Posted By Mark on Dec 18, 2015 | 4 comments

Like many people I’ve been to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens and like many people you’ve probably seen it too even if you haven’t because you’ve probably seen the original Star Wars and without wanting to spoil the film too much this new release is almost exactly the same. In much the same way that J. J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek you can more-or-less consider Star Wars: The Force Awakens to be a reboot of A New Hope with a splash of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi thrown in for good measure.

Did I like The Force Awakens? Yes. It was a big sci-fi spectacular, it had good action, good characters, and it all felt warm and familiar. It’s a good film because the original Star Wars trilogy was good. That said, there was nothing new in it at all and I’m really hoping that this is addressed in the following two; I’m going to be mightily disappointed if all we can look forward to is ghost Jedi, swamps, and muppets in forests again.

So, let’s see what The Force Awakens is like.

The desert planet Tattooine still features, only this time it’s called Jakku.

The person on that desert planet with the notably absent parents who dreams of fighting for the rebels and who has the Force flowing within them, originally Luke Skywalker, of course, this time is Rey. An aside here: I really liked her. She’s a tougher character than Luke ever was, handy in a fight, taking no nonsense, and only grudgingly accepting help. I approved of Rey a lot.

The evil Empire is now the evil First Order.

The evil Emperor is now the evil Supreme Leader Snoke. It will be interesting to see if any back story of Snoke appears in the upcoming movies as I understand he became truly evil because his parents Snufflywubs Giblets and Jar Jar Jumblybum didn’t give him a cute enough name.

The Darth Vader character – the Sith Lord, all in black, with a family connection to one of the main characters – is now Kylo Ren. With his helmet removed he reveals himself to be Young Sherlock Holmes. The pipe is truly evil and explains the husky voice.

Kylo Ren.

The bit where the Millenium Falcon is captured, boarded, and the pilots are hiding below the deck plating is there.

Han and Luke dressed as stormtroopers pretending to take a captured Chewbacca through the evil base is now an actual stormtrooper – Finn – pretending to take a captured Poe Dameron through the evil base.

The Death Star is now Starkiller Base. Nobody thinks to change moon for planet and say “That’s no planet, that’s a space station” because it is actually a planet and not a space station but you get the feeling that if they could they would have. Just like the deadly weapon from Star Wars and Return of the Jedi this weapon also features a shield that needs to be disabled and some design flaw vulnerabilities that could easily have been remedied. At least there’s some knowing dialogue towards this by Han Solo. Still, something new might have been nice.

I had some issues with Starkiller Base too that weren’t all design flaw-based. During the countdown to the firing of the weapon at the rebel planet while the X-wings launch an attack on the base (yes, just like in Star Wars) we see the base sucking a sun dry to store its energy; when the sky goes dark it can fire. The thing is we don’t see this take place earlier in the film when it destroys some planets of the Republic. It’s still nice and sunny when they fire so I can only surmise it sucked another sun and then moved off to another system (as planets like to do; I’d have liked to see it travelling by the way), or sucked one from a binary system maybe. And it must get bastardly dark and cold when a sun has been sucked dry so I really wouldn’t want to be on the base’s surface when that happens. I can’t imagine the life expectancy for the trees and plants that were on its surface would have been high for a planet that would likely spend vast amounts of time in darkness or around stars with different light spectra; this would create a challenge in generating oxygen which does make you question the sense in creating the weapon in the first place.

Casually ignores the speed at which the beam of energy fires compared to the speed of light and the ability to destroy planets around other star systems.

The means by which the shield was disabled, though, I liked. Sometimes you just need to point a gun at someone and say “switch the shields off.” And then throw them in the trash compactor. Ah, everyone loves crushing shiny stormtroopers slowly to death.

But back to the film similarities.

Yoda’s there, only Yoda is now called Maz Kanata.

Maz Kanata.

Maz’s place is filled with aliens from all over and there’s live music playing. The surroundings are nicer but I’d be tempted to book Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes for the music as the house band were not a patch on Mos Eisley’s finest.

You probably remember when Darth Vader confronted the fatherly figure of Ben Kenobi and killed him while witnessed by Luke, Chewie, Han, and Leia, leading to them going all crazy, shouting, and shooting all over the place. Well, Kylo Ren also confronts a fatherly figure while witnessed by several other characters and a death occurs too that you know is coming yet still seems to be a surprise to all the people who you think would have a better feel for what the foppish one is capable of.

The plans hidden in R2-D2 on a zip disk instead of emailed or FTPed are completely changed and upgraded in The Force Awakens to be part of a map hidden in BB-8 on a USB stick instead of emailed or FTPed. It turns out that R2-D2 also has some part of the map that he decided he wasn’t going to share with anyone until he powered up because he was in a shitty mood and which might have been handy to have earlier on for the rebel group trying to find Luke Skywalker.

Princess Leia’s capture, tortured interrogation, and rescue is Rey’s capture, tortured interrogation, and rescue, although Rey does a pretty good job of escaping on her own thanks to a sudden insight into using the Force on Daniel Craig dressed as a stormtrooper. Mind control of troopers encouraging them that these are not the droids they’re after easily becomes mind control of troopers encouraging them to release shackles and leave the room with the door open.

And dropping the gun.

So, yes, the film is completely unoriginal. But I liked it a lot and you probably did or will too. The new characters are good, the old characters are just as good, the action is actiony, the visuals are lovely, and there are some nice touches of humour and a bit of emotion in there too. We can probably expect to see some more of Finn and Rey’s background brought out in the sequels, a darker sequel with more deaths of main characters, and, most importantly, the return of C-3PO’s gold arm. Luke might even speak.