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A couple more Star Wars: The Force Awakens thoughts
Now that I've had some time to think about it, I really love two things about the new series of movies:
1 - That they start in media res, like A New Hope did. We could easily have gotten an entire movie about the disintegration of the Republic, the rise of the New Order, Kylo Ren's fall to the Dark Side, and so forth. But who cares? LET'S SKIP STRAIGHT TO REBELS BLOWING SHIT UP. :D I think one of the many things that made A New Hope so compelling (and made The Force Awakens feel similar from the start) was the way that we were plunged right into the middle of things with the opening credits crawl.
2 - That the events of this movie were precipitated by the original trilogy characters screwing up. As much as I love them, they're flawed people, and pretty messed up in some ways. I really liked that it wasn't enough to be brave and heroic in battle; it wasn't enough just to love each other. They made mistakes, they hurt each other, and ultimately, with the best intentions, they inadvertently precipitated events that tore down everything they'd built. And the ways in which they screwed up felt natural to their characters. Luke ends up replicating the mistakes of the people who trained him; Leia and Han are apparently not-so-great parents, and Han wasn't able to put Leia and the welfare of the rebellion ahead of his own pain after everything that happened with Kylo Ren and Luke. They're people, not paragons, and being good at one thing -- or being a likable and decent person, generally -- doesn't mean you'll be good at something else, or will always be able to rise to life's challenges adequately.
(Though Leia manages not to be quite as much of a failboat as Han and Luke -- at least she stuck around to try to fix what all of them managed to break.)
1 - That they start in media res, like A New Hope did. We could easily have gotten an entire movie about the disintegration of the Republic, the rise of the New Order, Kylo Ren's fall to the Dark Side, and so forth. But who cares? LET'S SKIP STRAIGHT TO REBELS BLOWING SHIT UP. :D I think one of the many things that made A New Hope so compelling (and made The Force Awakens feel similar from the start) was the way that we were plunged right into the middle of things with the opening credits crawl.
2 - That the events of this movie were precipitated by the original trilogy characters screwing up. As much as I love them, they're flawed people, and pretty messed up in some ways. I really liked that it wasn't enough to be brave and heroic in battle; it wasn't enough just to love each other. They made mistakes, they hurt each other, and ultimately, with the best intentions, they inadvertently precipitated events that tore down everything they'd built. And the ways in which they screwed up felt natural to their characters. Luke ends up replicating the mistakes of the people who trained him; Leia and Han are apparently not-so-great parents, and Han wasn't able to put Leia and the welfare of the rebellion ahead of his own pain after everything that happened with Kylo Ren and Luke. They're people, not paragons, and being good at one thing -- or being a likable and decent person, generally -- doesn't mean you'll be good at something else, or will always be able to rise to life's challenges adequately.
(Though Leia manages not to be quite as much of a failboat as Han and Luke -- at least she stuck around to try to fix what all of them managed to break.)