Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Yes, this review contains spoilers…

The opening crawl teases the plot: General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), commander of the Resistance has sent a pilot, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), to retrieve the missing piece of a map that leads to Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi knight in the galaxy.  Lying in exile, he has become a mythical figure few believe actually exists.  A flat angle shot of a Star Destroyer obscuring the planet Jakku behind it slaps us in the face as a ham-fisted attempt at metaphor:  Casting the long shadow of the First Order—remnants of the Empire all but defeated in RETURN OF THE JEDI.  The juxtaposition of the slug crawl and this shot perhaps foretells what one might already expect from the pairing of writer Lawrence Kasdan with director J.J. Abrams—a fairly good story somewhat hobbled by middling, thoughtless direction.

Kasdan, who penned RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and rewrote THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, has taken a formulaic story and given it some new flourishes.  At its best, THE FORCE AWAKENS makes the plot to destroy the doomsday device, Starkiller Base (borrowing from the original draft of Star Wars in which the protagonist was named Deak Starkiller), the backdrop against a new Hero’s Journey featuring a female protagonist, Rey, played fluidly by Daisy Ridley and guided by the Yoda-like Maz Kanata (Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o, whose face apparently was so gorgeous they had to replace it with CG).

There might have been this belief that recruiting Kasdan to write THE FORCE AWAKENS would relieve Abrams of some of the pressure to make this a commercial success.  But this is the same writer who gave us the exceptionally misguided DREAMCATCHER.  His best films were in the hands of more able directors, namely Steven Spielberg and Irvin Kershner.  But even then, lightning in a bottle is a hard thing to recapture once loosed on to the world.  And exceptionally harder now that the world is awash, thanks to George Lucas, in Star Wars everything—merchandise, books, cartoons, etc.  Consequently, having acquired Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.1 billion, nothing produced by the Mouse House is going to stand out in quite the same way.   It’s not on that basis that I find THE FORCE AWAKENS to be good but not great.

Without damaging Abrams’ precious Mystery Box™, the plot of this chapter in the Star Wars canon is generally similar to that of RETURN OF THE JEDI.  One of the criticisms at the time weighed against that film was that it was largely a rehash of the basic doomsday device plot from the first film.

Scenes linger in the mind: the light playing on Darth Vader’s gleaming surfaces as this metal man, who’s like a giant armored insect, fills the screen; Han Solo saving Luke’s life on the ice planet Hoth by slashing open a snow camel and warming him inside; Luke’s hand being lopped off, and his seemingly endless fall through space;

-Pauline Kael’s review of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, 5001 Nights at the Movies

This picture opens in a desert and Max von Sydow is passing some kind of important message to his son Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). Everybody hits their marks, laser pistol effects are added in post, and this bat-like ship appears carrying the masked villain Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) whose entrance feels anemic, as if Abrams was too concerned about losing momentum that he didn’t want to invest the time in it.  Compare that to the portents of Vader’s entrance on the Rebel vessel Tantive IV at the beginning of the original STAR WARS (1977).

Abrams gave a recent interview in which he proffered that his approach to directing this seventh installment of the franchise was inspired by Terrence Malick—a foolish move, regardless of his intentions.  Naturally, he tempered his boast, saying that he aspires to that level of talent.  I sincerely believe that he wouldn’t imagine himself on Malick’s level.  But if that’s the type of work to which he aspires, he’s taken off in the wrong direction.  Remember the scene in STAR WARS where Williams’ iconic theme is swelling as Luke looks out across the dunes at the binary sunset?  There’s a similar shot in which Rey is resting against the wreckage of an Imperial Star Destroyer.  Abrams goes wide for a few seconds but immediately moves right back to the action.  Either he doesn’t care or hasn’t the freedom to ruminate in that moment as Malick would.  And it’s in that context in which the film’s weakness resides.

Many interesting threads emerge, but Abrams goes nowhere with them either out of incompetence as a director or subservience to a franchise-minded studio.  Why is Maz Kanata hiding out in a bar and why, if she’s so wise, is her sole function to move the hero along?  In THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, Yoda doesn’t just describe the Force to Luke in generic, expository terms.  He shows Luke what it is to find strength within one’s self.  General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson hamming it, reveling in shallow Nazi parallels) is clearly vying for the augural Supreme Leader Snoke’s (Andy Serkis) assent at every possible opportunity. Again, this is Abrams at his noisiest trying to beat you in the head with it.   No, no… two times isn’t enough.  Let’s add a third and a fourth meeting with the Great and Powerful Oz to show you just how vulgar Hux’s ambitions are, but we’re given no real insights as to why the brewing rivalry.  And many of the characters feel just like that, cardboard cut-outs to help speed the plot along.

