Like most contemporaneous critics, I considered those accomplishments to be more than enough.
#THE FORCE AWAKENS REVIEWS MOVIE#
Ultimately, for me the movie accomplished two crucial goals: It transported me back to 1977, when I saw Star Wars on opening day as a 10-year-old boy and it began the task of wiping away all cultural memory of the abominable prequel trilogy. I described the movie as “less sequel than remix,” noted that it was “ensnared in its own nostalgia,” and explained that “much of the enjoyment it provides is by design derivative.” But my complaints were half-hearted at best. I saw The Force Awakens on Tuesday December 15 and wrote my review that day for publication when the embargo broke Wednesday morning.
And please be forewarned that this is going to get down into the weeds a bit. Let me offer a few examples out of the many available. Yet what were once generally considered acceptable flaws are now viewed by some as defining failures. So briefly: The Force Awakens’s chief protagonist, Rey (Daisy Ridley), is essentially a female version of Luke Skywalker (and a marvelously understated feminist one: read our own Megan Garber on the subject here) its chief antagonist, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), is a Darth Vader knockoff in more ways than one Harrison Ford’s Han Solo fulfills pretty much the role this time out that Alec Guinness’s Obi-Wan Kenobi did last time oedipal issues are once again resolved by means of a light sabre encounter witnessed by young heroes it ultimately all comes down to an X-Wing assault on the minuscule weakness of an asteroidal, planet-killing super-weapon etc., etc., etc.Īll this has been known and acknowledged from the start. The litany of particulars is by now well documented, and I have no desire to add unnecessary spoilers for anyone who has (somehow) managed so far to avoid them. Even George Lucas has gotten in on the act, complaining that the movie is all recycled ideas, and that his experience of selling the franchise to Disney was akin to selling his children to “white slavers.” (Which mostly raises the question: Who’s worse? White slavers, or the person who sells his children to them?) The balance, however, has shifted from emphasizing the former to emphasizing the latter.
#THE FORCE AWAKENS REVIEWS PLUS#
The essential components of the assessment remain the same: On the plus side, the film’s performances are strong and pleasingly diverse, it boasts many lively sequences, and the overall result is way better than the second trilogy on the minus side, the movie is ensnared in its own nostalgia and lack of originality. (My own version of that case can be found here.)īut over the subsequent two weeks, as the movie has racked up historic box-office numbers, critical sentiment seems to have shifted. When the movie first appeared in theaters, the characteristic response by critics was, essentially: Yes, it recycles too much from the initial trilogy- and the original Star Wars in particular- but it so aptly recalls those long-ago delights that this is more a quibble than an existential flaw. Abrams’s reboot has seemed to work its way through the expectations game not merely on the level of the individual (myself included), but on the level of vast, cultural consciousness. Never have I seen this dynamic more evident than in the response to Star Wars: The Force Awakens-which isn’t surprising, given that it’s the most-anticipated film in recent memory. Why College Became So Expensive Joe Pinsker
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