The Force Awakens Spoiler-rific Review

Even though I wrote the word "spoiler" in the title I'm going to again say it here that this blog will be filled with spoilers for The Force Awakens.  If you have not yet seen the movie continue reading at your own peril.  You've been warned.

I'm going to start off by saying I absolutely loved this movie.  It reminded me why I fell in love with Star Wars as a child.  Any and all issues I had with the film are completely me nitpicking.  It was fun, it was exciting, it was devastating and it left me wanting to re-watch it immediately after the credits started rolling.

After giving some careful thought to how I could review or discuss this movie in any coherent manner, as with most things I love, I can drone on and one and go off on 50 tangents which would make for an awful review, I think I will review the film character by character.

To get things going I'll start with the smallest character, BB-8.  BB-8 was fine, he was a cute little droid ball who really was used to bring Rey into the mix and as a means to sell toys.  BB-8 is set up to be the R2-D2 for the generation that will call this trilogy their own.  R2-D2 is and will always be better than BB-8 and I loved the fact that R2-D2 was so distraught over Luke's disappearance that he pretty much just shut himself down.  Good stuff.

Original Gangster

Finn was a really interesting character for me.  I'll admit that I purposely avoided any and all Star Wars information leading up tot he movie so his origin as well as anything else about him were totally foreign to me until I sat to watch the movie.  His origin, what little we learn of him, highlights the fact that this First Order will take children and raise them to be their soldiers, even going so far as to take away their names.  Adds a bit of darkness to this group of people that wasn't there in the prequels or the original trilogy.  In the prequels they're clones and in the original trilogy they're people who signed up under their own free will...anyway, I digress.

Finn seemed to have a real noble heart and strong idea of right from wrong for someone who has been raised by the First Order.  His lack of knowledge about the world around him based off his upbringing brought naivety to the character which helped usher in the audience into this world we both know from being raised on Star Wars but don't know because a good amount has happened in 30 years.

Now Rey was a great character that I'm excited to learn more about.  She's a strong and capable person who can hold her own.  I loved the scene where she used the force to make the Stormtrooper free her, leave the door open and drop his weapon on the way out.  I also loved the vulnerability they gave the character as highlighted in the scene where she finds Luke's lightsaber and runs from the responsibility of the moment because she doesn't think she can handle wield that power.  And lastly I absolutely loved the reveal that she was the Jedi because all the marketing and trailers made me believe it was Finn.  Seeing her and Kylo fight and her eventually getting the best of him and fucking up his face was amazingly satisfying.  A female Jedi lead character!

"Let go of my hand! I know how to run."

Poe Dameron seems cool but there really isn't much of a character to dissect yet.  We're told his the best pilot in the Resistance, we have no idea where he came from and he's involved in one of the more annoying "nothing to see here" moments when he just shows back up safe and sound and leading the Resistance pilots after seemingly dying in a crash landing in Jakku.  I've formed zero opinion of Poe and I guess I'll just have to see where they go with him in Episode VIII.

Kylo Ren...fuck that guy.  Kylo Ren is exactly how Anakin Skywalker in the prequels should've been portrayed.  He's a young man with power he doesn't know how to control completely.  He wants to be this great dark side power like his grandfather Darth Vader but he seems to find himself conflicted.  We don't know a lot about him other than his real name is Ben Solo. We know that Luke tried to train him to be a Jedi before Ben lost his shit and killed all the other Padawans resulting in Luke disappearing after blaming himself for losing Ben to the dark side.  He belongs to the Knights of Ren and the movie doesn't really explain much about that either.  I look forward to seeing what the future holds for Kylo Ren...the fucker who killed the one of the coolest dudes in the Galaxy.

Fuck you!

Han Solo is still awesome and he's still hanging with Chewie, the coolest Wookiee ever born on Kashyyyk.  He's back to his smuggling ways and has fallen out of the Rebel/Resistance lifestyle.  He's gotten older but he's still the smooth talking, scruffy looking, nerf herder we all fell in love with in the Mos Eisley Cantina.  Han's best moments in the movie come when he's talking with Rey.  You see a real fatherly affection for Rey in the moments when the two of them talk, even when he's trying to play it off that he couldn't care less, but hey, that's Han Solo for you.

