Star Wars: the Force Awakens | Movie Review

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I know I’m a little late to the The Force Awakens-hype. I’m a little late to the entire Star Wars hype actually. I hadn’t watched any of these movies until a week ago. I thought it was about time to see why everyone was going crazy for this one. So as anyone should do, I did a marathon of all seven movies with my sister and I’m glad I did. I won’t bore you with my thoughts on the original and prequel trilogies, but I do want to share my views on the latest one.

The Force Awakens is a great new entry in the Star Wars-franchise. Abrams did an brilliant job at continuing the look and feel of the older movies. Within the first minute of the movie, you immediately get the sense that it’s a Star Wars movie. I’m also glad that they’ve kept the tradition of the opening crawl at the beginning of these movies, since they give you a bit of needed background information.
I can see how some people feel it resembles the first Star Wars movie a lot, but I feel like that didn’t bother me as much. It has a lot of elements that the original had, but it differentiated enough to be distinguished as a different story.

Having some of the original characters return was amazing and having them adding value to the story is even more awesome. They are not included as some sort of quick cameo to tie this instalment to the original ones, but they actually contribute story-wise.
Harrison Ford is back as Han Solo and it looks like he never even quit portraying the character. Well, he’s obviously aged and more seasoned, yet he’s still the same Han. Carrie Fisher portrayed Leia once again, though she is now a general. She did a great job as well and managed to put some heartfelt moments in this movie.

Besides the original characters, we also get some new additions to the cast. Even though this is the first movie Daisy Ridley stars in, she manages to handle this movie very well. Rey carried the movie and becomes a major character in this franchise. John Boyega as Finn is a very likeable character and his interactions with Poe Dameron, portrayed by Oscar Isaac, definitely stole the show for me. Poe and Maz Kanata were my favourite characters in this movie. Lupita Nyong’o did a great job with the motion capture as the latter. There are some characters that I would’ve liked to see more, though I reckon we will in the next movies.
I feel like the movie lacked a bit for it’s villains. There’s close to no character development and we are left in the unknown as to why they have chosen the dark side. Not that they were bad or unbelievable, but I felt like there was something missing from these characters. We’ll probably get to know more about them in the next movies, but they could’ve used more time to explain in this movie.

I loved the fact that J.J. Abrams decided to use as much practical effects as possible here. I feel like it really shows off in the movie. Due to the fact that they filmed in real locations with real people dressed up as creatures, makes this movie feel like it could be real.
I was surprised by the humour present in this movie. There were seriously a quite a few moments where I laughed out loud.

Overall this is a great movie and a great continuation of the Star Wars-franchise. I’m looking forward to the rest of the sequel trilogy, but also to the Anthology movies starting with Rogue One this year. Are you a fan of the Star Wars movies and did you think The Force Awakens was a nice addition to that legacy?
I’ll see you later!

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