Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the beginning of the so-called "sequel trilogy," directed by J.J. Abrams and starring John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, Harrison Ford, Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Andy Serkis, and Lupita Nyong'o.
An unspecified amount of time after Return of the Jedi, everyone old is new again. The First Order has "risen from the ashes of the Empire," and the Alliance that we all worked so hard for apparently just fell the fuck apart, because the First Order is just as numerous, well-organized, and Nazi-fied as ever, while the Resistance is still the plucky underdog.
And I have to say: This is probably the thing that annoys me most about this movie. The last we saw of all of this, the Rebel Alliance won. They killed off the two Big Bads, blew up the Death Star, and had an Ewok party. And yes, of course, winning the peace is harder than winning the war, but that's not the vibe of the end of Jedi and it's not well communicated here. The vibe is much more "hey, remember A New Hope? That! We're doing that! Gimme all the money!"
Anyway. Resistance pilot and absolute dreamboat Poe Dameron (Isaac) has a map to Luke Skywalker (Mark Hammil), who disappeared some time after the end of the war. Apparently getting Luke back is super important to morale or something, even though it's been long enough that whether Luke existed at all is a point of some debate. Anyway, Poe gets himself captured by the evil (but equally dreamy!) Kylo Ren (Driver), a kind of latter-day Vader, but in the process a stormtrooper (Boyega) decides "fuck this" and helps Poe escape. They wind up picking up a junker called Rey (Ridley) on desert planet Tatootine Jakku, and the three of them become our POV characters. Finn (the stormtrooper) and Rey steal an old, junked ship which we as the audience recognize the Millennium Falcon, so of course as soon as they take off Han Solo (Ford) finds them because space is actually really small.
Anyway, turns out Kylo Ren is really Ben Solo, Han and Leia's (Fisher) son and Luke's former pupil. He's become the muscle and co-leader of the First Order and is all about blowing up the Resistance, with the Death-Star-but-bigger Starkiller Base. The Resistance rocks up and blows it up, Ren discovers she has Force powers and goes to find Luke to give him his lightsaber, Finn and Poe kiss passionately (citation needed), on we go.
So, I talk shit, but I actually do like this movie. It benefits from 30 years of development in effects, scripting, and so on, and it benefits heavily from not having George Lucas in a position of authority. Sure, it's beat-for-beat the same as New Hope, but there are some genuine funny and touching moments. Ford and Fisher reuniting feels bittersweet, but the chemistry I really like (other than Poe and Finn, which, like, fucking kiss already) is the kind of father/daughter energy between Rey and Han. Of course, Ren kills Han off in the third act, so that never gets to develop, but it's nice while it lasts.
This movie and the next two get an inordinate amount of shit from the incel whiners on the internet, which, like, I don't know why they're feeling underrepresented, they First Order are totally their people - whiny, violent, dangerous white boys cosplaying as Nazis. But the movie dared to have both a Black man as a main character and a woman using the Force (Mary Sue! Mary Sue! Whaa! I don't know what words mean! Whaa! Pandering! fuck off), so of course the trilogy takes up an outsized amount of discourse when we could just appreciate it as a better-than-average Star Wars movie.
Now, I have seen the next two in the trilogy but frankly I don't remember them well, so we'll see how I feel after watching The Last Jedi.
My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium high
Next up: Star Wars: The Last Jedi
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