"Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens"

In today’s film culture, where the influence of Star Wars is felt in every mainstream action/adventure film to the point where it’s almost invisible, making a balanced and level-headed assessment of a film like The Force Awakens is an almost herculean task. From the perspective of a critic who also happens to be a lifelong fan of the saga, the need to remain lucid and alert is doubly imperative: No matter how crushingly bad the prequels may have been, standards must remain sufficiently high to avoid mistaking mere mediocrity for quality. And as important as the tie-in merchandising may have been in shaping our childhood imagination, their existence demonstrates that the Star Wars saga is now a corporate brand as well as a story – a brand now owned by the Walt Disney Company, arguably one of the most powerful entities on the planet. Decades of pop-cultural osmosis and omnipresent merchandising combined with the current consumerization of nostalgia have imprinted the same message within our minds: The next Star Wars film will be good. The next Star Wars film must be good.

The underlying fear behind the hype was that all the hopes and fantasies we have projected onto the saga’s title would once again find themselves invalidated. Worse still were the silent, insidious questions traveling across our collective unconscious that this fear represented: Could it be that Star Wars never was as good as we made it out to be? Or that these films were the near-miraculous product of a specific concoction of inspiration, luck, creative restrictions and contemporary cultural influences that just happened to come at the right time in history? In other words, could it be that our generation and the generations to come will simply have to accept that they will never get “their” Star Wars?

The Force Awakens opens enough new avenues to make an affirmative answer seem possible, but its reluctance to venture outside its forebears’ towering shadow leaves the question open. As many critics and bloggers have pointed out, J. J. Abrams’s directorial career has so far consisted entirely of reviving stories he and his target audience grew up watching. In the span of almost ten years, he has directed five theatrical features, three of which are modern cinematic updates of popular 1960s TV shows. Even Super 8, his only film not based on pre-existing intellectual property, is a faithful-to-a-fault copy of the boyhood adventure fantasies produced by Spielberg and his movie-brat friends in the 1980s.

Abrams is thus, for better and for worse, the emblem of contemporary geek culture; the poster child of a once-marginalized identity built around popular entertainment marketed towards children and teenagers, now in complete creative control of Hollywood’s hottest properties. That The Force Awakens is his best film so far is particularly fitting, so illustrative is it of both the strengths and limitations of our elevation of childhood nostalgia to cultural godhood. It understands the narrative mechanics and economic-but-efficient characterization that made the original trilogy work so well, but works so hard to get them right that it struggles to find a voice that is entirely its own. Like a talented but star-struck apprentice fearful of deviating from the template set by his master, Abrams recycles narrative devices, settings, plot beats and visual cues from the original trilogy with just enough changes to suggest paths to eventual self-sufficiency.

The very first shot following the introductory crawl – the underbelly of a gigantic Star Destroyer gradually obscuring the stars as it crosses the frame’s verticality – looks like A New Hope’s iconic opening shot seen from a different angle, minus the rebel ship. The plot revolves around a cute little droid (BB-8, who looks like a metallic football with a revolving head) hunted on a desert planet by evil space fascists for the vital data it’s tasked with bringing to the heroes’ headquarters, only to come across an orphan dreaming of a better life. With the help of a fugitive, they escape the planet on board the seemingly decrepit old freighter Millennium Falcon and become involved in a race against time to destroy the villains’ devastating superweapon, as the orphan gradually learns the ways of the Force.

The reason the plot to A New Hope resonated so strongly within audiences worldwide is that it somehow managed to unite the elements of what Joseph Campbell called “the monomyth” that speak most directly to that mysterious part of the human mind that knows neither cultural nor temporal boundaries, only the limitless capacity for imagination. To see it imitated in its own sequel is disappointing but not altogether surprising – at best, Abrams and his co-writers – which include Star Wars veteran Lawrence Kasdan – use these glory days reminders to ensure the torch is passed along smoothly to the new generation of characters.

Indeed, most of the film’s strongest points derive from moments in which the past meets the present for one last dance before taking its final bow and making way for the future. Many of these moments are supplied by Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, who takes on the role of veteran-from-past-war-in-charge-of-mentoring-the-heroes previously assumed by Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Whatever frustration Mr. Ford himself may have with critics, audiences and filmmakers continually bringing his career back to the two characters that made him a star, his performance makes it very easy to understand why this keeps happening: Their very existence is a miracle for which he is largely responsible. He not only manages to cobble together the disparate pieces of pop culture from which these characters are made, he infuses them with nonchalant lifelike charm that feels almost unintentional. His acting in The Force Awakens illustrates that gift perfectly: With only a few words and glances, Han Solo isn’t just brought back to life – he steps back into our imaginations with the weight and shadow of a long unseen life spent running away from broken dreams and personal failures.

Chief among these failures is Han’s wayward son Ben – better known under the moniker Kylo Ren – whose desertion of his familial and political unit in favour of the evil First Order virtually drives the entire plot. It’s an ingenious reversal of the Luke-Vader dynamic that cumulates plot and character beats from all three original films, culminating in a scene that crystallizes all the film’s reference points and cardinal directions in one lightsaber stroke. Like A New Hope, it involves the battle-worn mentor getting killed by a primary villain to whom he has a personal connection. Like The Empire Strikes Back, it takes place on a beautifully-shot horizontal platform overlooking a chasm. And like Return Of The Jedi, it’s cross-cut with a space battle over the very station in which these dramatic personal events are unfolding.

