Movie Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I got to see “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” last night. But will the force stay woke? We’ll find out.  I am not a huge Star Wars fan but mostly enjoyed the first trilogy of movies, the second trilogy mostly hurt my eyes and ears.  Within ten minutes of watching the new movie it already had enough quality stuff in it to surpass the prequels.  The prequels being “Phantom Menace”, “Attack Of The Clones” and “Revenge Of The Sith” in case you’re scoring at home.

*Minor Spoilers Below*

All the new characters in the series, while maybe thrown in a little abruptly are all very likable.  There’s Poe, who’s supposedly the best pilot in the galaxy and he looks like he time traveled from an early 80’s action movie. Then there’s Rey who’s a bad ass living on some garbage planet overrun by thieves.  And then there is Finn who was a Storm Trooper who had a moment of clarity and decided to become a good guy.  Anywho it’s about thirty years after the original series ended and you know the old saying “You can’t keep evil down for more than a quarter of a century.” well it’s very true here as a new form of the Empire has risen called “The First Order.”  They may or may not have originally been a New Order cover band.  The First Order wants to destroy the Republic (They’re good) and stop all the Jedis, because that’s what you do when you want to reign evil down on the galaxy.  Unfortunately for them they need to find Luke Skywalker and he’s on sabbatical when the movie starts. The First Order is comprised of Kylo Ren who is a badass when you first meet him but then he takes his mask off and throws a couple of hissy fits and you can not take him seriously again for the rest of the movie.  There’s also some new supreme evil leader named Snoke who is shown as a creepy hologram and also a bunch of quasi Euro-hipster generals who like to blow up planets and probably cry when the camera is not on them.  Oh yeah and the Death Star has been replaced by the Starkiller Base which is five times the size as the Death Star and costs half the price!

Kills 5 planets in one shot. Only $39.99 a month!

On to the actual plot, Rey and Finn team up to bring a droid back to the resistance and somehow Han Solo and Chewbacca find them. And then after a hilarious scene in which everyone that Han is in debt to shows up to collect at the exact same time, Han and co. kick some ass and decide to help get the droid back to the resistance together.  The movie is nearly perfect until Han, Rey, Chewie, and Finn end up on some planet where nothing seems to make sense.  Han weirdly offers Rey a job, which she refuses and then moves on. Finn decides he’s just going to abandon everyone and travel to the end of the galaxy for no reason at all, and then a lightsaber talks to Rey which ultimately pays off but comes out of nowhere when it happens. Everything comes together quickly though because The First Order decides to blow up five planets of the republic after holding a rally that Kim Jong-Un would be proud of and then everyone goes crazy and fights.  Things look bleak until Princess Leia and the resistance shows up and sort of saves the day.  We ultimately find out that Kylo Ren is Han and Leia’s son which should be a lesson to everyone that if you have the force in you then you shouldn’t have kids because there’s like a 50% chance that they’re going to become an evil warlord. One complaint about this storyline is that Leia looks broken about her son turning evil while Han seems to have taken it as reason to party and troll throughout the galaxy with Chewbacca even though he’s like 70 years old now.

I burn my hand on this thing like all the time.

The movie takes a slight downturn in the second half because it kind of becomes a “Best Of” show.  It’s like the writers were like “Remember all the best parts of the first trilogy? Well we’re doing them again but bigger!”  It’s all kind of obvious but it’s pretty enjoyable and the final battle scene is great. There were lots of parts in the movie where the audience clapped but I choose not to clap because I’m just not that kind of person. At the end of the day it was good and I look forward to seeing the next one but I’m not going to become mentally unstable waiting for it.

Rating: 7.5/10

@JoePontillo