The hype surrounding Episode VII of the Star Wars saga is deafening, but the enthusiasm is genuine. The anticipation for Star Wars: The Force Awakens dwarfs even Harry Potter because the phenomenon encompasses several generations of fans. The risk of disappointment borne by Writer-Director J.J. Abrams was enormous. Few were thrilled by the second Star Wars trilogy (Episodes I-III), and most waited in expectation of recapturing the heady excitement of the original series.
The good news is that Abrams delivers. Unlike his botched reinvention of Star Trek, he doesn’t mess with the story or play with clichéd special effects. The Force Awakens builds strongly on George Lucas’ original concept, picking up the plot 30 years or so after Return of the Jedi. Abrams deftly matches old-school sets with millennial SFX in rendering the Star Wars vision of alien worlds, the starry vastness of space and the advanced technology enabling galactic travel. Co-writing with Michael Arndt and original Star Wars screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, Abrams introduces a set of new characters with legs for the coming sequels while (cheers from the audience!) ushering in the old favorites.
The protagonist on her unwitting hero’s quest, Rey (Daisy Ridley) is a plucky orphan who scavenges for her keep amid a Bedouin-like society on the desert world of Jakku. Handy with a weapon and techno savvy, she escapes an assault by storm troopers aboard a derelict old freighter—you guessed it, the Millennium Falcon. Her traveling companion, Finn (John Boyega), is a defector from the storm troopers with similarly unhappy origins—like the Ottoman Janissaries of Earth’s history, the troopers are plucked from their families in childhood and trained to fight and obey. Conscience is a hard flame to extinguish, however. Troubled by the massacre of civilians on Jakku, Finn takes his chances and escapes with a Resistance prisoner, the ace pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac).
The old gang begins to reemerge when Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his faithful sidekick, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew under all that shag), forcibly reclaim the Falcon. Grizzled but still fit, Solo has returned to grifting and smuggling, his cynicism inflamed by galactic political developments. A new evil force has arisen, the First Order, wielding world-destroying weaponry and headquartered aboard the planet-size Starkiller Base. Softened by Rey’s sincerity and Finn’s eagerness, he is drawn back to the struggle and the Resistance leader, his old flame, General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), who has matured into a commanding presence.
The plot mechanism turns around the search for Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who disappeared a generation earlier. A map purporting to show his location is encrypted on a thumb drive Poe passed to an adorable new droid, BB-8. The Resistance wants to find the map to the missing Jedi, as does the public face of the First Order, the new man in black, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Light sabers will clash soon enough.
Abrams gets the underlying ethos and aesthetics that put the original Star Wars light years ahead of Hollywood science fiction. Underlying the action is the yin-yang of Oriental spirituality and the archetypes of Carl Jung, set in a sprawling but economically told saga rooted in the sci-fi serials and World War II aerial combat movies of Lucas’ youth, but produced with the benefit of advanced technology and art house references to Leni Riefenstahl and Ingmar Bergman. In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, as in the original trilogy, magic coexists with science, physics with metaphysics, and the primeval lives with the futuristic in a story propelled by fist-pumping action and leavened with humor and characters to root for. Stick around for Episode VIII.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
3 and a half stars
Daisy Ridley
Harrison Ford
Directed by J.J. Abrams
PG-13
