Today I will be doing a spoiler-free review of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. This movie is set thirty years after Return of the Jedi and I think it’s a very good movie to kick off this new trilogy and it sets up a lot of potential for the rest of the trilogy. You are introduced to a few new characters in Rey who has been abandoned since she was a child and turned into a scavenger on the planet Jakku. She has some pretty decent character development throughout the movie and she’s a very solid protagonist for this film. Another newly introduced character is Finn, who actually starts off the film as a stormtrooper and goes on some really good character development. I was a massive fan of Finn’s character, mostly just because of how different it was from anything they had set up before. John Boyega who plays Finn should also get way more recognition than he does as he is fantastic playing this role in the opportunities that he was given. You also see other characters return such as Princess Leia who now leads the rebel alliance since Luke Skywalker has been missing for about 5-6 years. You also see the return of Han Solo who is phenomenal in this just like he was in the original trilogy. Harrison Ford as Han Solo will forever remain one of the best character castings ever. Another newly introduced side character was Poe Dameron who is a very skilled pilot and a main part of this movie with these other characters.
The villain in this movie is Kylo Ren who leads the First Order as a successor to the Galactic Empire and Darth Vader. He is by far my favorite part of this movie and the entire trilogy. Adam Driver is a fantastic actor and plays this character to perfection. Kylo is just a very evil yet broken character very similar to how Vader was. The plot is pretty good even though it’s kind of basic. It flows well, hits very few hiccups, and makes sense from beginning to end. The action and cinematography are both great from beginning to end and this is the best the cinematography has ever gotten in the Star Wars universe. The pacing is solid and even though it does have its dry spots, it usually is followed up by something very interesting so they do a good job balancing it out. The acting was solid but not great. Most of the characters did their job very well but there are just some spots that aren’t great here and there. The score is phenomenal like it is in every Star Wars movie. The ending to this movie alone and not considering what happened after is amazing. It sets up a lot of great potential that unfortunately just never came to fruition.
I always rate the Star Wars movies and shows and I rate them based on 10 things in the movie. Those things are: action, acting, cinematography, pacing, score, characters, ending, plot, protagonist, and antagonist. I rate all of those pieces 1-10 and then after that, I add up the scores of all 10 of them and get a total score out of 100. I gave this movie a 87/100 and it’s a very good movie, not quite as good as the original trilogy but it is very good nonetheless. Also, I will not be reviewing the other two movies in this trilogy because of how bad they are. I’ve reviewed bad Marvel movies before but these are just so unbelievably poorly done and they make no sense. They also ruin many great characters and just have some of the worst scenes in the entire franchise. Like I said, this movie was great and the ending specifically was phenomenal in setting up great potential for this trilogy. However, they just didn’t deliver at all in the final two and left a lot to be desired.
