"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" - Review

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't see the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I recommend to see the movie first, then read this review. This blog article reveals many important parts of the movie.

I am an avid fan of Star Wars. I watched the original movie, Star Wars 4, A New Hope, in the movie theater around a dozen times as a 16-year-old teenager. (Star Wars 4, A New Hope was first released on May 25,1977 according to Wikipedia.) When I first saw the Death Star, that was quite amazing. I had never seen or heard of any concept of making a moon-sized starship planet-killing military cannon. When the Rebels blew it up, that was a great ending for the movie. Very well done. And later in 1983 and in 2015, I'd think to myself, once is enough.

It's important, right now, to review the movie order of the Star Wars epic space opera, the years they were made and how many had big military-sized weapons killing spaceship/planets the Rebels blew to bits.

1999 - Star Wars 1: The Phantom Menace

2002 - Star Wars 2: Attack of the Clones

2005 - Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith

1977 - Star Wars 4: A New Hope - A fully operational Death Star is blown to bits.

1980 - Star Wars 5: The Empire Strikes Back

1983 - Star Wars 6: Return of the Jedi - A half-built Death Star is blown to bits.

2015 - Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens - A planet killing machine (military equipment installed inside a huge trench in a planet) is blown to bits.

At this point, as of the movie Return of the Jedi, isn't obvious that fans know, for sure, that the Rebels are always going to blow up any huge Death Star-type military space ship or planet killing weapon?

In the order of years which the movies were made, I liked the first two Star Wars movies (1977 and 1980) very much. Then came Return of the Jedi in 1983. As soon I saw the half-built Death Star on the screen, I knew the Rebels would blow it up. This ruined the film for me. When I heard the name, Return of the Jedi, I expected that Luke Skywalker would have been recruiting new Jedi to take out the Empire. Both of these things points made me dislike this movie. I still liked the Return of the Jedi, I suppose overall, but I was very disappointed with this movie.

Then 1999, 2002 and the 2005 Star Wars movies came out and I was very pleased. They told the background stories very well. I had people tell me he did not like these back story movies and I simply can't see why anyone wouldn't like these films.

Now move forward ten years from the last Star Wars film in 2005 to the latest film in 2015. It was during the summer of 2015 at Comic-Con International San Diego (California, USA) that the new director of Stars Wars announced he had a big responsibility to the fans to stay true to the story, it's characters, etc. and that he had risen to the challenge. I was very hopeful that he and his crew would do a good job. 

Here we have the name of the movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Wow... what a good name! And remember, there have been many books written and other Star Wars stories made over the years from books to animated TV shows. One such TV series I liked very much was the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008), which had very good story telling and I liked that series very much. Except for the fact that the Jedi seemed to be quite stupid for letting the bad guys get the best of them in that series. The point is, new movies or series can be written about Star Wars and the stories are good.

My main thoughts on The Force Awakens

To me, The Force Awakens was a much bigger disappointment than I ever expected. The overall story was good, the dog-fight scenes were really good, the spaceship designs were very good, the new actors were all very good. For the most part, the overall movie was good. 

However, when you have a Death Star-like military weapon, as soon as that's shown on the screen, WE ALL KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN. THE REBELS ARE GOING TO BLOW IT UP. BORING. (If the Rebels couldn't have blown up that new Death Star-like military weapon, that would have made the movie better.) However, the best idea is to never have another Death Star or Death Star-type military weapon ever again in a Star Wars movie. Period. Even the bad guys in the movie know the Rebels are going to blow it up! To me, this is common sense because we all now know the ending of the movie.

In the movie The Force Awakens, they talk about how Luke had gone away to find the original Jedi Temple and to me this indicated that Luke's main purpose of going there was to train a new group of Jedi. And I would assume he had been training many Jedi for about 30 years! I thought this would be very cool. Skywalker will have trained a new set of Jedi Knights in this movie (and there'd be some Padawan Learners as well) to fight the bad guys but this never happened. What a huge disappointment.

After each character talked about "finding Luke", I thought for sure that Luke would have a much bigger role in the movie with, of course, lots of new Jedi Knights at his side. Don't we as fans want to see Jedi Knights? I know I do. And by the way, how did Ren and Rey so quickly pick up and use a light saber without any training at all? By osmosis? We know from Star Wars, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones, one must have extensive training to learn how to use a light saber. 

