mythology. At that point, Abrams makes us believe anything could happen-it’s the best kind of movie feeling.īut somewhere along the way, Abrams begins delivering everything we expect, as opposed to those nebulous wonders we didn’t know we wanted. Early in the movie, when she befriends BB-8 (another orphan of sorts), it’s a meeting of kindred spirits. Rey’s loneliness and her self-sufficiency are intertwined.
And Abrams introduces a note of glorious melancholy in the character of Rey (newcomer Daisy Ridley, charismatic in a no-nonsense way), a teenage scavenger marooned on a sandy planet, longing to find her way back to the family from whom she’s been separated. A roly-poly cueball with a surprisingly expressive half-dome for a head-and a vocabulary of squeaks and squiggles that are more eloquent than mere words-BB-8 is both modernist and old-fashioned at once, a marvelous creation that could have sprung from the imagination of Jules Verne. But why settle for adequacy? For the first 40 minutes or so, The Force Awakens feels like something special and fresh: For one thing, Abrams and his team of designers and technicians introduce a new star, a droid named BB-8. Abrams splits the difference, and the movie suffers-in the end, it’s perfectly adequate, hitting every beat. When you’ve been charged with reviving one of the most obsessively beloved franchises in modern movies, is it better to defy expectations or to meet them? With S tar Wars: The Force Awakens, J.J.