I can't bring up Han Solo here without also bringing up "the moment".  As soon as Han calls out his sons name and meets him on that catwalk of the Starkiller I think we all knew what was going to happen next and I think Han did as well.  Seeing Han Solo is Dad trying to help his son, even if it meant sacrificing himself (something any parent can relate to) was something to see because it was a side of Han we've never seen before.   Seeing Han touch his son's face one last time with affection even after his son just murdered him was a scene I'm not likely to forget.

The movie also did a great job with Chewbacca's reaction immediately after Han's death.  Chewbacca growling in anguish as he shoots every Stormtrooper he can find.  Seeing him mourn made me sad.  Much sadder than a grown man should admit.

RIP and may the Force be with you

Now on to some general thoughts:

• General Organa tough as nails and leading the Resistance.  I love that she hung up the Princess moniker for General.  It seems she'll be more of a secondary character now though.
• Enough with giant space stations that can blow up planets.  It's like when Superman Returns came out and Lex was once again doing evil as a real estate scheme.  Death Star I & II were both destroyed by the Rebels and your answer is to just build a Death Planet.  I don't even want to think about the physics involved with destroying a sun in order to fire the weapon and how the hell does it find another sun to destroy to fire it a second time?  Does it move?  I will say I love that it was called Starkiller (the original name for Luke before it was changed to Skywalker).
• Admiral Ackbar!!!
• Nien Nunb!!!
• Where are you Lando?
• I would've liked a few quiet moments in the movie, it was very faced paced.
• Hat's off to J.J. Abrams for capturing the magic of the original trilogy.
• Star Wars is back!!!

I'm pretty sure I've missed some things because I honestly can talk about this movie and this franchise for an entire month without repeating myself.  Thanks for taking the time to read.  May the Force be with you.

I'm a Feminist

I’m a feminist.  I’ve never said it or wrote it outright but certainly my beliefs for as long as I can remember have been in support of equality for women in all areas of life.  It has always been a belief I knew I had but it has never been one that spent a lot of time thinking about.  That changed when my daughter was born.

Having a daughter has completely opened my mind further to the inequality that exists in even the littlest parts of our daily life and that just makes me angry.  We think of inequality and we think of feminism and some people think of larger social issues like equal wages or women’s fight for the right to vote in the early 1900s.  What I didn’t think about until I had a daughter was the fact that dress up clothes for boys are police officers, fire fighters & doctors, while dress up clothes for girls are princesses & ballerinas. 

 

Can someone tell me why there are “Legos for Girls”?  It’s legos for Christ sake!  For all these years have we been playing with boy legos and didn’t know it?  Holy shit, how did women like my wife grow up to be functional women while playing with boy legos? My daughter is too young for legos but she plays with duplo blocks and likes to make robots.  Everything she builds she says is a robot.  According to society I need to correct this immediately and help her build kitchens and kittens with her duplo blocks.

Which brings me to another thing, why are robots for boys?  Why are robots, cars & trains a boy thing?  My daughter loves cars, trains & robots and as long as she does I’ll continue to nurture that.  Children don’t know boy thing or girl thing…we’ve done that to them.  Adults have decided that a little girl shouldn’t play with a train and a little boy shouldn’t make breakfast in a play kitchen. 

 

Buzzfeed had an article a while back about 21 pointlessly gendered products (found here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinchack/pointlessly-gendered-products#.mlKq6zGApJ) and honestly that list should annoy the shit out of you, I know it annoys the shit out of me.  They sell girl microscopes…GIRL MICROSCOPES!  I mean what the absolute fuck does that even mean?  And as you scroll down the list you can see just how insane we are as a people and how far we haven’t come since women gained the right to vote nearly 100 years ago.

I’m going to ensure that my little girl grows up knowing that she can do anything, that “like a girl” is not a put down and that she can play with any type of legos she wants.