Star Wars: The Force Awakens “Honest” Review

***So after seeing this film three times with various friends and family members over the course of a week, I’ve finally decided, after much thought and consideration, to write two reviews for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, one, a “fanboy” review that strips away my critical thinking of the film and looks at it from a purely entertainment and nostalgic driven standpoint and the other, a more “honest” review where I talk about the film much more critically and candidly.

What follows is my brief, spoiler-free “honest” review.***

I kinda had issues with this movie.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been a long time coming. A few decades in between the original trilogy and a few less since the prequel debacle and I was ready to dive into this behemoth of a cultural phenomenon headfirst. As mentioned in my “fanboy” review, I couldn’t get enough of the idea of the film. I loved seeing Star Wars the way it should be, updated for modern times in slick HD quality with more practical effects and edge of your seat action than you can shake a lightsaber at. I loved seeing our original heroes back onscreen doing what they do best and I loved the feeling of my childhood giddiness rushing back when that iconic theme began blasting through the theater.

But this is where I let that nostalgia fade away. This is the review where I speak the honest truth about this film, and why it isn’t as mind blowing as a billion dollars at the box office would lead you to believe.

First things first: I’m not bashing the movie, I loved it, truly, I’d even put it on the same level as Return of the Jedi, but there are a lot of things in this film that just didn’t work from a critical standpoint. Granted, seeing the movie three times before deciding to write these reviews certainly helped bring about most of my arguments here, but if I’m being honest (and I am) I had a nagging feeling in the back of my head during my first viewing that something was a little bit off. To not be a total dick to myself and in order to enjoy what I had been waiting to see for what seemed like an eternity, I ended up pushing those thoughts to the back of my mind for the remainder of the runtime. But as I left the theater, mulling over my own thoughts while discussing a few things with the people I saw it with, the more I realized that the movie was driven by nostalgia and anchored by what we wanted to see as opposed to what should have been seen.

For all intents and purposes, this movie is like a magic trick. JJ Abrams and crew do a glorious job of bringing Star Wars back to that perfect mixture of wide-eyed whimsy, laugh out loud humor and badass action that the original trilogy had in droves. The idea of the film, and the way Abrams went about it was exactly what we wanted to see, but at what cost? While we were too busy looking at one hand, reliving the thrill of seeing a new Star Wars film that didn’t totally suck, the hand that we weren’t watching was quickly setting up and implementing some truly odd and amateurish filmmaking decisions.

Looking past the fact that this movie’s plot is EXACTLY the same as A New Hope, all of the other plot holes and convenient explanation for things are just pure lazy. The Millennium Falcon just happened to be where it was? R2-D2 just happened to show up the way he did at the time he was needed? Jakku, Takodana and Starkiller Base just happen to mimic Tatooine, Endor and Hoth in all but name? Come on. I know a certain amount of jumps in logic and rehashed ideas is to be expected in a film, especially a sequel, but it’s a little disheartening to see that after all the effort put into this movie that they couldn’t find better ways to squash the story and déjà vu problems that kept popping up. Using the excuse that “it’s Star Wars” isn’t gonna fly this time like the way we tried to use it for the prequels.

Character-wise, outside of the always stellar original cast, the main newbies consisting of Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, BB-8 and the central antagonist Kylo Ren, fit well into the movie’s universe. Since they’re essentially going to be the characters we’ll be following throughout the next few films, they rightfully take up the majority of screen time and have the most to do in regards to the overall plot and forward momentum of the film. Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and Adam Driver do a fine job getting us acclimated to their new faces while at the same time showing a nice range of emotion and character growth that will no doubt become the central focus of the remaining episodes from here on out. On the flipside, overly hyped and underwhelming characters like General Hux, Captain Phasma and Supreme Leader Snoke do literally nothing except attempt to sow seeds for future movies and tie-in merchandise. Their scenes could have literally been cut and barely been missed. One of Snoke’s scenes with Kylo Ren in particular takes what could have been a big, slow burning reveal, and turns it into a stupid line of unnecessary dialogue that kind of took the air out of the rest of the proceedings.

This sort of handholding is pretty prominent when talking about this movie. The exposition and sheer amount of talking that’s done to reveal bits of really cool information had me rolling my eyes, wondering which one of these seeds would sprout up in a different form of media first. For example, why is C3P0’s arm red? Why even mention it if you aren’t going to explain it? Oh, there’s a new comic book mini-series doing just that? Guess I’ll be buying that shit then. I’d go on but my remaining arguments involve big spoilers, so let’s just say that it’s not cool that Hollywood can’t make a self contained movie anymore. Like Avengers: Age of Ultron before it (albeit done in a MUCH better way), The Force Awakens seems to be shackled by it’s duties to set up the new Star Wars universe while at the same time making a movie that satisfies on a self-contained level, a level that it has a hard time reaching at points.

I’m convinced that with this film out of the way that Episode VIII will be one of the best Star Wars films to ever come out, but the weird Marvel Cinematic Universe approach of interconnecting everything and planting seeds that do nothing to benefit the film on its own really hurt the film in the long run. I’m sure it’ll all pay off in the end, but this isn’t the end, this is a new beginning and seeing this right off the bat is a little hard to look past. Just because Hollywood wants shared universes and loves cramming everything they can into each movie doesn’t mean it should be done.

As for the biggest spoiler of the film I’ll say this: the scene was handled extremely well, but the emotional fallout from such an act was a little underwhelming. I’m hoping that this plot thread is explored further in the next episode, it’d be an injustice to what happened to simply just gloss it over.

And the ending! Man, I really wish they just saved that for the next film. To be honest, while my fanboy self was nerding everywhere, my filmmaker self was screaming for them to cut to credits. The entire scene felt like one of those tacked on after the credits “secret ending” that’s all the rage nowadays and yet again felt like something we wanted to see as opposed to what should have been seen.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a fine fan service, and I’m most likely going to see it at least one more time before it leaves theaters, but when broken down in any critical way, it starts to lose its luster. A simple, re-hashed and predictable storyline full of glaring and coincidental plot holes mixed with a handful of underwhelming characters and a few odd out of place scenes, makes this film worth a watch (obviously), but after the initial excitement of seeing a new Star Wars back up on the silver screen wears off, I don’t see this film being remembered as fondly as we all seem to be doing at this moment.