Actually I don't think the 'Episode VII' part is in the name this time, which is a shame because I like it when films get numbers; they let me keep my stories straight. If I ever decide to watch the Harry Potter movies I'm going to have to find a guide just to know what order to watch them in. Star Wars, on the other hand, has handy episode numbers that... well okay this is actually a bad example, seeing as episodes 1, 2 and 3 came out years after 4, 5, and 6 and everyone's got their own ideas on which order works best.
Fortunately it's easy to figure out what order to read this review in, as you start with PART ONE, then you read this part, then part three finishes it off tomorrow.
I'm going through the movie scene by scene so this will be full of SPOILERS. I'll also be spoiling parts of the earlier Star Wars movies (episodes 1 to 6), but somehow I doubt that's going to be an issue for anyone. I'm just making sure you know what you're in for.
Previously, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens:
A Stormtrooper named Finn met up with a scavenger called Rey and a droid called BB-8 and then everything exploded. Just explosions everywhere, it was crazy. Fortunately the Millennium Falcon was just sitting there in the desert with the door open and the keys in the ignition, so they got inside and started making more explosions.
Fortunately the First Order are rubbish and couldn't track the Falcon after it left the atmosphere, but they're still really keen on getting hold of BB-8's map to Luke Skywalker and it's only a matter of time before they find them again.
And now, the continuation:
While Rey handles the emergency repairs, Finn has a secret meeting with BB-8 to discuss the location of the secret Resistance base. I like how obviously shocked and concerned the droid is when Finn admits that he's not really in the Resistance; all the prop did was roll backwards an inch and tilt his dome but the reaction was plainly obvious. Finn doesn't understand his beeping, but Rey does, so Finn needs the droid to tell her the location of the base and save him from being found out as a fraud.
So the ship's been fixed and they've got a destination, so now the three of them finally have a moment to relax and take a breath. But then the moment's over as the ship's captured by another, bigger ship that looks a bit like a Nintendo NES with teeth on its cartridge door!
I love that Finn actually climbs up on his seat to get a good view of the mysterious ship, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering the angle it's coming at them from. There's so many windows in so many sci-fi shows and movies, but you rarely ever see people moving around to get a better look out of them.
Anyway, they have a plan: they'll unfix their repair job and flood the ship with poisonous gas to kill the boarding party while they're hiding with masks on! It'll even work on the Stormtroopers as their masks don't filter out toxins. Unfortunately it's not Stormtroopers coming aboard; their genius plan is about to kill Han Solo and Chewie!
Fortunately they know their old ship considerably better than the current occupants and are able to find them before their poison gas plan is put into effect. It'd be a bit embarrassing to be accidentally killed off by the new protagonists after 30 seconds of screen time.
I suppose that explains why they were able to remotely shut off the controls earlier, as if anyone knows the Falcon's admin password it's going to these two.
When the movie's original writer, Michael Arndt, was coming up with the first script for Episode VII, he had a lot more Luke Skywalker in the story. But he felt it wasn't working, because the moment Luke turned up you cared more about what he was doing than what the new protagonists were up to. Now Han and Chewie have turned up and I kind of see what he means.
Incidentally, they show up about five minutes earlier in this film than they do in the original Star Wars. It just feels later because this movie plays in fast-forward.
Again Rey's level of knowledge doesn't quite match what we've seen her doing with her life. I wish there was a tiny bit more exposition here, just to hint at where she gets all this from.
Han's keen to just ditch them on the nearest inhabited planet (which I guess would be Jakku), but they tell him about the droid and the map to Luke Skywalker, and that gets his attention. Unfortunately it's been two minutes since the last crisis and they are way overdue, so he's soon distracted by his past catching up to him and boarding his giant NES freighter.
Han thinks he can talk his way out of this situation while Finn and Rey stay out of sight under the floor, but his old associates are tired of him failing to deliver. Plus they recognise that droid he's got with him, so they're going to go search the freighter for the other two fugitives to give over to the Empire. I mean First Order.
It's weird this section of the movie, it's like an extra episode added to pad out a TV season. An unnecessary diversion from the main plot.
I'm glad that Rey didn't deliberately get all these people eaten alive by monsters and it's just an unfortunate accident. Though Han definitely punches a guy and feeds him to a creature to slow him down, and it's probably not even the first time he's had to do that.
Rey and Finn head back up into the corridors, and Finn grabs her hand again. Though she's too shocked at the carnage in front of her to really complain, and he's learned to only hold on long enough to get her moving.
