Reviews Film / The Force Awakens

STAR WARS EPISODE VII: THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY (Warning: spoilers up the wazoo)

(I've got a more in-depth review here, for the record.)

So, Episode VII. As far as Episode IV rip-offs go, it's better than it had any right to be. I was expecting something terrible from the promo stuff, but when the reviews started coming in I revised my prediction to "probably just mediocre" shortly before I actually dragged a troper buddy with me to see it. It slightly exceeded my expectations, being actually pretty decent, pretty much on par with, ah, Phantom Menace or Revenge of the Sith.

It's bogged down by its unoriginal plot and obvious OT fanboying subtext and suffers for it- apart from Chewbacca, I found the OT characters the dullest part of the film- but has some genuinely good fight scenes and effects and cool new toys for the First Order. Pacing has major issues, going way too fast in the beginning before slowing to a crawl for the rest of the film. Acting was all over the place. Kylo Ren is a whiny tantrum-prone Vader fanboy, and the rest of the First Order is just around to be around, but Poe Dameron and Finn and BB-8 are fun as hell to watch (Rey, less so- she could stand to be a bit less yelpy). I loved the TIE Fighter hijacking and the flight through the wrecked Star Destroyer, as well as each of Finn's lightsaber duels. Dialogue was a mix of vintage prequel Lucas writing and more modern action movie lines, and they didn't quite mesh very well. Some parts felt needlessly dark- in particular, Luke's academy getting trashed by Han and Leia's kid just so everyone has a reason to angst.

In general, this film felt very good for what it was, but what it was, turned out to be derivative fanfiction. Decent, but I wanted better from Star Wars.