Review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) by Dcharles — 18 Dec 2015

Luke Skywalker has gone missing and General Leah Organa has dispatched her best resistance fighter pilot, Poe Dameron, to investigate. These details (as you probably can tell) are part of the opening crawl and sets the tone for the seventh Star Wars movie. It's a fun, emotional and poetic motion picture that really captures the spirit of the original trilogy. It's imperfections are few (the film may have left me wanting a little more than it should have), but this is still the joint second-best chapter in the series. It's as good as A New Hope, but The Empire Strikes Back remains my favorite.

What is truly astonishing about Star Wars: The Force Awakens is how it manages to retread the familiar beats of A New Hope, but remains fresh and exciting nonetheless. I loved the new cast. Rey, Finn and Poe are fantastically realized characters, especially the very good Oscar Isaac who plays Poe (he's the new Han Solo of this trilogy). The ending is not a definitive one, but it's emotional and moving; the final shot will grab you and leave you thinking about what it could mean for the next two episodes. The original Star Wars movies are legendary. This film is magical.