Review: "Star Wars, Episode VII - The Force Awakens"

ABRAMS, J.J., “Star Wars, Episode VII - The Force Awakens”, Lucasfilm/Disney Films Inc., 2015.

NB: I’m going to try and keep this as neutral as possible but, inevitably, some references to the events of the film are going to be mentioned. I will try not to de-bag any cats, but let me just say “SPOILER ALERT” before going in, regardless.

This might not be the venue for this particular film but, along with me, keen-eyed Mythos fans will have spotted the Cthulhoid horror that leaps off the screen in Act 2. Yes, Servitors of the Outer Gods, the Idiot Pipers swarming around the Daemon Sultan Azathoth, make their debut in this film. You saw it here first folks! For me, this just underscores the fact that whatever HPL and his spiritual descendants were tapping into, its power is still with us, influencing the creative efforts of others today. Either that, or J.J. Abrams is a Mythos fan from way back.

The creatures in question were the ones that were being smuggled aboard the space station which captures our two heroes, Rey and Finn, as they escape the clutches of the First Order. These terrors are obscenely plastic blobs with hideous mouths and many trailing tentacles. However the thing that really defines them is how they move: it’s the Servitor “tuck and roll” as detailed in Sandy Petersen’s Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters. Look it up – you’ll see it’s true. If you are planning a scenario where these nightmares are coming into play, you could do worse than watch this sequence by way of research.

As to the rest of the movie, well, what can be said that hasn’t probably already been said elsewhere? This is a breath of fresh air: everything about it is new and interesting, cunningly wrought and deftly handled. The mess that Lucas recently unleashed has been neatly swept under the rug and someone with a firm grasp on the Craft has stepped in to take charge. It’s a grand moment; a new day has dawned.

Before getting on, let’s make some definitions. I want to break down the extant movies in the franchise in the following way (it’s a personal framework, but feel free to make it your own): the first three films (Episodes IV, V and VI) I refer to as the “First Films”; Episodes I-III, I call the “Bad Films”; these new films starting with Episode VII, I call (naturally enough) the “New Films”. I suppose I could just call them by their Episode numbers and be done, but this puts them more neatly into my personal mental framework.

One thing that Abrams does, and I’m sure it’s been commented upon previously, is confuse the concepts of ‘reference’ and ‘re-make’. His “Star Trek” re-boot, when all was said and done, was not an homage to previous material, but simply a re-make of “The Wrath of Khan”. With a new cast and a shiny new look it has to be said, but basically the same old, same old. In “The Force Awakens” he replays the events of “A New Hope” as an outline for this new, bigger, better show. Droids smuggling holographic clues; space-based weapons of mass destruction; a desperate raid by small, one-man fighters to fend off planetary destruction – it’s all back. Nothing new here in that regard. What makes it better, is that Abrams has enormous technical skill in bringing characters to life and in making the viewer feel for them. It’s all in the writing and the direction; the special effects are just a bonus. This is what Lucas has always – always – consistently misunderstood.

As an example, in this new film we see the new incarnation of the Darth Vader archetype, struggling with his role in the universe. In just a handful of scenes, we see the seamless transition from troubled novice Jedi to full-blown Sith Lord – rejection of the Light and the embracing of the Dark – as a full, satisfying arc, something that Lucas couldn’t manage across three entire movies (aka. the “Bad Films”). And, as a bonus, not a petulant, Hayden Christensen whine to be heard anywhere.

Lucas doesn’t understand bad guys. He sets them up and chews them down like corn chips. He doesn’t see their potential for salvation or their usefulness in carrying forward the narrative. This is why he chopped down Darth Maul before we even got a chance to discover anything about him; and it’s why he clumsily retro-fitted Bobba Fett back into the First Film re-releases when the fans wanted more. Darth Vader was just an obstacle to Lucas, and I’m guessing he was as surprised as anybody when the audience reaction was to learn more about him and his origins.

