Film: Star Wars – The Force Awakens

Having been to see Star Wars (later A New Hope) as a 7 year old, I was disappointed by the prequels, so was very tentative about the new sequels.

I was both pleased and disappointed when I got the DVD of The Force Awakens.

So, a new desert planet (hmm where have we seen that ?), and a new cute droid BB8.

On the upside, the main character is a woman so we move into the twentieth century at least.

Again on the upside, we have a black actor as a main character. Finn is introduced well and provides some interesting ideas about why Stormtroopers always have their helmets on.

So we have The First Order (son of The Empire), which is only sketchily described which may be partly for dramatic tension, but annoying for those who don’t go looking online as to what is going on. Three main protagonists are introduced – Snoke; Ren; and Hux. They’re fairly well fleshed out for what little time they have.

Their screen time is fairly short as with any new film setting up a franchise deliberately, a new swathe of characters have to get screen time to set up the framework the rest of the sequels will populate and develop. So as part of a franchise series no problem – annoying as a stand alone movie and therefore it compares badly to SW ANH when compared one to one. But given SW ANH was pretty much a shot in the dark and didn’t assume a trilogy was a given, its not a fair comparison. So, characterisation so far not bad, not astounding.

Leia and Solo then turn up to support Rey and Finn all of which mesh well together, along with the return of C3PO and eventually R2D2. Solo’s killing was really good, very unexpected to kill of such a popular character at such short notice in the first of the sequels.

The First order’s “Star Destroyer Base” is fairly lame and results in the overall plot of the film feeling like a re-tread of ANH, which detracts from the many upsides of the film.

So overall I think this is a good romp, much superior to the prequels and approaching the original series in enjoyability, and hopefully setting things up for the XII and XIII episodes.

But…

Captain Phasma.

Well she got ran appearance on the posters, got a name, got a unique outfit, and was obviously set up as a major character and then…

…@….@….@….@…

Yes, the gag with Solo allegedly dumping her into a garbage chute was a nice one, but really, she needed much more screen time to establish her character.

A missed opportunity, IMHO.

Looks like she will return, and I hope she gets a better amount of screen time//characterisation in the following sequels.

Overall, a good start to a new series of sequels, as a stand alone film so so.