"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.