I was 12 or so when I first saw “Star Wars” and, although it lit my head on fire and got my geek-juices flowing, it also bothered me, as it has ever since. My first point of contention was why the “big walking carpet” was called “Chewbacca”? Given that the tale is set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” is it likely that tobacco grows there, that it is chewed, and that it is called ‘tobacco’? So why this moniker? As well, given that we see enough visual displays and consoles throughout the films to know that the Roman Alphabet is alien to our heroes, why are there robots called “R2-D2”,“C3PO” and “BB8” and spaceships called “X-wings” and “Y-wings”? Even in this newest film, when Poe Dameron looks through his binoculars at the start, there are alien letters combined with Arabic numerals in the readout, so where is consistency in all of this? Lastly, and most recently, I discovered that the French name for an Algerian prison camp in North Africa, which was used as a penal colony from the 20s to the 50s, was “Tatouane”, so this is obviously from where Lucas got the name “Tatooine” for the desert planet while he was filming there. “Star Wars” is such a clumsily-written, bolted-on, strapped-together mish-mash of wayward stuff, it’s a miracle that it’s lasted as long as it has. And that’s not even to mention Kurosawa’s “Hidden Fortress”...

The other thing that Lucas wouldn’t recognise if it bit him on the arse is romance. Irvin Kershner showed him how it could be done and won the franchise an Oscar for “The Empire Strikes Back”, still the best of all the previous films, but Lucas continued to flail around trying to pin the concept down without actually getting it. You can marry Princess Amidala and Anakin Skywalker on the shores of Lake Como in Italy but a romantic view is all you get. It was like watching a puppet show with all the warmth that wood and strings can provide. (Compare Sam Mendes’s use of the very same scenery in “Casino Royale” and you’ll see what I mean.) Abrams, on the other hand, is capable of giving an emotional depth to the characters we see on the screen – their hopes and expectations, their troubles and despairs – and with nothing more than small moments – a touch, a worried look, a raised eyebrow. I’m guessing all those episodes of “Lost” and “Fringe” have paid off and that Lucas is back to being the learner while J.J. Abrams is now the Master.

In my reviews of Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” (shudder!), I railed against all the sloppy references that were being passed off as ‘foreshadowing’, thus losing for the narrative its power in its own right. Abrams plays around a lot with this here in “The Force Awakens” too, but it’s on not-so-grand or shambolic a scale. Of course, it wouldn’t be “Star Wars” if someone didn’t say, at some point, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this”, so we can all smile and move on at that. There are other hark-back moments that skate damn close to being cheesy, but Abrams nevertheless manages to pull it off. You have been warned: try doing a little homework before you see this flick.

Friends and I used to have a drinking game for “Star Wars” which had some fairly complex rules. Each viewer picked a character to follow (in teams, if there were sufficient numbers present). Those who were tracking Luke Skywalker took a drink each time he whinged about something (“But I wanted to go to Tarshi Head to get those power converters!”); those following the Droids took a swig each time C3PO complained about something, or foresaw doom approaching (“We’re doomed”); those backing the Empire took a drink each time the baddies made a hubris-filled statement about their capabilities (“I think you overestimate them Lord Vader!”). Everyone drank when someone got a bad feeling about something. The other rule was that you listened to what R2D2 was saying – everyone tried to translate the cranky, curmudgeonly, obscenity-laden comment those whistles and blats were coding for and the best one earned you a drink. Few people made it through “A New Hope” without getting legless...

Delightfully for me, R2D2 is still the “Moravian swearing-droid” (non Triple-J listeners won’t get that reference), and my mind flooded with wicked translations through this film too (“Hands off you shiny, tin-plated gimp!”). As the credits rolled, I knew that the franchise has 'a new hope' in Abrams and that good things will come down the line.

May the Force (minus the crappy midichlorians) be with us all once again!

Four Tentacled Horrors.

PS: Just read in the Guardian that George Lucas - previously happy with Abrams' involvement - has now panned the film and has equated the selling of Lucasfilm to Disney (for over 4 BILLION dollars, thank-you very much) with "selling his children to white slavers"; this, two days after ISIS released its 15-point legal outline on how it thinks slaves should be treated, according to its own special view of the Koran. Seriously? Can we all just stand up and tell 'George Lucas the Hutt' to go flush himself? What a turd...