Being this awesome ain’t easy.
With the capture of the Falcon by an unknown ship, we finally learn what Han and Chewie have been doing over these past thirty years. It is a nice little sequence that shows a bit of comedy, but we can also detect the heartbreak and loss that Han has been dealing with. He has turned back to smuggling, which has ruined his relationship with Leia and caused his growth over the past three movies to effectively reset. Around this point in the story, we also learn the reason why: Kylo Ren is actually his son, Ben Solo. It is also heavily implied that Ben/Kylo is responsible for the wholesale slaughter of a new generation of Jedi, which caused Luke to go into hiding.
Some people might be up in arms about this, but I think that J.J. and Lawrence Kasdan pushed the character in a logical direction because, let’s face it, what would a father do if his son suddenly became a genocidal maniac? Some would drink themselves to death, while others would throw themselves into their old life or work. Luckily for us, we get to see the latter idea take the stage. We wouldn’t want to get too depressing in a franchise like this, amirite?
While Rey is fangirling over their predicament and Finn is just kind of there, we soon learn that Han has also not learned a lot about financial management, as two teams of criminals invade the ship to collect their debts. An action sequence with some CGI Cthulu monsters soon follows, but it leads me to one really nasty question:
Doesn’t this feel tacked on and a little bit too focused on Rey?
If you think about it for one second, her minor screw-up releases the monsters, but it also wipes out the criminals to the point where she and the characters are allowed to escape on the Falcon. Of course, there is a little problem where Finn is carried off by one of them in the middle of the sequence, but her sense of timing allows her to free the guy even though ANY OTHER PERSON would have been eaten by now.
Hey, now we know that Finn has plot armor! Yay?
Chewie takes the worst hit as he is shot in the arm, but he’s going to live. With their escape, Han sets course for Takodana with Rey as his co-pilot. But again, the absence of Poe in this sequence is like a gaping wound that is beginning to bleed uncontrollably. I can buy that Rey could be a great mechanic, which would allow for the exact same scenes with Finn and BB-8 but not stretch disbelief so much.
The team heads to Takodana to meet with Maz Kanata, a thousand-year-old alien voiced and captured to perfection by Lupita Nyongo. Of course, there is a little bit of fan service here with a cantina sequence, which is fine. However, we soon figure out that Finn wants to leave and is beginning to feel attracted to Rey, but she chides him for that. We also learn that Maz is the guardian of Luke’s first lightsaber, but there is no explanation as to how it got there or why it can suddenly cause Rey to have visions. To make matters worse, the First Order and the Resistance are hot on the trail of our heroes, which suddenly gives Maz the permission to disappear from the movie… for some reason.
What is it with this movie suddenly causing characters with critical skills or information to disappear?
I guess that they ran out of money and couldn’t afford to render the lizard-esque face anymore. Sadly, things get even dumber when Rey wants nothing to do with the war and flees on the eve of battle… even though she chastised Finn for wanting to do the exact same thing in the scenes before this. When the Resistance and First Order finally clash, we learn that the X-Wings are being led by Poe himself.
Wait, where the hell did you come from?!
Okay, that happened with no explanation whatsoever. Unfortunately, Rey is captured by Kylo Ren and the First Order withdraws, allowing for our introduction to the second hero on our list.
So, Leia Is A General Now. Huh.
To be fair, these are some sad, but slightly hopeful scenes.
With the arrival of Leia, we spend some time with her, Han, and an out-of-place C-3P0 that was put in there to remind us of The Empire Strikes Back. This might be a small issue in the grand scheme of things, but I feel like I need to explain something about the golden droid that we all know. The scene in Empire revolved around Han and Leia’s first kiss on-screen, which worked because the primary objective of the scene was already over by the time that the bothersome butler showed up. In this way, it served as a means of getting on to the next scene and you can chuckle at it. In The Force Awakens, C-3P0 actively stalls the primary objective of the scene, which was to learn what happened to Leia and Han’s relationship.
After a few minutes, we learn that the former couple doesn’t really blame one another for what happened, which is something that I think fits well with their characters. They still love each other, but their grief and desire to throw themselves back into their work is what pulled them apart. Still, Leia believes that their loving son is still under the mask that is totally not based on Darth Revan. Nuh, uh. Not at all.
Re-canonizing Revan is a stroke of genius that this movie missed!
Soon after this, we set off to the Resistance base where the proxy army seems to have only thirty X-Wings and a basic command structure. There is no explanation given other than that the Republic sort of supports the army, but supposedly wants to prevent a galactic war with the First Order… even though they use pretty much the same equipment so it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out that the Republic is funding them AND doing a half-baked job at stopping the remnants of the old Empire. It’s even more asinine when you consider the scenes prior to the Takodana engagement that introduced Starkiller Base.
After Domhnhall Gleeson is Fuhrerious and loving it as General Hux, the First Order effectively decapitates the government and cripples the New Republic Fleet. While I can accept the Star Killer as an example of the evolution of technology and that there might be some shipyards out there that are willing to help build their fascist fleet, how in the hell did the First Order gather the resources to build that goddamn thing without the Resistance or the Republic noticing?! I know that they are trying to portray either a Cold War gone hot or the lead-up to the Second World War in space, but are they so incompetent and stupid that they couldn’t bother to insert spies into the enemy ranks?
Seriously, did anyone see the size of that thing?!
The answer is yes. Yes, they are.
To Be Continued in Part 4.
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