Not without its flaws, Star Wars: The Force Awakens succeeds in spinning a yarn on old and familiar tales that we like revisiting again and again. The Force Awakens doesn’t waste time trying to establish what has happened before. Just like Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), the first Star Wars movie, we are thrown bang in the middle of the action. There is great urgency right from the first scene when we learn that Luke Skywalker has gone missing for a long time. For many, he is a myth, one who may have wandered away to a distant land. Later we are told why. A droid, meanwhile, with valuable information stored in its system, gets lost till a scavenger girl named Rey (Daisy Ridley) finds it. In a junkyard settlement, Finn (John Boyega) spots a stolen, rundown ship. He calls it garbage. Later in the movie, three people walk into a bar where aliens of different races, from petty criminals to helpful associates, lounge and get drunk.
Throughout the first hour of The Force Awakens runs a sense of déjà vu. The abovementioned incidents in the film echo events, characters and themes of the past. Star Wars geek J.J. Abrams feeds on fanboy emotions and structures his film a lot like the 1977 movie. To Abrams’ credit, instead of feeling repetitive or coming across as lazy writing, he makes it feel like one universal story that spreads itself over space and time. Rey and Finn are updated heroes yes – a female protagonist and a coloured male actor in a new gender and race-sensitive world. But they talk and behave the way they would’ve had they starred in the early Lucas movies. Both are seemingly ordinary people who don’t have plans to do anything extraordinary. But when thrown into the situation, they end up saving the world. Given its disastrous and much-ridiculed prequels (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) that came out between 1999 and 2005, The Force Awakens could have gone for a cynical re-imagination. Instead, it goes in the opposite direction, to a more innocent world of childlike wonder of the early movies. Right from its first frame – when that iconic opening scrawl disappears into the galaxy, the Force Awakens makes its intentions clear: this is made by a fan, for the fans (that must be large enough to make a continent, perhaps?). The Force Awakens doesn’t feel outdated a bit. The Star Wars universe, where ancient cults and futuristic concepts co-habit, still feels like a singular artistic vision. In the age of mindless CGI-generated mumbo-jumbo in the ubiquitous superhero movies, it’s a relief to see the weird creatures and machinery of the Star Wars universe as real creations in real locations. Yet, The Force Awakens often finds it hard to sustain our interest in its action scenes – the Stormtroopers and lightsabers remain ultra-cool though. There is quite a bit of intergalactic battles in the last hour and they don’t excite you as much as those in episode IV, V and VI. They work in the earlier movies even today because we see them in the context of that time. The same thing churned out today, with better technology but without any inventiveness, feels bloodless.
It also lacks the emotional depth of the first trilogy. As good as the new leads are, especially Ridley, one hasn’t exactly come to the stage when one wholeheartedly roots for them. The real deal is still the original three. Having Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill back as Hans Solo, Princes Leia and Luke Skywalker is like catching up with old friends. With Solo playing the important role in this one than the other two, Ford shows us a completely convincing aging of his lovable outlaw. He still has debts to pay to petty criminal gangs and got some of his roguish charm intact. But he’s also softened and there’s a crucial track that becomes the centre piece of the film (giving out more would mean spoilers).
It’s not as easy as it seems – to promise a nostalgic reboot of one of the most enduring and beloved franchises in movie history and deliver on most counts. With the next two instalments all set to be made, it could well be “A New Beginning”.
– Sankhayan Ghosh
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Director: J.J. Abrams
Actors: Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Oscar Isaac