The picture feels a bit clunky, as if on stilts, until the action takes place. Roger Ebert had a cynical observation about whom the Oscars rewards, to paraphrase, “He who acts most acts best.”  Though not as acrimonious as Lucas’ prequels, which aren’t even worth consideration if we’re to be serious about any kind of analysis, Abrams feels off balance when he’s not running.  I can relate, but I have poor motor coordination because of my cerebral palsy. What’s J.J.’s excuse?

THE FORCE AWAKENS also suffers from Abrams’ lack of a visual style.  It’s not due to technology.  He insisted on real locations and a film medium as opposed to digital cinematography. RAIDERS’ cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, like Peter Suschitzky on EMPIRE, had an easily deconstructed style that was consistent and appropriate for the tone Spielberg wanted for his homage to b-movie serials.

Yet consider how THE FORCE AWAKENS opens: We feel as though we’re on a badly-lit set.  The dirt and blood feel painted on. The picture looks sterile.  The film improves on the strength of the actors, especially Daisy Ridley, but we shouldn’t be hanging our analysis on her hypothetical relevance in sequels to come.  Save for two kinesthetic sequences in which the Imperial deserter Finn (John Boyega) and Rey separately unlock their skills, Abrams relies upon flat angles when he should use hero shots and hero shots when he should use two-shots.  Abrams sets up scenes where someone walks by foot (or sled) only to jump on a powered vehicle placed in a location he can pan to, purely to delay a reveal.  You wonder why they didn’t just park closer in the first place.

Yes, I get that there kinda sorta maybe is more to come because Abrams is tasked with reinvigorating a whole franchise … if only because Lucas obliterated it with his abject insistence on being surrounded by yes men and Disney is completely out of ideas, given to recycling its old masterpieces.

Yes, I get that Harrison Ford steals almost every scene as Han Solo… if only because Ford kept playing Han Solo in every other movie he’s ever made and that has never escaped the collective consciousness.  We get the warm fuzzies because of work done in previous films and not this one.

What I connected with in STAR WARS is not the spectacle, but the central story of a boy afraid of becoming his father.  I identify with that on a personal level.  And just as soon as Abrams attempts to replicate that visceral notion, by which I mean that he borrows Suschitzky’s set-up albeit at the wrong angle, he’s got to move right along because he’ll lose his balance.  Something has to blow up.  God forbid the story should move slow enough for anyone to wonder what purpose it serves the First Order to obliterate every habitable planet in the galaxy.  Isn’t the goal of imperialism to gain control of neighboring resources with or without the people’s consent?  What good is it if you annihilate the labor AND the acreage?

And what about Snoke?  We keep seeing these giant projections of him delivering edicts to Hux and Kylo Ren… But knowing Abrams penchant for poetic symmetry (which in Hollywood is a synonym for “laziness”), did anyone think we wouldn’t be the least bit curious about the little old man pulling levers behind the curtain?

THE FORCE AWAKENS is passably entertaining for the two hours and fifteen minutes of its running time.  Abrams still a slave to his marketing-friendly-but-intellectually-bankrupt Mystery Box™, one can’t help but feel it’s all Snoke and mirrors.

But I will give you two observations:

1. In spite of a characterization that’s unlikely to crack the defensive armor of toxic masculinity, not only does Rey emerge as the reluctant protagonist we wanted to see in Anakin (before the fall), but she realizes her destiny in a climactic lightsabre duel that evinces a greater respect for the pacing of Luke and Vader’s encounter in EMPIRE, which was choreographed and doubled by Bob Anderson, an Olympic fencer who coached Errol Flynn, among others.  I strongly suspect that Abrams watched all of Mike Stoklasa and RedLetterMedia’s critiques of the Star Wars prequels before undertaking this project.
2. In the few moments that Luke Skywalker appears on screen, Mark Hamill’s singular facial expression out-acts every other actor in this film.  Hamill is the most underrated of the entire franchise, especially given that all his work is attributed to the larger-than-life character of Skywalker and not himself.  Yet in spite of the hurried character introductions, 90% of which take place in the first ten minutes of the film, we see thirty years of regret, anguish and dread of what’s to come only alluded to earlier summed up in a single look that lasts but a few seconds.

Perhaps another director will pick up the elements that Abrams left scattered about, imbue them with some… any kind of subtext, to give us some real poetry.  JEDI already established that Luke was so powerful he could see far enough into the future to plan out Han Solo’s elaborate rescue.  Wouldn’t it be neat if Yoda were wrong and Luke remained in exile so that Rey could complete the circle as the “other” who brings balance to this MacGuffin we like to call The Force?