While I am not a huge Star Wars fan, episode VII (The Force Awakens) seemed like an interesting film from the trailer so on new year's day Kristin and I were off to see it in IMAX 3D.  Prior to this I had seem some of the previous films.  From the original trilogy I'd give a new hope 3 stars, empire strikes back 4 stars, and return of the Jedi 3 stars. From the prequels the Phantom Menace didn't need to exist, so -1 stars, and the other two I didn't have an opportunity to see.

So, with this in mind, overall, I give the force awakens 4 stars. It was good, but I don't know why people are going back to see it multiple times in the theaters.

What I liked about STTFA were two things: the action and the potential of the new cast.  The action in this movie was pretty spectacular and there were a lot of on-screen explosions (boom!).  From a personalities involved perspective you have a storm trooper with a conscience who defects - or rather tries to find his ethical raison d'etre. You have a scavenger with obvious abandonment issues, but who nevertheless has picked herself up from the bootstraps and kicks ass.  She is also the one where with the strong force, so obviously she is being groomed to be a Jedi.  You have Skywalker who has given up on...well everything...because he failed to be a good teacher to his first group of students and blames himself for Ben's going over to the dark side (seriously dude, get a grip, even Yoda and Kenobi probably had some bad apples - they don't just blame themselves) - so there is potential for Skywalker to become an uber-awesome teacher again. And, let's not forget Leia & Han's son, Ben (aka Ren to the dark side). Vader seemed like an absolute evil in the original trilogy, but Ben/Ren seems like a tortured individual, so there is hope for him yet.

That said,I do have some critiques.  I think my main one is the duality of the force, the light vs the dark side.  In the original movies, and in movies in general, it seems like having a clear good guy and a clear bad guy creates the opposing sides.  However, I am seriously thinking that #TheSithWereFramed ;-).  Look at the Sith Code for example:

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

Nothing in there about being evil and doing bad deeds, however the movies treat the dark side and the Sith as the ultimate evil. Seems to me that someone along the lines corrupted the Sith for their own purposes.  I wonder if this is something that will come up in future movies, and if we'll come to a more gray-area of morality and ethics in subsequent movies.



Another critique is the overdoing the homage.  New audiences probably don't remember that Luke blew up a death star (which was really an artificial planet), and that the empire destroyed planets, so this was new to them, but the back-and-forth between the good guys and the bad guys seems the same:

1. Bad guys search for something that the good guys have
2. Bad guys temporarily have this thing and/or good guys
3. Good guys escape
4. Bad guys blog up planets, kill many innocents
5. There is disruption in the force
6. Good guys blow up enemy base (which happens to be massive)
7. Bad buys pull a Dr. Claw and say "You'll pay for this Good guys!"
8. Credits roll

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the action in the film, but it seemed rather derivative. I hope that the second in the new trilogy is better than Star Trek's Into Darkness lol ;-)

your thoughts?

PS: Yeah, Han Solo dies at the hands of his son.  I sort of expected this.