So, I finally saw TFA last night. Yes, it took me eight months, sue me. I've wanted to watch it really badly for a long time, just hadn't gotten around to it until now.
I liked it a lot. It felt like it took place in the same galaxy as the OT, whereas the prequels felt like they took place in a sort of cartoonish version of that galaxy. There's a grittiness here that was absent in the prequels, imo. The action sequences, both the space battles and the saber duals, are fantastic. Just super, super fun to watch. I thought the opening with the First Order attacking that settlement on Jakko was highly effective and visually incredibly exciting. It immediately set the tone of the film and made it feel like kin to the OT. The final light saber battle is perhaps in the best the saga has seen since the Qui-gon/Obi-Wan/Darth Maul "dual of the fates" in TPM(though I don't think anything can top that one in terms of choreography and visual appeal), it was beautiful. I could go on.
I've read the criticisms of some here about how elements of the plot are recycled and how the filmmakers played it safe and gave fan service and all of that, and it's pretty much true, but I don't care. I don't view it as a negative.
With the original films, especially ANH and ESB, there's a simplicity to the plots that give a certain buoyancy to the action, whereas the plot of the prequels was much more complex(some of it necessarily so, what with having to tell the story of how a republic turns into an empire, but some of it not so necessary), to the point where the films arguably got bogged down by it. To delve even a little deeper, the OT was high fantasy. The prequels, I believe, aspired to add actual sci-fi elements into the fantasy, to very mixed reaction. For TFA, the filmmakers very obviously wanted to return to the more broad-stroke storytelling of the OT - a plot as simple as 'The Resistance, led by Leia and Han and joined by new characters, races the First Order, led by Kylo Ren, to find Luke, who disappeared after the new Jedi were wiped out' - and to a fantasy palette less polluted with sci-fi aspirations that a large percentage of fans didn't necessarily want anyway.
Now, like I said, some of that complexity of plot and detail-oriented-ness was necessary in order to tell the story of the Republic turning into the Empire. But when telling this story, the post-OT story, when so many fans have a bad taste in their mouth from the prequels, going minimalist with the plot was the right decision. It was a palette cleanser, and it allowed people to come back to the franchise and just buckle in for a really fun, propulsive, thrilling ride, to just sit back and feel the impact of the thing without having to think too much. And in the end, the Star Wars films have always been more about emotion and less about incisive thought. Good vs Evil. The human condition. Which brings me to this...
The thing that really stood out to me was that the new lead characters - Rey, Finn, Kylo - were so relateable on a human level, whereas in the prequels, the same couldn't really be said for Anakin or even Padme. They all have their own struggles and motivations. Finn's conscience wouldn't let him kill for the first order and he wants to redeem himself for the actions he did carry out. Rey continuously feels pulled back to Jakku because...we're not sure, she was waiting for someone relating to how she ended up there in the first place, and struggles between that instinct and the desire to develop her skills, see where they take her, and be part of something bigger. Even Kylo, in his unmasked moments, is revealed to have a genuine bitterness towards his parents for things as yet unknown, and yet clearly also still feels something for Han when he sees him. I feel like these characters have a sort of depth that was sorely lacking in too many of the prequel characters.
I was impressed with Adam Driver. He only had like ten minutes or something unmasked, but in that ten minutes he managed to convey the whole gifted-jedi-turned-bad-with-a-tormented-soul thing with more nuance, more menace, more gravitas than Christensen was able to in two full films. Whereas Anakin came off too emo, like a 13 year old, whining to everyone about how he'd been wronged with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, Kylo comes off as an adult, and his expressions of anger and/or pain(like his encounter with Han) and/or fear(like when he realized he couldn't jedi-mind-trick Rey) are quieter, more pensive, and suggest internal conflict, and that there is more to him beneath the surface, which is a feeling I never really got about Anakin. Driver's performance is the kind of performance the character of Anakin deserved in the prequels.
BTW, it may seem like I'm piling on Hayden here, but to be clear, while I generally don't like his performances in AOTC and ROTS, I don't really blame him either. I don't think he's a bad actor, I just think he was miscast and then handicapped with poor direction and poor dialog. None of that is his fault. So on that note, I also have to give the TFA writers credit here, for making Driver's Kylo already more interesting than Christensen's Anakin.
It may also seem like I hate the prequels. I don't. I just recognize the flaws in them and appreciate TFA's attempts to not make the same mistakes.
Anyway, I really liked the film. The one thing I didn't love was
. I had somehow managed to go eight months without being spoiled about that, so I was genuinely surprised when it happened. Like everyone, I love Han, and I was bummed when it happened. I'm not sure why they did it. Some say Ford wanted it that way, but he's apparently going to be in Episode VIII(in flashbacks I guess), so that would make less sense. Anyway, if it had to happen, at least it happened in a most Shakespearean manner, with
.
I very much enjoyed it and am looking forward to Rogue One, Episode VIII, and beyond. Will definitely pick up the 3D blu-ray when it's released in November.