Star Wars: The Force Awakens Review (Spoilers)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is out and it feels good. The movie is almost as good as the original trilogy with a lot of action and enough for those who went to enjoy the nostalgia to leave the theater happy.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE SO IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE PLEASE COME BACK LATER

Right from the beginning this movie is action packed and all the new characters are to be enjoyed. There is no Jar-Jar in this movie or anything that comes even close to it. There is also a lot of fun to be had as this movie has a lot of laugh lines without ever going into the realm of comedies. Chewbacca and Han Solo have a lot of the best lines and Chewy was definitely the funniest of the bunch.

The new droid BB-8 was amazing and if you do not have the action figure yet, you have like 3 seconds to get it before the prices are too ridiculous. The little fellow steals the scene every time that he is around. He is expressive, funny, fun and all I can say is that if he were around I would give him thumbs-up.

In a rare event, every new character in the franchise is really good and every one of the actor delivers what they need to and more. Poe Dameron (played by Oscar Isaac) is an amazing character and left us wanting a lot more of him. Finn (John Boyega) was fun and brought a lot of energy to the film and Rey (Daisy Ridley) is one of the best female heroes in film history. The villains are a bit more complicated as we do not know much about Snoke and Hux for example and Kylo Ren was the only character to give us mixed feelings.

The older generation was also great, especially Han Solo and Chewbacca. I would have wished a little more of Luke in the movie but I get why we didn’t. Leia was also back and in a position we all imagined she would be after the events of return of the Jedi. I also wished for more R2 and C3PO but I got that this was BB-8’s turn to step into the spotlight.

Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) started off as an amazing and powerful villain. That scene where he stops the blast from reaching him at the beginning was pretty badass and it was clear that his soldiers feared him; he was shaping up to be a perfect villain, but then once the mask came off all that changed. After that, it felt as if he was just a brat and Hux who at one point had fear in his face started flat out disrespecting him.

The other thing that needs an explanation is how in the Star Wars universe a character like Kylo Ren can lose a fight to two untrained individuals. It is clear that Rey had some experience using the force in the past but she hasn’t since she was a kid so it should have been an easy fight against a guy that had been training since he was a kid. There is not even such benefit of the doubt with Finn though. He was stolen from his family as a kid and it could be that he was force sensitive and that is why he was kidnapped by the First Order but there is no hint of that in the movie. Kylo Ren should have won that fight easily, but he didn’t and that is one of the problems we had with the movie.

The other problem that we had with the movie is that it was a bit predictable. Was there anyone watching that did not know that Han Solo had his future written out the moment that Leia asked him to bring their son back? Even if you did not realize it then, you should have the moment that Han saw Ben on the bridge. We all knew that Poe could not be dead in the crash and we knew R2D2 would come back at the end.

All that said, the movie was very enjoyable and we left the movie theater excited once again for the franchise. It is not the perfect movie and it is not even the best Star Wars movie, but it is up there. We are giving it 4 stars out of a possible 5.