The Force Awakens... Or Does It??

You’ve probably heard that there’s a new Star Wars film out in theaters. If not, welcome to planet Earth. Please, take a gander at practically any website out there, and you’ll be fully caught up. It’s impossible to avoid at this point. Needless to say, the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a massive event arguably unlike anything that cinema, not to mention pop culture itself, has seen in ages. Star Wars has become so ingrained in our lives, that it’s basically assumed everybody loves it. Even if you don’t love the prequel trilogy, you must at least love the original trilogy. If not that, then surely A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back are some of your favorite films? I mean, this past year, The Empire Strikes Back was voted to be the greatest movie of all time by the readers of Empire Magazine (no connection to the movie). How could you possibly not love that film? Well… Let me start off by saying that as a kid, I was pretty into Star Wars. I still have an incredibly vivid memory of playing the Hoth level in the Nintendo 64 Star Wars game

The Hoth level from Shadows of the Empire. Trust me, it was amazing! (Click picture for source)

Shadows of the Empire, because it completely blew me away. I actually got up to look out the window to see my brothers playing outside, wanting to tell them how amazing the experience was. I had the original trilogy on VHS, and even sometimes carried around a pretty big Star Wars Encyclopedia book with me to school. On my 12th birthday, I painted half of my face to look like Sting (a wrestler, not the musician), and the other half to look like Darth Maul. So, yeah, I was a fan. But then, I think I kind of grew out of it. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a judgment on adult Star Wars fans. Hell, I’m still a wrestling fan! But as an adult, it no longer holds the same appeal to me. Or, perhaps more accurately, I've started to feel like I enjoy the concept much more than I enjoy actually watching the films.

Nowadays, I find myself awkwardly having to confess to people that “I’m not really a Star Wars fan…” Which is practically always met with stunned disbelief, especially by other fans. I’ve never witnessed any other fandom elicit a response on the same magnitude as Star Wars. Like I said earlier, it’s just assumed that everybody loves it. Needless to say, the hype for the new film has been out of this world (apologies for that phrase), because it’s a franchise so universally beloved. Even I was starting to get mildly curious, so when a good friend of mine bought 15 tickets for the day of the premiere, I decided to go with him and see whether this new film could rekindle my childhood love for Star Wars.

I’m going to start off with the things I really liked (and don’t worry, I’ll keep this spoiler free). The three new protagonists, Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and Poe (Oscar Issac), are all absolutely wonderful and charming. They’re all so immediately likeable, and easily defined. Poe, though, is perhaps the least original of the bunch, coming across as a nicer version of Han Solo. He’s the charming rouge, who is also a genuinely good person and isn’t afraid to show it, unlike Solo. That being said, there isn’t much more to his character, though Rey and Finn are both more fleshed out. Finn was a brainwashed soldier for the evil First Order, before finding himself unable to contribute to an outright massacre. His arc in the film begins with him breaking away from his role as an obedient Stormtrooper, and follows him as he attempts to figure out his true identity. Unaware of who he really is, at times Finn’s choices and actions strike a balance between looking out for himself, and doing things to help others. It’s a legitimately good example of a character’s identity driving his choices, rather than the plot.

Fair Use

As much as I liked Finn, it might still be Rey that steals my heart. She starts off the film as a loner, stuck on the planet of Jakku, getting by selling spare parts for food as she waits for her family to return. At this point, it’s unclear how long they’ve been gone, but it’s certain that Rey has been alone for a while, clearly able to take care of herself. Not only that, but she’s reluctant to really rely on anyone, content with her solitary life until her family returns. In a way, she is, admittedly, a bit stereotypical. She’s the loner that’s perhaps destined for greater things, if she can learn to trust others. However, Daisy Ridley’s performance manages to make her more than the sum of her parts, instilling a great sense of wonder and enthusiasm to the character. Her facial expressions alone are golden, making Rey’s reactions to her whole new world feel incredibly genuine. In fact, it must be said that all three actors do a wonderful job bringing these characters to life. Without them, the characters would simply not be as great as they are.

However, even though I grew to be very fond of those three characters, I still have to admit that I found myself longing for a better plot around them. Allow me to digress just a tad to say that I’ve been weary of comic book movies for a long time now, largely because I feel that they’re mostly all too similar to each other. Even the beloved Guardians of the Galaxy was a disappointment to me, because it still felt like every other comic book movie that came before it, even though the initial impression had been that it would do something different. There’s still the same-old, corny romantic subplot and the same origin story arc necessitating a climactic action sequence. Not to mention numerous scenes of big bad guys talking in deeply serious tones about needing to get the whatchamacallit to summon the whowhatwherenow in order to do whatever it is they want to do. Rule the world, probably. Unfortunately, some of the same problems apply to The Force Awakens.

The plot itself felt like it was mostly going from one action sequence to another, with the occasional deus ex machina thrown in to move the plot forward. Oh and yes, there were scenes of big bad guys in dark chambers discussing deeply serious things about… ruling the world… or something. And one of them is called Snoke, which sounds more like a character from the Moomins. To make matters worse, most of the moments that were supposed to be incredibly dramatic were telegraphed a mile away, robbing them of most of their power. By the end, despite loving those three protagonists, I was mostly kind of bored by the film. Rather than having a cohesive plot, it felt like it was jumping from one action sequence to another, with a bit of exposition in between. Therefore, it basically shares the same problems that I feel are symptomatic of comic book movies too. The one exception during the past few years was X-Men: Days of Future Past, which, to me, felt like it had more going on. There where characters with clear motives, and it felt like the plot was driven by those motives, rather than by a need to get to the next action beat. It was by no means a perfect film, but it kept me engaged far more than most similar films do these days. I can’t really say the same for The Force Awakens.

The purpose of this piece was to write something on The Force Awakens from the perspective of someone who isn’t a Star Wars fan. I wanted to write a review that was independent of hype and nostalgia, though doing so completely is kind of impossible; one way or another, I’m going to be affected. Still, I feel like I was coming into this film more from the perspective of it being a film rather than a Star Wars movie. Now, if you’re a Star Wars fan, I think I can pretty safely say that you’ll enjoy this film. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that it’s one of the best Star Wars movies yet, if not the best. For non-Star Wars fans, however, I don’t think this film will convince you otherwise. Some people might laugh at me for saying that The Force Awakens is an incredibly Star Warsesque film, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. But the point I’m making is that The Force Awakens is a Star Wars film, for better or worse. If you’re a fan, you’ll stay a fan. If you’re not a fan, you’ll probably continue being ambivalent. Despite loving those three protagonists, the Force, sadly, did not awaken in me.

Sorry. I had to.