So if you’ve been under a rock for the past month, you would know that a monumental movie came out in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The movie was sold out in most theaters since the final trailer came out during the October 19th Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants. The movie has grossed over 1.16 billion dollars, and has a extremely high Rotten Tomatoes rating (94%) and a high Metacritic rating (81%).
But what did I think about the film? Here is my official review, with no restrictions to what will be said.
Positives
1. Great Story and Realism: This story was great in multiple ways. First, it did a great way of continuing the saga without making people feel dumbfounded as to what has happened in between episode six and episode seven, while being an homage to A New Hope. Granted, there is ALOT of background they are going to have to cover in the next movies or even in the anthology, but for it to be a two and a half hour film, it did a good job of telling a story that will keep us interesting until Rogue One.
Also, the realistic aspects of this movie were even better. While it needed to have CGI, the realism of the movie was dope. There were actual stormtroopers on the screen, the fights on StarKiller Base and Takodana were excellent and looked like a realistic fight scene.
2. The Fights: The fights in this movie where a big “screw you” to the prequels. The dog fight between Rey and Finn piloting the Millennium Falcon against the Tie fighters inside a Star Destroyer was a precedent of how beautiful a dog fight can be, especially by a former stormtrooper and a scavenger piloting the freaking Millennium Falcon! The Resistance coming down to Takodana leading to Poe annihilating 12 Tie Fighters in a matter of a minute was excellent, especially seeing it from Finn’s perspective, who earlier had a great fight against the TR-R8 Stormtrooper.
Finally, the lightsaber fight at the end was absolutely beautiful. It was a perfect symmetry between what the prequels and the original trilogy: the prequels treating lightsaber fighting more of a dance, while the originals made it more light a kendo fight to the death. Kyle’s fights against Finn and Rey, in particular Rey, felt like a gritty fight that had a warring dance to it.
3. Excellent New Characters: The movie did a great job of reigniting our interest in the series by giving us new characters to root for and care about. BB-8 completely made me forget that this movie still has R2-D2. The droid was funny, serious and brought a lighter tone to the movie. Finn brought a new aspect to the series as we get to see the mindset of not just a stormtrooper, but a former stormtrooper. Rey was absolutely amazing and allows us to have a female Jedi in the main series as a main character, which is a long time coming. Maz Kanata is one of the secret gems of this movie and I personally want to see more of her and what she knows, especially seeing as to how she is interwoven into the entire series. And then there is Kylo Ren, who is my favorite character from this movie. He is so interesting as a villainous character and has so many layers that I can’t wait to see how far he is willing to go to be like his grandfather.
Negatives
1. Lack of Phasma: This is more of me nitpicking, but I find the lack of Captain Phasma disturbing. Now granted, the character might become a bigger threat in the series in episode eight and nine. I actually wish that the scene in which Finn fought TR-R8 that it was Phasma instead of him. It would have brought more interest to the pair and made use of Gwendolyn Christie’s sword fighting skills that we see in Game of Thrones.
Final Grade: A-
This movie is great and had a excellent story. The fights were amazing. And I can’t wait until the next one comes out. The series has definitely gotten reinvented by this movie and has shown new aspects of everything in Star Wars: we see a new aspect of the Force, how far the Sith and Jedi have actually fallen, and how much of a threat the First Order is in comparison to the Galactic Empire. This movie was excellent and if you have seen it, see it again as this will be the kickoff to a great new year of movies.
JayTezla's Nerdvana 