This is the scene in which the callbacks to the original trilogy are given meaning and purpose. The death of Han Solo doesn’t just represent a dramatic narrative game-changer; as administrated by Kylo Ren, it’s an act of cathartic release – one that, given Abrams and his co-writers’ choices, seems outright necessary to allow the franchise to grow autonomously.

Kylo Ren, you see, is The Force Awakens’ most innovative creation. When we are first introduced to him, see his tall black-cloaked figure and hear that deep metallic voice coming from beneath the faceless mask, we are given every reason to dismiss him as a poor Darth Vader imitation – just another reminder of a perfect villain the franchise may never surpass. But the more we get to see of him, the more it becomes apparent that that is exactly the point. Kylo Ren has gone through an as-of-yet undefined journey to the dark side not unlike Anakin Skywalker’s, except that he is still learning the ropes. Behind the mask hides a scared, unbalanced and uncertain young man who has latched onto an idealized vision of his illustrious grandfather to compensate for his own perceived lack of identity. Put simply, Kylo Ren is – for want of a better word – a fanboy. A dark reflection of the generation Abrams represents: Gifted, privileged and passionate, but lacking in maturity and perspective.

Because this messy bag of hormones is also the film’s foremost antagonist, he is arguably the most difficult character to get right: He has to be simultaneously cruel and pathetic, uncertain all while projecting an aura of confidence, convincing as a threat even as his efforts to be threatening are discernible. That Adam Driver succeeds at walking that line is one of the film’s unqualified successes; correcting Hayden Christensen’s blandly petulant Anakin, he turns his character’s post-adolescent self-pity into a destructive, unstable weapon. His Kylo is a spoiled moody teenager with power and authority far above his understanding, all at the service of an ideology that thrives on dominance for its own sake.

Driver, best known for his work on Lena Dunham’s NYC dramedy show Girls, is an ideal fit for so relevant and complex a character. His gawky college-student face provides the perfect mask for the millennial confusion, resentment and self-absorption Kylo represents. In that respect, his eerily grateful act of patricide – the film’s indisputable high point – represents the culmination of our generation’s gradual acceptance of the fallibilities and inadequacies of our childhood hero creators, and the necessity to move on with their blessing (notice the reluctant compliance expressed by Ford’s body language in his dying moments).

The other big step in a new direction is John Boyega’s Finn. Of all the story’s arcs, his may be the most interesting because it’s one we’ve never seen in any Star Wars audiovisual media before: A non-violent Stormtrooper who, for reasons unknown even to him, has somehow resisted lifelong conditioning to unquestioning obedience and deserts everything he has ever known at the first opportunity, just so he won’t have to kill any more innocent people. This introduces opportunities to study the perceived naturalness of violence and aggression – which the Sith and their far-right politics consider self-evident – that demand to be exploited. Boyega himself is easily the best of the three new leads, a naturally likeable everyman that doubles as a uniting force between actors, creating spontaneous chemistry with every person he shares the screen with. As orphaned heroine Rey, Daisy Ridley’s relative inexperience sometimes sticks out, but she nonetheless acquits herself with spunk and stamina.

A pity that so many other new characters exist mainly to set themselves up for later installments, as though they were in a pilot for a TV show – you can probably blame Abrams’s TV roots for that. Gwendoline Christie cuts an imposing figure as the stormtroopers’ steely Captain Phasma, but only appears in all of three scenes to end up as a punchline for yet another New Hope call-back joke. Despite being the most seasoned actor of the new main cast, Oscar Isaac’s role amounts to little more than an extended Top Gun cameo. And while Andy Serkis does imbibe him with foreboding omniscience, Supreme Leader Snoke remains as generic a threat as the MCU’s Thanos.

As a director, J. J. Abrams has always come across as a competent technician that also happened to be a studious enough follower of better filmmakers to fool some critics into thinking him an auteur. Here, however, he is in his element. Refraining from his usual tendency to flash up expository scenes to hide their unengaging nature, he gives his characters enough leeway to express themselves in a way that isn’t constrained by plot mechanics or the need for spectacle. In scenes such as the climactic lightsaber duel between Kylo and Rey, he even uses his more familiar flash-and-slash style to effectively turn his screenplay’s implicit stage directions into concrete visual storytelling: Contrasting with the original trilogy’s slow-burning Kurosawan face-offs as well as the prequels’ theatrical acrobatics, Abrams films his characters’ fight in mobile, heavily-cut shots that follow their movements and match their mutual status as novices: It’s a clumsy, unevenly-focused affair with virtually no choreography to speak of – and it works beautifully.

To be sure, the film is not entirely exempt from issues common to modern blockbuster filmmaking: The rushed pace doesn’t find its proper rhythm until the second act, the political background is not well defined (apparently, a recently-restored Republic still needs a Resistance movement to face enemies that threaten its power) and the disappointingly uneventful destruction of an entire solar system proves once more that excessive build-up – in this case, a few shots of terrified civilians facing their imminent doom – tends to nullify rather than magnify emotional impact.

Still, Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens contains enough spark and soul to reinvigorate even the most cynical viewer’s faith in modern mythmaking. As much a mirror to our present culture’s psyche as its predecessor was an antidote to 70s malaise, it calls upon us – and upon its own creators – to grow as both storytellers and audiences. May the sequels demonstrate that we have listened.