And there are more disappointments in the film. What happened to the Republic after the Emperor was killed (in the 1983 movie) and who took his place? How did this new emerging power, the First Order, come into being? This movie is supposed to take place 30 years later from the 1983 movie, the Return of the Jedi. Why not fill us in, at least a little bit? Geez.

How about the first scene with the silhouette of the Star Destroyer. Boring. If they would have opened the movie like the first Star Destroyer was revealed in the opening scene in the 1977 movie, I would have loved it that way or in a similar way.

Why didn't they visit Coruscant? I love Coruscant. Why was the first planet called Jakku? I thought it was Tatooine. Why did they have a little teeny-tiny desert trading post on Jakku? Where was the big city like Mos Eisley? It's Star Wars, don't we as fans want big? Yes! It's okay to have a small village here or there but not for the first scene. 

About the new main "bad guy" called the Supreme Leader Snoke. Why does this alien look like a character out of Lord of the Rings? His look was bizarre and to me, is not a Star Wars-type looking character. And then the young bad guy, Ren, is not introduced and no one explains his rank. How do we understand his position if no one tells us his position? And what about his mask? He takes off his mask several times and doesn't stop breathing. So his mask is only for intimidation purposes? It's not for a breathing problem? If the mask is so important to him, why not have him only take it off in his private quarters? 

Why did Luke have only one scene? Wow... that was another huge disappointment. (Well, actually he had two scenes, the one scene is in Rey's dream. We actually don't see Luke's face in the dream, we hear his voice, but it could have been another actor who touched R2D2.) 

And the piece of the puzzle that BB-8 was carrying was a set of millions of star systems that I am sure any droid could have figured out where it was in the galaxy. If you have a huge set of star systems which might be about 1/10th of a piece of a galaxy, even a fifth grader could figure out where that part of the map was in the galaxy. If they wanted to be at least a little realistic, the map piece would have been a pinpoint when R2D2 projected the hologram of the galaxy in mid-air.

What about C-3PO and R2D2? Why didn't they have bigger roles? What a waste of talent, humor and story line. While I like the idea of BB-8, BB-8's personality was honestly quite bland. R2D2 has a much better personality than BB-8. I think R2D2's personality comes through with his interaction with C-3PO and with humans. The droid comradery between C-3PO and R2D2 really helps make the movie fun. Not using C-3PO and R2D2 as much as they did in the previous movies, is yet another reason why the movie was disappointing.

Here's how I think the movie could have been better. 

The opening scene should have had the star destroyer making a grand entrance on the screen. The rest of the scenes at the beginning of the movie were very good except the city on Jakku should have been a big city and by the way, money should have been exchanged for services, not food. Come on. (I also don't like the design of Rey's speeder but there's no accounting for taste, is there?)

Then when they meet Han Solo, this is where C-3PO and R2D2 could have been introduced as well. It's at this point when Han could have explained what happened in the last 30 years and he could have talked about the new players in the First Order. R2D2 could have projected 3-D hologram pictures of each of the new main players as Han talked. Maybe R2D2 could have pointed out different star systems by name using a map of the galaxy while Han explained everything. This is called making sure all the fans and other movie goers understand what the hell is going on.

And when Han met his son, he would have been smart enough to know that you don't play around with someone in league with the dark side of the force, unless you are a Jedi. I didn't like that Han was killed off by his own son. Having Han talking to his son might be an okay story line but I'm not really sure that the smuggler would have tried to talk to him in person, since Han knows he's no match for a Sith Lord. It's simply not worth it. 

However, if he had to talk to him, Han would have been smart enough not to have walked onto the tiny bridge, all alone, with his Sith Lord son. He would have not have gone near his son because if Ren reacted badly, Han could have made a quick retreat. Han is smarter than to intentionally get near a Sith Lord and put himself in such a dangerous position.

(If Han accidentally turned the corner and he bumped into his son, then tried to run away but his son wouldn't let him, and then if Ren soon killed Han -- that type of story, to me, would have been a more realistic way for Han to have been killed. Also, to me, having Han killed off made no sense, it was a let down. It didn't help the move the story along at all.)

Then they could have continued their search for Luke, had a set back or two, met Lea and then found Luke and his new band of Jedi Knights. Then the new Jedi Knights could have led an attack on the First Order and taken out several of the main players.

And obviously, delete the plot line of having yet another militarized planet-killing weapon. Unless if some inept military personnel accidentally blew it up, that would be funny.

