Disney launches a new saga with new characters trapped in old problems.
Last week:A fascist abusive husband becomes a screaming skinless torso.
Next:The Last Jeditwists and turns.
David James/Lucasfilm 2015
Andcheck out Entertainment Weeklys newStar Warspodcast!
What fun we can have in this franchise wreckage!
Later, a ruined AT-AT offers mealtime shade from the sizzling Jakku heat.
ILM/Lucasfilm
She drives an open-air speeder, and wields a henchman-crushing battlestaff.
To make money, she explores leftover toys from old star wars.
What a job description!
Abramsis doing, directing this movie.
Its what Im doing now, writing about it.
Rey is also, it turns out, a fan.
This is theMillennium Falcon?!?!
she exclaims, after shes already twirled the freighter through a stratospheric swoopfight.
This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs!
She gets the parsecs count wrong, but dont we all babble when were starstruck?
Han (Harrison Ford) is as famous in his universe as Harrison Ford is in ours.
And Reys heard of Luke Skywalker too, though she thinks hes a myth.
The opening crawl rattles off the new geo-galactic political reality: Republic, Resistance, First Order.
By now, though, one single celebrity family is the cause and solution to all lifes problems.
Nefarious Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is a Skywalker cousin hunting vanished Uncle Luke.
He has his own sacred fandom totem, worshipping grandpas half-melted helmet.
He imitates the Dark Jedis style, too, rocking a sleek noirborg armor.
Anakin needed machine parts to breathe electric.
Kylos just a Vader poser, his radiogravel voicemask the robo-villain equivalent of a badass fake tattoo.
Such a movie would probably not involve Snoke (Andy Serkis), a remarkably uninvolving shirttail Emperor.
Heseeeeeeeeeeviland boringly performance-captured, such a whiff that he seems like a joke.
Hes been part of this world his whole life and hates it.
Or, maybeThe Force Awakensdidnt need to be about Skywalkers at all.
The other great moment arrives in the first action scene.
A random stormtrooper rushes over to his blasted buddy.
The dying soldier lifts his hand and marks his friends helmet with blood.
Thats a good launch for a character, andForce Awakenscertainly gets off to a running start.
Theres a laserfight and a spacecrash, a ground-air chase, a horde of Rathtars, the irrepressibleOscar Isaac.
Desert planet, frozen planet, forest planet, lightsabers: Right?
There are two broad complaints you’re free to make about aStar Warsproject.
First: Its not enough likeStar Wars.
Second: Its too much likeStar Wars.
You dont need to be a scholar to love a movie, of course.
And you dont need to have a good reason for hating something pointlessly.
Kids will love whateverStar Warsmovie was new when they are young.
Who knows why people think the things they think?
The franchise is very popular across so many generations and cultures.
This is, almost, whatForce Awakensis about.
They are inheritors of the dualStar Warstradition, attractive Dark and noble Light carried forward to a new generation.
A neat twist, too, that the bad guy is Ben Solo.
Hes the son of Leia and Han, the student of Luke, and probably named after Obi-Wan.
Presumably he grew up listening to Threepios nattering and R2s beep-beeping.
Possibly, he rode on Dads lap for some earlyFalconadventures.
This boy raised inside the iconography ofStar Warsturned out to be a patricidal murderer.
Rey isnt an outsider.
Shes another orphan on another sandsphere, meeting another droid with another Skywalker hologram.
Decades have passed since the original trilogy, and nothing has visibly changed.
The Republic exists just long enough to get Alderaand off the space map.
Its too much likeStar Wars is one complaint Im making, I guess.
Compare that to the treatment here of theMillennium Falcon.
And then theFalconperforms maneuvers it could have never accomplished with the handmade bloodsweat special effects of the original trilogy.
It swoops, flips, barrel rolls, zips, zaps, zoops.
The second problem:The Force AwakenslovesStar Warstoo much to let the characters do anything except loveStar Wars.
Everyone gets along great; everyone is great!
The newer characters are fast friends: Good to meet you, Poe!
Good to meet you, Finn!
Elders are always supportive.
Han meets Rey and wants to hire her for theFalcons crew.
He was a trusted insider, tasked with launching a franchise that cost Disney $4 billion.
Abrams is also an incredibly loud filmmaker.
Everyone is always sweating.
The hyperbole can be fun.
BB-8 is adorable, and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) looks cool as hell.
But all the excess strangles.
Captain Phasma never has anything to do, and the final X-Wing assault is spacefight karaoke.
The younger performers are always running or screaming.
Nobody gets to be like Leia inA New Hope, dismissing short stormtroopers.
Kylo Ren tells Poe Dameron hes the best pilot in the resistance.
Thats one hell of a pilot, Finn will exclaim when he sees Poes swirling X-wing.
I dont know, movie, can he fly good?
Mazs castle itself is franchise gentrification unbound.
The Mos Eisley cantina was, like, a dive, populated by sadsack freaks and violent shadowlurk monsters.
Its a long way to go just to give an old man his lightsaber back.