Then Finn gets to be the only person here to be dragged away by a monster and not eaten, which in turn gives Rey a chance to be the only person running towards the things. At least until she finds a security monitor that lets her close a blast door on its tentacles. I'm glad that horrific mistake of hers hasn't put her off using blast doors altogether.
They all get to the Falcon and jump to hyperspace inside the hangar, with one of the monsters trying (and failing) to hang on to the cockpit. I was expecting the jump to really wreck the place, maybe even blow the bigger freighter apart, but it just pushes a couple of people over. So going to lightspeed indoors is possible, it's just underwhelming.
And that's that chapter of the movie done then. Only took 10 minutes for Han to get the Falcon back and lose his other ship. That's almost two weeks of Star Wars Minute podcast episodes, but a blink of an eye in movie terms.
I'm a bit disappointed though to be honest, because I wanted see a montage of them giving the Falcon a thorough overhaul. I'm really worried about the ship; it's been left out in the elements for years and has suffered a lot of punishment recently.
Wookieepedia calls Starkiller Base a mobile ice planet, but it also says it's 660 km in diameter, which would make it a lot smaller than any planet I know about. Don't get me wrong, it's still unimaginably absurdly huge and must have taken a ridiculous amount of resources to build, but it's only "that's not the state of Texas, that's a space station" big.
You might be wondering how the First Order was able to build such a massive space gun. Well, it actually makes perfect sense if you take into account LOOK OVER THERE, THERE'S A GIANT HOLOGRAM BLOKE ON MASSIVE HOLOGRAPHIC CHAIR WITH A HUGE SCAR ON HIS HEAD.
I mean I didn't care about Thanos either until Avengers: Infinity War, but the guy was basically just an mid-credit bonus cameo up to that point and when he made a proper appearance he demanded my interest. This guy is no Thanos. Though I do like how Hux and Ren are both standing there side by side, almost like they're brothers. It's not just the Darth Vader of the movie who gets to visit the Emperor this time.
Snoke's a little bit annoyed at them both for losing the map, because if the Last Jedi returns then the new Jedi will rise. Wow, spoilers mate. But Hux has a cunning plan: they'll stop the Resistance from reaching Skywalker by blowing up all the Republic planets that support them. It's a bit like stopping Indiana Jones from finding the Ark of the Covenant by nuking Chicago, but that's the kind of overkill Snoke likes!
Some other business: there's been an awakening. Also Kylo Ren is Han Solo's son, Snoke's just going to drop that fact on us here.
Han doesn't even need Ren as a kid, these two are way better. He should adopt them both and teach them the ways of the scoundrel.
Hey, you know what else happened in A New Hope? A droid projecting an important hologram:
We learn here that Luke went into isolation after one of his Jedi students turned against him. People think he went looking for the first Jedi temple, and if it's true that's where the completed map will take them.
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| Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope |
This is also like the part of A New Hope where they manage to save Leia from the Death Star and then fly off to take R2-D2's plans straight to the Rebel Base. Except Han has apparently learned from past mistakes as he's going to visit a old friend of his instead. He says that she'll be able to get the droid where it needs to go, but doesn't mention why he can't take them himself.
Personally I think he's just trying to escape an awkward reunion with the woman he's been avoiding for the last few years.
This is a beautiful movie, by the way. I know that's obvious, but I just felt like pointing it out.
She's a lot more interested in the offer than Luke was, but she turns it down. I guess it was probably much easier to voluntarily exile herself to the desert hellscape of Jakku when she didn't know what she was missing, but she's still determined to go back. She's waiting for her family.
Han explains here that the reason he's not taking the Falcon to the Resistance base is because they need to get the droid onto a clean ship. Apparently the Falcon is very easy to track right now for some reason, as that's how he was able to find it. Doesn't explain how the First Order couldn't see it though when it was right next to Jakku. I think he's just bullshitting.
Hey, is that Mandalorian flag up there in the middle? Wait did I spot a Stormtrooper flag?
Anyway, this is a fantastic shot, as it starts outside with the heroes walking up to the door, then continues inside the set in one apparently unbroken take, with the camera going around and showing off all the makeup, animatronics and CGI, until it finally reaches Han's friend Maz Kanata. It's two separate locations linked with clever compositing in the doorway, but it's slick enough to impress me. Plus this place is definitely Mos Eisley Cantina 3 with all the different aliens they've got here (the second one was Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi)
Then they go and ruin the scene with a comedy 'everyone turns around to see Han Solo' moment, thanks to Maz yelling his name across the room. Fortunately no one really cares about them, except for a droid who immediately sends a message to the Resistance, and a spy who informs on them to the First Order. In retrospect it was a terrible idea to come here and Han should've known better.
