Star Wars: The Force Awakens Review

If you would like to read any of my reviews of the previous films in the series, click here. This is an important film so in order to avoid spoilers, please refer to the next page.

Thirty years after the defeat of the Galactic Empire, the galaxy faces a new threat from the evil Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and the First Order. When a stormtrooper defector named Finn (John Boyega) crash-lands on a desert planet Jakku, he meets Rey (Daisy Ridley), a tough scavenger whose droid named BB-8 containing a top-secret map featuring the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), the last of the Jedi Knights. Together, the young duo joins forces with Han Solo (Harrison Ford) to make sure the Resistance receives the intelligence concerning the location of Skywalker.

This is a big one, perhaps the biggest one ever and rightfully so. It is the newest entry to the biggest sci-fi series of all time (in my opinion) and I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. Sure they rebooted the series just to make money (and they will make a boatload) but I don’t care because I’m a big fan (most won’t either). To those who are unfamiliar with the story, when a stormtrooper defector named Finn (Boyega) crashes onto a planet named Jakku and then runs into a female scavenger named Rey (Ridley) whom herself finds a droid named BB-8 which contains a secret map containing the location of Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker (Hamill). They join forces with Han Solo (Ford) in order to assure the safe arrival of this information to the Resistance led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher). This is the most I am willing to say about that at this time. What I loved about this film is that it reminded me more of the original trilogy than the more recent prequel trilogy with the former having a better story and the latter having better special effects. This film serves as a great combination of the two. The film’s story is a simple one but it tells it in a great way, touching you and appealing to your sense of spectacle. I loved the script here too as the dialogue was mostly great here and I loved its sense of humour (which reminded me of the director J.J. Abrams previous Star Trek films). Sure there are special effects here which were well done, but the film does not rely on them as much as the previous trilogy did. There is some CGI but you barely notice it making the film more real which I also liked. I liked the action but it came a little late for me. Because this is the first of a new trilogy of films, they have to establish new characters (because the current ones are getting a little old, no offense). I liked the way in which the film handled these characters giving them enough time compared to more established characters. Some with nostalgia may disagree. They were good with the main characters but I would have liked to have seen more of the secondary characters.  The story was good but wasn’t perfect to me as the film had me thinking of a few unexplained plotlines (again no spoilers) which did not overly impact my enjoyment. Overall, this is a great new addition to the series with a great story, interesting characters, great special effects, and great action.

Score: 9/10

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.