Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Spoiler Alert

You'll see it. I know.
But If I'm going to write anything more in depth than, yeah it's great ra-ra, then I'm going to have to talk about what happens in it.
So you've been warned. If you're the sort that hates spoilers, come back after you've watched it.
You've been warned, fair and square.

Nostalgia On Steroids

The people streaming into the cinemas were dudes my age and a bit younger (which makes them firmly GenX) with their brood of boys and their teeth-gritted-smiling spouses. Not having kids of my own it struck me that this was one of those generational handover moments that are usually lost on me because I don't have kids. But these dudes were there to share in a moment from their adolescence and childhood with their own kids.

The little kids came dressed as Jedis and Stormtroopers; the crowd had a buzz, but it was a tired kind of buzz. In some ways it is 10 years too late. The prequel Episodes I-III had botched things in such a way as to necessitate a better Star Wars experience, but the crowd felt muted. The anticipation was more like exorcising ghosts. The Gen X dads looked like they'd given up hope on some level.

But they were still there, going through the motions. This, after all, was Star Wars. There's always a new hope in more ways than you can imagine.

What's Good About It

It's a good thing when a product lives up to its billing. I'm not sure I'm about to label it the best Star Wars movie since Empire Strikes Back - though it just might be - but it did have the kind of pumping frenzied action that some of the prequels managed to have while delivering more of the flavour from the older films.

The new characters are good. They're engaging and interesting in new ways, and that is what you want.  The old characters grace the screen in a way that reminds you of the past, but that past is so distant. It's like a faded memory that underscores the scenes we see. It's a bit like making new friends at an older age. You're unsure of the value of the new friends because your old friends are so precious already; but the thing is that new friends are just as likely to be precious to you, and so you warm to the new characters very quickly.

The directing is very workman like. It's not very interesting in of its own. Compared to the 70s cineaste meandering vision of the original, this film is much more succinct and to the point. Normally I wouldn't say this was a good thing but in this instance it was a god send because there was a lot of story they had to get through. They weren't going to make a visual breakthrough kind of cinema here; JJ Abrams set out to make a Star Wars movie with the mood of the old ones, and that's exactly what he did.

The visual styling was consistent with the earlier productions, and that added great tangibility to the story; that is, tangible in the Star Wars milieu. But then these days the Star Wars milieu is a cultural space we all share. We know what it's supposed to be and this film landed its shot right in the middle of that zone. It gets more than a pass or a credit, it gets a distinction.

What's Bad About It

Maybe the film is too loyal to the original sources. Having gone to great lengths to recreate the feel of the old films, it then goes on to duplicate the emotional beats of the old films. When you consider that Episode I The Phantom Menace already did that, you get the feeling that the Star Wars universe is a lot smaller than originally imagined in 1977. The tropes keep getting repeated and you keep thinking "Oh God, couldn't they think of something new there?"

The film's first act is on a desert planet. Not Tatooine, but for the love of God it was hard to tell one from another. A droid is on a journey across the sands. It meets a young person about to set off on an adventure. The Storm Troopers come looking for the droid... and so it goes. One beat after the other, every one of them can find its equivalent from the original films. The order is shuffled, but it's the same box of chocolates. Not only was JJ Abrams risk averse about finding new emotional cues, he slavishly recreates a pastiche of the old films with a new skin. This might resonate with the new, or stimulate the nostalgia in the older fans but it felt tired. Tired as the Gen-X dads that queued to watch this thing.

But you know what? It's not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination. One hopes the next episode does something different. Like, really different. As it stands, this one was 'A New New New Hope'.

What's Interesting About It

I won't go into how Star Wars is such a huge cultural project all of its own. It has become a sort of cultural myth making which is trans-generational. It is like the creative industry is building the equivalent of the Babylonians inscribing 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' in cuneiform on tablets - a cultural monument - as an expression of who we are as a people. If real aliens should ever show up, we might show them Star Wars movies to explain our myths and what motivate us. It's getting to that kind of emotional investment for the audience as well as the film makers.

At the same time, it is as if the adults who made adult films have all vanished. This is what we have - the kids have taken over the toy store. I know I complain about this a lot, but this is the legacy of the first Star Wars. We live in that kind of world now; another Star Wars movie isn't really making things worse by a great deal.

Harrison Ford Is A Bastard

And here we get to the big spoilers. Again, if you hate them, go away! Don't read on!

In the lead up to the film, Harrison Ford has been doing a number of interviews. He's looked strangely chipper and incredibly accommodative in answering the questions about returning to the role of Han Solo which launched his extraordinary career as leading man. For a man who's had great disdain for "Han Yoyo" as he calls his iconic character and loathes being drawn into conversations about Star Wars, he's been congenial. Now we find out why. Han Solo dies in this film, thus releasing him from future obligations to the franchise. No wonder he looked so happy. Worse still, it is so drastic a death, he knows exactly how it would have gone down with the old fans. Like a lightsaber right through the heart. And so we come to understand his jovial mirth in all his interviews. It was a "so long suckers, and take that you nerds and geeks" smile.

He may find that his sense of release is short lived.