It's funny how Kylo Ren isn't called Darth Kylo or something. It seems like Sith names in this era are more like Pig Latin, and I think I see how it works: you swap your first and last name around, then take the last two letters of each and replace the others with something random. So Ben Solo becomes Kylo Ren, Leia Organa becomes Banana Aria, and Luke Skywalker becomes Fwjkygker Bike.
Han's friend Maz kind of reminds me of Raz from the game Psychonauts, as she's got the yellow skin and the googles. She's also got some words of wisdom for Han, telling him he's been away from the fight too long and he should go back to Leia. Finn's certain that there's no way they can fight the First Order and they should run, which gets a few looks, especially from Maz who's gotten up onto the table and started staring at him by that point. Honestly, I think his 'Resistance agent' impression needs some work.
Finn's going to go look for a ship to take him to the outer rim and asks Rey to come with him, but she tries to talk him out of it. Then he finally reveals that he's a Stormtrooper, who was taken from his family as a kid and raised by the First Order. That massacre at the start of the movie was his first battle, so he turned against evil the earliest chance he got, but he thinks it would be crazy for them to make a stand against it and now he's going to go his own way.
Rey watches him leave, but is soon distracted by cries she can hear coming from Maz's creepy basement. She goes down to investigate and BB-8 decides to follow, which he probably comes to regret after clunking down at least a dozen steps. A mysterious door mysteriously opens, but inside there's nothing more interesting than a mysterious chest... containing a very familiar prop.
The lightsaber sat in a box for the next 18 years until it was claimed by Anakin's son Luke, who held onto it for three years during his Jedi training. He may have been holding onto it even longer than that, seeing as his hand was still attached when he dropped the weapon down a pit in Empire Strikes Back. I think The Force Awakens was originally supposed to begin with Luke's severed hand floating through space, but I'm glad they changed their mind on that.
Star Wars doesn't do dream sequences or flashbacks in the main episodes, they're against the rules, but they cheat here by giving Rey a Force vision instead.
Then we see a guy with a mushroom hat get stabbed through the gut by Kylo Ren, who's apparently hanging out with his mates, the Knights of Ren.
Speaking of mysteries, we also get a glimpse of how Young Rey ended up on Jakku.
This means Rey and Finn have pretty similar origins, as both were separated from their parents at an early age and were brought up somewhere cruel by utter bastards. And they've both turned out pretty well despite that.
They apparently filmed a scene of Plutt tracking Rey and the Falcon to Maz's place, where he got his arm ripped off by Chewbacca, but it didn't make it to the final edit. Probably for the best really as the movie's already pretty busy, (though the guy was kind of asking for it.)
And then there's one last vision, of Kylo Ren in a snowy forest, which knocks Rey back to reality...
Maz comes down to tell her about the lightsaber and give her some truth: whoever she's waiting for on Jakku isn't coming back. For a moment Rey seems receptive, but then she refuses the call to action. Or the call to pick up that bloody lightsaber again anyway. She's so freaked out in fact that she runs back out to the forest on her own.
Its funny how Han Solo's friend has got his other friend's lightsaber in a box and has never told him before. And she ain't going to tell us why she's got it, because J.J. Abrams likes his mysteries. I'll forgive her though, because she's a good character. It's weird to go back to this now that I know who Lupita Nyong'o is though, as I don't see or hear any of her in Maz, even though I've seen the behind the scenes footage of all the dots on her face.
But not everyone was invited, as there are some poor officers who still have to work. This particular anonymous death ray button pusher jumped out at me, because I was 60-65% certain I recognised her:
She's not in any way important in this movie, I just felt like mentioning it.
Finn can see the beam in the sky from Maz's planet, but it's not heading for them. It's actually splitting up to annihilate five other worlds, one of them being a world that kind of looks like (but isn't) Coruscant.
This was her very first role out of university and there was originally going to be a little more to it than this, as she filmed a scene where Leia told her to go to Hosnian Prime to speak to the New Republic senate on behalf of the Resistance.
J.J. Abrams demonstrated his disinterest in astronomical realism pretty clearly in his Star Trek films, where everything in space was 10 minutes apart and you could see other planets blowing up in the sky, but here he's really outdone himself.
