I'll put on some elevator music while I wait for you to go away...
There is way too much to talk about! I feel like this movie was jam-packed with interesting elements, a bit hard to take in. I loved it, loved it, loved it.
1. This is what a science fiction universe should look like. Not just diverse in aliens, but in human characters too. Our X-wing hero is a Guatemalan-American, and our other lead guy is black, and of course our protagonist is female. There are women all over this thing, including among the baddies! The X-Wing pilots included aliens! It was almost distracting because the sets looked just like old Star Wars, but minus all the white guys. So sweet. (But the main baddies were white. We'll see what the paranoid white racist dudes will think of that!) (Update: Here it is! tr;dr) (too racist; didn't read)
2. One thing I didn't like with movies 1-3 is they're overly CGI-ed -- it's not always realistic looking. This movie had seamless effects. It looked and felt just like the originals.
3. One thing I enjoyed about movies 1-3 were all the costumes and foreign worlds and species. There was less of that in this movie--it was less exotic. More like Game of Thrones where you're in a mostly familiar land, a subtle sort of fantasy. But I wonder if we'll get more of it in movies 8 and 9. There wasn't room for it here, which is fine.
4. The music disappointed me. That was another strength of movies 1-3 -- Williams came up with some beautiful new themes that helped convey the emotion even when the storytelling/script fell short. Movie 7 had very strong acting and writing and plotting, so it didn't have to rely on the music. But I missed it. The incidental music was good, echoing all six of the previous films (and Raiders at one point); but the big "we blew up the Death Star thingy" theme fell flat.
5. The casting and acting were so good! I didn't know Boyega (Finn) could be so funny! The second half of the movie was more emotional, like Empire; but the first half was funny like New Hope, and Boyega shone. There was great chemistry with our protagonist Ray so I definitely hope for a romance there. :-)
6. I think we knew Solo would die in this trilogy. The writer Kasdan wanted to kill him in Jedi, as did many. We saw in Firefly how effective and moving that can be, to take out a main character. (And then George RR Martin took it to 11.) But the original movies were supposed to be Saturday morning serials, and I'm glad Lucas insisted on keeping it that way. I was a child, and I got to enjoy what he wanted children to take from it--a sense of wonder and hope, a spur to my imagination. The ending with everyone alive and well was perfect.Force Awakens feels like what happens if you take Lucas' universe and push it one step further into the realm of Serious.
It felt deeper, a bit more adultier. With Han and Leia's son turning to the dark side, and the effect on their relationship and on Luke, and on the kid himself--there is a lot of pain. It's like starting off with Empire. So though movie 7 feels like our good old universe, it's going to have its own flavor, just as 1-3 did.
7. I hated Leia's first outfit and hairdo. She has a short neck, so she looked terrible. And the hair too--it made her look so old. Why did they do that to her? Lord. I wonder why they couldn't/didn't get Trisha Biggar on costume design. The second costume was better, but the hair was weird. Like... it would take forever to do that second hair design--what general spends that much time on her hair? 8. They did a great job of making the characters well rounded. They echo the roles played by the original characters, but each with their own twists. The writers have given them all vulnerabilities, which (as Lani Diane Rich via Brene Brown points out) helps us connect with them.
Ray is almost a Mary Sue--she's great with technology, ships, flying; but also discovering all these Force-ee skills. Very much like Luke, growing up on a barren planet, yearning for something else; but even lonelier than Anakin or Luke cause she has no family. You care about her immediately.
Finn was basically a slave, brainwashed, expected to commit mass killing, and now he's struggling to become a new kind of person. He even leaves at one point, like Han Solo. ("He's got to follow his own path, no one can choose it for him.") As Campbell said about Solo: "The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he hadn't known he possessed."And finally our villain Kylo Ren--he's so sad and conflicted, the poor little guy! Out of control, being turned a bit mad by the effect of the Dark Side. The writers achieve the idea that "Everyone is the hero of their own story" -- I like the way the Light Side is seen as bad, and something you don't want to be corrupted by. He does terrible things, but the writers have already instilled in us the desire to see him redeemed by movie 9. The acting and writing and directing make his struggle what Anakin's should have been like in movies 2 and 3. (Anakin's turn to the Dark Side wasn't terrible, but it was a bit on the melodramatic side.)
9. I'm interested by Ray's use of the Force in her fight scene. She calms and centers herself, just like Luke learned to do; but then she comes out swinging. That sort of heavy attack is, from my understanding, more of a Dark Side thing. When Luke calmed himself, it always led to him to taking a passive or self-sacrificing choice. He let himself fall down the duct in Cloud City, and he put away his light sabre in the battle with Palpatine, and stopped himself from killing his father and threw his weapon away completely. Interesting contrast.
10. BB8 was ADORABLE. A delightful puppy. And our X-Wing hero was a delightful puppy too. And Lupita Nyongo's character was lovely.
11. Chewbacca was my favorite character as a child. I had a 6' cardboard cutout in my room, and I kinda disliked Leia for calling him a walking carpet. The love is clearly etched on my brain, because when he was shot I gasped. My mouth was hanging open and tears sprang to my eyes.
12. Did Philippe Petit build that goddamned ship they were on? What the hell. Would it kill you to install a handrail? As Sigourney Weaver screamed: "It doesn't make any sense! Whoever wrote this episode should die!"
13. The Force stuff was definitely weaker than in Empire and Return of the Jedi. Well, it's hard to top Yoda (my other fave character as a child.) Movie 7 had depth of emotion, but I think spiritually/philosophically it had less depth. We'll see what they do with 8 and 9, when Luke's around, and we try to save poor ole Kylo.
14. Does Carrie Fisher wear ill fitting dentures?
15. It was so painful to watch the Millenium Falcon being slammed against the ground! I almost covered my eyes.
16. What are the implications for killing stormtroopers now that they aren't clones?
