Star Wars: That warm, fuzzy feeling

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Not without its flaws, the film succeeds in spinning a yarn on the old and familiar from the Star Wars franchise.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens doesn’t waste time trying to establish what has happened before. Just like Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), the first Star Wars movie, we are thrown bang in the middle of the action. There is great urgency right from the first scene when we learn that Luke Skywalker has gone missing for a long time. For many, he is a myth, one who may have wandered away to a distant land. Later we are told why.

A droid, meanwhile, with valuable information stored in its system, gets lost till a scavenger girl named Rey (Daisy Ridley) finds it. In a junkyard settlement, Finn (John Boyega) spots a stolen, rundown ship. He calls it garbage. Later in the movie, three people walk into a bar where aliens of different races, from petty criminals to helpful associates, lounge and get drunk.

A sense of déjà vu runs throughout the first hour of The Force Awakens. The abovementioned incidents in the film echo events, characters and themes of the past.

Star Wars geek J.J. Abrams feeds on fanboy emotions and structures his film a lot like the 1977 movie. To Abrams’ credit, instead of feeling repetitive or coming across as lazy writing, he makes it feel like one universal story that spreads itself over space and time.

Rey and Finn are updated heroes yes – a female protagonist and a coloured male actor in a new gender and race-sensitive world. But they talk and behave the way they would’ve had they starred in the early Lucas movies. Both are seemingly ordinary people who don’t have plans to do anything extraordinary. But when thrown into the situation, they end up saving the world.

Given its disastrous and much ridiculed prequels that came out between 1999 and 2005, The Force Awakens could have gone for a cynical reimaginationThe Force Awakens doesn’t feel outdated a bit. The Star Wars universe, where ancient cults and futuristic concepts co-habit, still feels like a singular artistic vision. In the age of mindless CGI-generated mumbo-jumbo in the ubiquitous superhero movies, it’s a relief to see the weird creatures and machinery of the Star Wars universe as real creations in real locations. One can feel the texture of their scaled skin, their shabby metal surface, a quality that gives the film the look and feel of the old movies.

Yet, The Force Awakens often finds it hard to sustain our interest in its action scenes – the Stormtroopers and lightsabers remain ultra-cool though. There is quite a bit of intergalactic battles in the last hour and they don’t excite you.

They work in the earlier movies even today because we see them in the context of that time. The same thing churned out today, with better technology but without any inventiveness, feel bloodless. The Force Awakens also lacks the emotional depth of the first trilogy. As good as the new leads are, especially Ridley, one hasn’t exactly come to the stage when one wholeheartedly roots for them.

The real deal is still the original three. Having Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill back as Hans Solo, Princes Leia and Luke Skywalker is like catching up with old friends. The world has changed a lot. “But its good to be home,” as Solo quips to his old hairy companion Chewbaca. With Solo playing the more important role in this one than the other two, Ford shows us a completely convincing aging of his lovable outlaw. The Force Awakens succeeds in spinning a yarn on familiar tales that we like revisiting again and again. With the next two instalments all set to be made, it could well be “A New Beginning”.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (English)

Director: J.J. Abrams

Cast: Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Oscar Isaac

Bottomline: Not without its flaws, the film succeeds in spinning a yarn on the old and familiar from the Star Wars franchise.