This is going to be spoiler-free. Why? Because the rest of my dang family hasn’t seen the movie yet. I went by myself to the Crowfoot Cineplex this afternoon, while Tammy and the kids went to the optometrist. I have no idea how I managed to raise two kids who can take or leave Star Wars. I blame the prequels.
Speaking of which:
There are now four Star Wars movies.
The Force Awakens renders the Lucas prequels moot. In fact, if you can do an ice pick lobotomy to remove all memory of them, plus find an unaltered version of Return of the Jedi without Hayden Christensen smirking as ghost Anakin at the end, you’re good.
The Force Awakens has the things that made the original trilogy great:
- Characters you care about
- Dialog that’s quotable
- A good villain
- Special effects (but not just for the sake of them).
For some reason, the lightsaber battles felt more real. Like they were actually burning hot swords. The people fighting with them looked scared of the idea that they might get hurt by them.
Tammy dropped me off at 3:00, and I found the Cineplex to be a madhouse. I got in line, and immediately spotted that the show I wanted to see (2D at 3:30) was sold out. They had four showings in 2D and 12 in 3D, and the only 2D showing with tickets remaining was 10:00 tonight. So I resigned myself to the 3D at 4:00. It was a packed house, but I had a decent seat. After sitting through the pre-show palaver, then ten minutes of commercials then 10 minutes of trailers, everyone was ready to revolt. But once it got started, all was forgiven. The kids around me were totally into the movie. The woman to my left jumped out of her seat at every unexpected noise.
It was weird to have the movie start without the 20th Century Fox fanfare. Disney owns the franchise now. I suppose I should be glad that the Disney castle fanfare wasn’t on the front. Just a silent “Lucasfilm” logo, followed by “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”
3D Star Wars was also weird, especially in the space scenes with TIE fighters and star destroyers. There was one scene with a star destroyer, where the front of it looked like it was coming out of the screen. I was so tempted to put my hand up to try to touch it. In some ways, I think the 3D cheapened the look of the space scenes: the ships looked more like models hanging in a void. I am looking forward to the 2D version.
I don’t know what else to say that isn’t going to spoil the movie. There were a lot of scenes that harkened back to the original trilogy.
- George Lucas: I’ll go back and mess with the original scene to make it “better”.
- JJ Abrams: I’ll make a new movie with a better scene in it.
The intro of the Millennium Falcon is great. The new actors do well to make the audience care. The old actors do well to play their age. There were a lot of physical props, sets and effects in the movie. They made everything feel more “real” than the prequels, which were mostly shot in front of green screens.
I am really looking forward to two things:
- My wiener kids and wife seeing it.
- The next movie.
Well done, JJ Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan and Disney.
