Once again, a droid with secret information is dispatched to find help, and is intercepted by Jakku-native Rey (Daisey Ridley). In The Force Awakens, the hilted-lightsaber-wielding Sith apprentice is Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), whose initial similarity to Darth Vader at first seems cheap, until it becomes clear that the similarities are deeply intentional. The First Order (perhaps more accurately called the "Führer-irst Order") has supplanted the defunct Empire, and the Alliance seems stronger than they were at the outset of A New Hope, but the status quo is similar: evil bureaucratic Empire fronted by Sith Lord/Emperor hunts the Alliance through a combination of regular troops and his apprentice. We open on the desert planet of Jakku, where Rebel Alliance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is retrieving a key to the location of Luke Skywalker, whose sudden disappearance decades ago has allowed the Galaxy to return to a state pretty similar to how it was before. Don't forget to read the title crawl in the midst of all this clapping (which you, against your better judgement, will whole-heartedly participate in) -you'll be lost otherwise. And then all at once, the explosive trumpets and title crawl-this is where your average theater-goer is really going to start losing his mind. The stars of the galaxy lighting up the screen-more excitement. The LucasFilms logo-excitement sounds all around you. Little whoops sound from people unselfconscious enough to do stuff like that, which in the dark is a lot of them. Magic, it turns out-in all its meanings-is what makes Star Wars so special, so distinct, so disappointing when it fails, and so thrilling when it succeeds. It's just got such tremendous multivalence: movie magic, the magical "Force," the magic of suspension of belief, CGI wizardry, et cetera, ad Entertainment Weekly-ish nauseum.
That word comes up a lot in any discussion of what makes Star Wars special. So the question looms: can a modern movie capture what made the first trilogy so magical?
It's been a decade since our last Star Wars movie, and arguably three times that since one that wasn’t a heavily-qualified “good.” If do-overs existed for movies, then The Force Awakens is pretty much the do-over for 1999's The Phantom Menace. Now, explaining why it’s good is the real uphill battle.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a spectacularly good movie. I don't want you skimming paragraphs trying to find the sentence where I say it's good, so here it is.
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