The Oedipal Complex Reigns Supreme In The Star Wars Galaxy

Of course, this film being 'A New New New Hope', Solo's death retreads Obi-Wan Kenobi's death/transformation from 'A New Hope', but also the "I am your father" scene from 'Empire Strikes Back'. Solo is killed by his own son-turned-villain. Yes, it's a shock. It's a shock precisely because in the first iteration of this Oedipal struggle, we were unwitting on-lookers with Luke; in the second iteration we were with Luke and unwitting participants; in this iteration we are fathers being slain by our own children. And therein lies the true horror of this death. We grow old, we die, none of this is to our choosing, none of this can be controlled.

The Oedipal complex simply isn't about our desire to have sex with our mothers, it also necessarily includes the homicide of the father. Anakin slays not only Obi-Wan, he also slays the Emperor. Luke confronts Darth Vader/Anakin knowing it is his Oedipal Complex Destiny to face him but gives in and says "I am not like you"; which enables Anakin to say the same thing to the Emperor but in Anakin's case, kill him. And so Kylo Ren - named Ben after Obi-Wan - kills Han Solo.

It is a sobering moment. It would have hit the old Gen X crowd hard. A lot of them looked dazed and confused as they stumbled out of the cinema, unsure of what they had seen with their broods of boys. What they saw was the emotional destiny awaiting them: on some metaphorical level, their sons will come and kill them, so that they may become adults. It's an uncomfortable thought that is going to fester. Maybe for that alone, this film might come to be viewed as important in the future. It is as if the film is telling us that we have to give up something of ourselves if we want something better.

The Petulant Teenager Who Will Come To Kill Us All

The major criticism of the prequels was just how underwhelming the character of Anakin Skywalker was, as it played out across three films before he made his haphazard transition into being Darth Vader. There is a tremendous disconnect between the grandiloquent and stoic Darth Vader we see in episodes IV through VI as voiced by James Earl Jones, and the petulant teenager with low emotional quotient and low self-control. If the turgid romance and the strange emotional torsion we see is enough to turn Anakin into Darth Vader, it seems more trivial than grand. And so rightly or wrongly the prequels get a hiding from the fanbase. With each passing year their esteem grows lower.

Yet, here we are with this film giving us an even more petulant and emotionally immature son who has chosen the Dark Side.The petulance of which is tinged not just with the Anakin Skywalker sullenness but also a wild Han Solo impulsiveness that manifests in thrashed equipment. And by thrashing, we mean with a lightsaber.

So this is the villain we get to replace Darth Vader, and he is more pathetic than Anakin Skywalker. The new bad guy Snoke who sits on the throne like the Emperor of old looks bigger than the Emperor but not necessarily smarter. Even with the dramatic slaying of Han Solo, you wonder if Kylo Ren has enough substance as a character to carry the next two films as the villain. The grandson of Darth Vader is more, Darth Mature.

Oddly Unromantic

In the last year, I sat down and tried to do the Machete order. In case you don't know, the Machete order is 4-5-2-3-6. Drop The Phantom Menace, and spare yourself the Ja-Jar Binks experience as much as possible.

I got through episodes 4 and 5 without a problem, but by the time I got through 2 and 3, I was too fatigued to watch 'Return of the Jedi'. Still, one of the most distinguishing features of the earlier films is the deep romanticism underpinning the action. They're deeply moving films that yearn for the eternal beauty in things, as Andrei Tarkovsky would have it. They're great films as well as being great movies. In turn the great fault of the later films was how unromantic the whole exercise became. Somewhere between the early 1980s and early 2000s, George Lucas had lost any sense of romanticism as a director. Keep in mind this is the same director of 'American Graffiti', which is another film imbued with romanticism. It is pretty hard to figure.

On some level the story of the 6 films in the order of production mirrors how George Lucas lost his romantic streak as a director and essentially became a kind of evil emperor presiding over Lucasfilm.

It is therefore a little sad to see JJ Abrams given the reins of the film, only to deliver a film that is oddly short on the romanticism as well. Maybe it's the distance of time; maybe it's simply the way we are now, but this instalment is decidedly prosaic in the same way that Episodes 1 through 3 are prosaic. It's really not that interested in the eternal yearning and existential wonder.

On the other hand there is a commendable political correctness about the whole enterprise. It is no longer a boy's club going around doing boy's own adventures. The demographics of space is not white people and weird tentacled aliens. There are many ideologically proper things going on with this film, but it never escapes the problem of being unromantic. There is no yearning for the eternal beauty. It doesn't strive for the force, it just sort of picks it up. It doesn't reach out to deeper meaning, it sort of finds it prepackaged and ready to consume. And I know I'm not saying this because I'm now old and bitterly cynical - I'm saying it because the franchise is old and bitterly cynical without the romanticism.

I'm curious to see what else happens now with the franchise, but in some ways I'm going to dial down my expectations. They're going to be fun little yarns, but they're not going to stretch out to the depth of space in search of meaning. It's kind of where we've all come to, so we may as well accept what is being offered for what it is. We grow old, we die, none of this is to our choosing, none of this can be controlled. So let's just say, may the Force be with us all.