Star Wars: The Force Awakens

J.J. Abrams – 2015 – USA

While watching the biggest movie in history, I was reminded of Freud’s theory that adult humans spend much of their time attempting to restage pleasurable memories from childhood.  Healthy or not, it’s a practice that is usually doomed to failure, leading to the nebulous feeling of dissatisfaction that burdens modern man.  The hope that there could possibly be a Star Wars movie as great as the first one is what eternally pokes and prods at the collective movie unconscious.  What the build-up to The Force Awakens showed was that this hope didn’t fade after the catastrophic let-down of George Lucas’ prequel trilogy, but only intensified.  I confess I never felt it, and was satisfied that lighting doesn’t strike twice.  But being in a theater full of grown adults whooping and gasping at almost every single action and line of dialogue made me newly aware of how much that Star Wars, more than any other film franchise, taps into something both primal and joyous that audiences recognize and want to savor.  The Force Awakens picks up about 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi (1983), during a time when the Rebel Alliance, now called the Resistance, is still fighting the remnants of the Empire, now known as the First Order, which, as before, seems to be ruled by a shadowy Sith Lord.  Abrams and co-screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan are careful not to stray far from the template.  Almost every character and situation correlate to something from A New Hope.  A lonely, Force-sensitive youth on a desert planet, dreaming of adventure; an exiled Jedi master awaiting the opportunity to redeem himself; surprise revelations about familial connections; a government hierarchy in which a Sith apprentice and the military are pit against each other; a cute beeping little robot; a fearsome, planet-sized mega weapon that needs destroying.  Sometimes the parallels are a little too on-the-nose; e.g. the wacky outpost cantina populated by a host of diverse aliens.  But for the most part, I was delighted to see how much Abrams and company steered clear of the prequel trilogy’s pitfalls, particularly its over-dependence on green-screen and CGI to the point that very little felt real at all.  It’s easier to single out what Star Wars VII does wrong than what it does right; simply because it’s doesn’t do much wrong at all.  But it missteps so rarely because it takes no risks at all, not because it takes risks and succeeds.  I can’t fault a film for failing to do what it makes no effort to do, but I do lament that it didn’t take at least a few chances.  The original Star Wars of 1977 took its place in line behind many visionary forebears – from The Searchers to The Hidden Fortress to Lawrence of Arabia to 2001: A Space Odyssey – and inspired entire generations of fans and filmmakers to think differently.  I don’t see that happening with The Force Awakens, as good as it is.   Star Wars was also – we must remember – a personal and even autobiographical film by George Lucas; filled with his loves, worries and influences.  Abrams’ film, in contrast, doesn’t convey much about him at all save for him being a Star Wars fan.  I don’t have any major gripes about the film, except to more-or-less agree with the sentiment expressed by several critics that Abrams plays it safe about as well as anyone could imagine.  There’s hardly any doubt that this is what the majority of fans wanted, but, again, part of me longs to be surprised and challenged by such momentous films, not entertained only.  People can argue all they want – and correctly – that Abrams merely stands on the shoulders of giants while George Lucas was a true innovator, but it doesn’t matter; the bottom line is that Abrams has made a more satisfying Star Wars movie than Lucas could have at this point.  Lucas is a genius and a superior filmmaker, but the prequel trilogy (1999-2005) demonstrated that he was not particularly interested in catering to the kid-in-all-of-us who adored the original trilogy.  A more mature artist at the time, he had other things he wanted to say, and personally I would have preferred him to make other films to express those ideas while supervising from a slight distance the continuation of the Star Wars franchise.