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| Red and Blue, the standard movie colours for civil war. |
Thirty years after Endor, Luke Skywalker has disappeared. The Republic faces the threat of a post-Imperial power called the First Order and ex-Princess Leia is leading a Resistance against their rise. Enter our new leads: Poe Dameron, ace resistance pilot; Finn, a renegade stormtrooper; and Rey, a scrappy scavenger.
Finn and Rey, our particular heroes, embark on a journey to deliver a droid carrying vital information, and that's not the only similarity to A New Hope, a movie as old as I am. It can not be denied that The Force Awakens leans heavily on its original source, and that makes it hard for me to judge it in isolation, but what it does with that source is way more interesting than what the prequels did, and arguably more interesting than A New Hope itself. It really helps that they got a good writer who knows the franchise (Empire and Jedi co-writer Laurence Kasdan,) so that the dialogue pops nicely without leaning on having 'a bad feeling about this' like it was a crutch. I'm also not going to pretend that it hurt getting 'Big' John Williams on board to do the music.
There are no big surprises, but certainly some twists that I didn't anticipate going in and a story well wroth following. There was one section that flt superfluous and the central macguffin is a bit of a stretch, but overall the story is good and the character beats are really nice, and have the development that was lacking in the prequels. It's going to need a very strong follow up in episode VIII, but this is an excellent setup.
Good job, JJ. Good job everyone.
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