Or how about this? Ren could have told Han that the First Order built a new planet killer weapon which can take out an entire solar system in one fell swoop. And Han could have looked concerned and have said, "Let's go blow it up, I know how to do this, we've done this before." I could then see Han getting all the Rebels together to go blow-up the planet-killer weapon (near the beginning or somewhere near one quarter into the movie). However, during the first test of the plant killing weapon, something goes wrong and it blows itself up. And therefore, as the Rebels are approaching the weapon planet to blow it up (yet are safe enough away from the planet), I could see Han Solo saying, "Oh, they did it for us", then the real story line could continue to be told .

If these story lines were added to the movie and the good parts of the movie were left in, it would have made a much better movie. 

How to know if you were a Star Wars fan from 1977.

After I downloaded the Star Wars app (which I learned about during the past summer at Comic-Con International 2015 in San Diego, California, USA), I noticed an article from the app which was titled something like this, "How to know if you were a Star Wars fan from 1977?" Since I'm in that category, I thought it would be fun to read the article but I was disappointed in the article since I didn't agree with it. Having just seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens (or Star Wars 7) today, I decided to write a my own version of "How to know if you are a Star Wars fan from 1977."

I was 16 at the time when Stars Wars came out in 1977. I loved Star Wars from the very start of the movie. I later found out that I was basically a loner (among my friends and family) when it came to being a fan of Star Wars and did not have any friends who shared my own enthusiasm for the movie. As a young teenager, I told my entire family how much I liked the movie and they couldn't care less.

One of my aunts told me that she went to the movie and didn't like it because she couldn't understand the movie. I thought to myself, damn lady, don't you have any education? If you knew anything about solar systems and about our galaxy, you would have loved the movie. I always had an interest in science and liked Star Trek and now there was Star Wars! To hell with my aunt. (Of course, I was young and nice at the time and never said these negative things to her.)

Back in 1977, news flash, we didn't have personal computers, laptops, the internet (ouch), smart phones (or any pocket-sized cell phone), iTunes, DVDs or DVD players, Netflix, YouTube, PDFs or anything like this. We had stereo systems, records, cassette tapes (for music), 8-track tapes (for music - some people had these), newspapers, magazines, movies, theatre, symphonies, TV, radio, billboards, libraries, the white pages and the yellow pages. This is how we learned about the world around us and how we were entertained.  

In fact, when I went to high school I was very disappointed. I thought, "Where are the computers?" I saw what I thought were modern computers in the reruns of the 1960's Star Trek TV show (in the 1970s) and I simply assumed that we had at least something comparable to the computers in Star Trek. What a disappointment. At college, I thought the computers would be better than high school. Nope. It was worse or at least it seemed worse to me. We had data cards, loud data card readers and I knew this was super low computer technology and I had no interest in this "computer" technology. Yuck. 

Before getting back to my blog topic, I will first digresses a little bit. Here are several reasons why I felt that Star Wars was so fantastic.

1) The spaceships really looked like they were flying in space! This was important. Up to 1977, the 1960s Star Trek TV show (1966-1969)  and the 2001 Space Odyssey movie (1968) had spaceships which simply do not have the appearance of what it would actually look like if the ships were flying through space. In fact, George Lucas had to make the stop motion technology to make spaceships look like they were actually flying through space. How cool is that?

2) Also, the 1960s Star Trek TV show and the 2001 Space Odyssey movie had spaceships which looked like they just came out of the factory and were always in pristine condition both outside and inside. Star Wars spaceships looked like there were worn from use and looked realistic. 

3) Star Wars was the first movie where laser blasts looked and sounded real. Everything in Star Wars looked real. That was very cool.

4) Many of the movies of the day were very negative in the 1970s where the bad guy seemed to always be wining. I propose that this was due to the United States being in the immoral Vietnam War (which ended in 1975) and due to President Nixon resigning from office in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal which made many people distrust the government and authority figures.

Before Star Wars was released, I remember watching a movie where the last scene of the movie was were a cop pulled over the main bad guy in the movie (the cop didn't know he pulled over a really bad guy) and gave the bad guy a traffic ticket, and I believe ticket was for a tail light which was out. The bad guy pulled away and started down the road. The cop accidentally kept the bad guy's driver's license. The cop started his motorcycle, turned on his lights and siren and tried to pull the bad guy over again just to give him back his driver's licence. The bad guy had enough of the cop, pulled out a gun and killed the cop and kept driving. That was the ending of the movie. 