The Wookieepedia page is full of all kinds of explanations for how any of this is possible, with the time/space weirdness used to make the shots faster than light also making the light faster than light. But the end result is that a gun made out of a planet just shot one beam that hit five other planets located right next to each other, and Finn was able to see it happen instantly from the other planet he's standing on. I dunno, maybe it's just a star system with a ton of habitable planets, like the one in Firefly. Or they could've been moons!
Plus to be fair it's not like the original Death Star laser was particularly realistic either. George Lucas specifically defined Star Wars as being fantasy, so he could get away with not having to explain things like this.
Maz's planet has been spared from complete annihilation, but the First Order are still dropping by for a visit. It's going to be the start of the movie all over again!
Rey and BB-8 race back through the forest, while Finn returns to Han and is given Luke's lightsaber. I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen first time I watched this, whether Finn was going to have Force potential as well, but on a rewatch the way Maz says "Take it, find your friend," makes me think she wants him to give it to Rey. Which is a bit of a shame because I wouldn't mind seeing a story about a Stormtrooper who becomes a Jedi.
Rey spots a Stormtrooper and tries to shoot him in the back, but unfortunately she didn't know she had to take the safety off. Then her second shot goes wild. But she gets him with the third one! Not bad shooting for someone who presumably hasn't used a gun before, though the Stormtrooper did make it easy on her by not moving. Once the moving targets start coming after her she wisely makes a run for it.
You could argue that Rey's a little too good a marksman for someone with zero practice, but Han Solo's such a good shot that he's basically using cheat codes.
Finn's feeling a bit defenceless out there without a weapon, but Maz points out that he's holding one and he fires up the lightsaber! We haven't seen non-Force users use a lightsaber much, possibly because they're bloody dangerous and you can't block blaster shots without spider sense, but Han once used this sword to open up a tauntaun and now Finn's about to open up some Stormtroopers.
This scene does raise the question of whether Finn would've even been trained to use a sword. But then we kind of get an answer as another Stormtrooper shows up with a melee weapon of his own.
This guy's trained well, as once he sees the lightsaber he immediately throws his gun away and switches to his lightsaber-resistant energy baton thing. But he's also an idiot, as he knows who Finn is, and has to realise that even if he is Force sensitive, he hasn't had time to learn how to deflect blaster shots with that thing yet! I mean Luke took about... two and a half minutes to master that skill. Uh, never mind then.
Meanwhile Han borrows Chewbacca's gun again because he's developed a real fondness for it. Which turns out to be lucky for Finn, as he uses it to save his life when he loses the lightsaber fight.
Fortunately they've got incoming at 28.6.
These new X-Wings have some weird wings, but I kind of like them. And I could watch them blow up TIE Fighters all day.
Han and the others escape, and Finn's doing a lot better now he's found himself a Stormtrooper rifle. Poe's doing pretty well himself, swooping around and causing all kinds of mayhem in one long shot. I get the feeling things would've gone pretty differently if he'd been able to get his X-Wing off the ground at the start of the movie. This time around the First Order don't stand a chance.
Ren blocks all of Rey's shots and freezes her in place like he did with Poe. Then he uses his hand-to-face interrogation technique on her to find the droid and discovers that he doesn't need it, because she's seen the map herself. It seems possible he could turn the tide of this battle all by himself with his abilities, but instead he calls for a retreat and carries Rey back to his shuttle. Such a badass.
Finn does the "Nooooooooo!" scream and chases after him, but he's way too late.
Right afterwards a Resistance transport touches down and Han's finally reunited with Leia! It's moment he's being dreading, and a moment we've been anticipating for years.
I've read some people complaining that 3PO's introduction here is an obvious attempt to get people to read the tie-in books to find out how he got a replacement arm, but that honestly never even occurred to me. It's just a joke about him spoiling the moment by being his usual annoying self. He's got his silver leg replaced with a gold one as well, but no one's expecting there to be any tie-in expanded universe story about that! (But yeah, there was actually a tie-in story to explain the red arm, because of course there was).
Chewie comes over as well to give Leia a hug and then they all fly off to the Resistance base to figure out what they're going to do about the First Order's new super weapon. Just like they did in A New Hope.
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART THREE
TOMORROW
But you can leave me a comment for part two right now!
We haven't seen non-Force users use a lightsaber much
ReplyDeleteHan Solo got to use one a few times in the old Marvel comics, which officially don't count any more, but I count them because they are brilliant. In one story, Han (with lightsaber) forms a Space Magnificent Seven and they fight Godzilla. Make a movie of that, Disney!