Star Wars: The Force Awakens Review

Well, it has been a month since I blogged (Long story).  Sometimes when you have to take a break, you know you need to get back in, but it seems like you need to do something big when you start back.  What is bigger than reviewing the most anticipated movie since…hmm…Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, I suppose.  Made it to the Thursday night early opening.  9:30 show.  With about 30 minutes left the movie froze.  They couldn’t get it back going for about 20 minutes.  They finally moved us to another theater.  I was there a long time.  Now I’m charged up, might as well write it before I go to bed.  I will not be proofreading (”Do you ever?”  Shut up), I mean it’s 12:40.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens AKA, Star Wars Episode VII: Don’t Disappoint Us J.J. stars a whole bunch of people you don’t know from anything.  Seriously, you don’t.  You think you recognize them, but you don’t.  It’s only because they have been running teaser trailers forever.  It also returns many from the original cast including Indiana Jones, Marie from When Harry Met Sally, the voice of Joker from Batman the Animated Series is billed as being in the movie, but was not in any of the trailers unless that mechanical hand on R2 was him.  Is he in this movie or not? Spoiler free!!!!!!  Also, Gollum is in this.  Andy Serkis is perhaps the most underrated actor of our time.  He is great.  He plays a character that I had no knowledge of before I saw it.  I tried really hard to not know anything about this movie.

Expectations:How do you even begin to answer this question?  My hopes were off the chart high.  I tried to keep them as low as I could, but I couldn’t help it, they were high.  I took a bathroom stop right before the previews and some guys dressed as Jedis were talking (they had seen it at 7).  They said they really liked it, so I was really confident.  The people who come dressed up are normally the hardest to please.

Reality: It was really good.  It really had the same spirit and feel as the original trilogy.  The new Star Trek reboot felt very different than the originals.  This felt the same in all the right ways.  It should cleanse the palate of all of those still sour from the second trilogy.  It was a great blend of the characters that we know and love but introducing some brand new characters, played by nobodies just like in the originals.  The effects were good, there were funny parts.  Everything that you would want from a Star Wars movie was there.

Appropriateness: It is a little violent but no more than any other Star Wars movie.  I would totally take a small kid to it that can take fantasy violence.  Way tamer than Lord of the Rings.  Even if I were uptight about these kinds of things, I still would recommend this movie for kids.

Rating System:

See it in the theater and will definitely own

See it in the theater and might own

See it in the theater and will likely Redbox it again

See it in the theater and be done

See it at the dollar theater

Redbox

Bored in 2 years and  watch it on Netflix

Avoid it.

I rate it a  See it in the theater mutliple times and buy it as soon as it comes out. There was never any doubt was there.  Well, maybe a little.  I really loved it.  I’m supposed to see it with the extended fam at Christmas.  Maybe I can wait until then to see it again.  We will see.  Call me.  I’ll go see it with you.  After you see it, we can discuss all the things that I didn’t spoil here.