To me, this was the mood of the country in the 1970s, the bad guys kept winning. Not to mention that we had some of the worst hair styles and clothing in the 1970s as well. Then Star Wars happened. Good against evil, it had excellent music, a good story line, humor, the space ships look real, the space ships looked real while they were flying in space, the blasters looked real and the good guys won! This was awesome. The movie had a positive ending!

How I knew I was a Star Wars fan from 1977. 

1) I remember after watching the movie for the first time, I got out of movie at night time. On the drive home, it was at night and the roads seemed narrower to me, so I felt as though I was in an X-Wing fighter. Having just seen X-Wing fighters flying through the "canyons" of the Death Star. It was so cool driving home. Imagination is so wonderful because remember there were no movies on DVDs and no computer games. 

2) As a teenager, I had very little money so I didn't even have a Star Wars t-shirt. However, I did see Star Wars about 10 or 12 times. Back in the day, it was basically unheard of for people to see movies more than once at the theater. I remember at the time that the news reported that Star Wars was the first movie where many people went back to the movie theater to watch the movie over and over again.

3) I also remember reading how George Lucas planned to make nine movies. He made the first movie in hopes that it would be successful but if it was not successful, then at least he would have made one space movie. Then from what I can remember, the nine movies were basically never talked about throughout the 1980s and 1990s. I believe that if you remember how George Lucas originally planned for nine movies and also how the news never talked about these nine movies in the 1980s and 1990s, this also helps define you as a Star Wars fan from 1977. (And now we know that George Lucas planning nine movies might not be true due to a 2012 Huffington Post article.)

4) As a Star Wars fan, I actually dreamed that it would be awesome to be living in the Star Wars world where faster than light (FTL) space travel was possible and flying from star system to star system within a galaxy was an every day occurrence. I wanted to live this type of life. I still would like to live this type of life!

5) I could and did make Darth Vader's breathing noise and could quote, in Vader's tone of voice, "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force." (I can still do this.)

6) I wanted a landspeeder, that would be really cool of course. I'd also want my own spaceship but the landspeeder was really cool. And of course, I wanted a blaster and light saber.

7) There were no DVDs in the 1970s. The technology for video tapes for home use, according to Wikipedia, stared sometime in the 1970s. However, at my household, we did not have a VCR machine and no video tapes. According one to one website, the first home VCRs in the USA were sold in 1977 and a limited number of movies were sold on video cassettes for the first time in either 1977 or 1978.

To enjoy movies, for most people, we had to rely seeing re-runs on TV or listen to movie sound tracks on records. Music records. The Star Wars record jacket had two records with pictures from the movie inside and a poster with the Han Solo, Luke Sky Walker and Princess Lea. Almost every day after school, I'd come home (my mother was usually at work) and I would play the Star Wars record loudly while laying on the living room floor dreaming about the movie and dreaming of living in that world and looking at the pictures (from the movie) inside the record jacket. I don't know how many times I listened to the two record set but it must have been hundreds of times.

8) I also had some baseball cards of the Star Wars characters. I have no idea if I still have these, I don't think I do. Too bad because there were really fun look through.

9) Back in the 1970s, food coloring (for making different colors when coloring icing for birthday cakes) was very popular and was a staple, if you will, in the kitchen where I lived. I would use several drops of the blue food coloring in my milk so it looked like the drink the Luke drank on Tatooine at his aunt and uncle's place. In the kitchen cabinet, there'd be several  little bottles of food coloring (red, green, yellow, blue) and suspiciously, the small blue food coloring bottle would soon be empty. Not sure if my mother ever figured out where the blue food coloring disappeared to. I blame it on the Force.

These are several of the things that defined me as a Star Wars fan from 1977. I loved the advanced technology, space travel, good music and the story.

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An aside: According to a 2012 Huffington Post article, the writer says that George Lucas claims never to have said he'd write a nine (9) episode space opera, that the news media misunderstood him and got it wrong. In fact, the same article quotes Mark Hamill as saying Lucas told him he planned on making a 12 episode space opera. However, I thought for sure, that George Lucas did say he was going to make a nine episode space opera and I thought he repeated this in at least one of the "making-of" movies. However, I guess I'm wrong on this point. 

I think that Lucas said that he made the the first movie in 1977 in hopes that it would be successful but if it was not successful, then at least he would have made one space movie. However, it was a huge success and decide to finish the rest of the space opera.

Reference:

'Star Wars' Sequels: George Lucas Always Teased 9 Films; Or Did He?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/star-wars-sequels_n_2048830.html

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