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MOVIE
The force has awakened
The new Star Wars movie turns out to be a lot like the old Star Wars
movie, except all cleaned up for the 21st Century. The hero is a woman
this time, a scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley) who lives on a desert
planet where people trade scrap metal for food: think of her as Mad
Maxine. She's deadly with a sword, fast on her feet, able to pilot all
manner of spaceships and, it turns out (alert: first of several
spoilers!), a she-devil with a light saber.
 Rey
is swept up into the Star Wars universe, a place that - fictions about
'a long time ago' and 'a galaxy far far away' aside - exists alongside
our own universe, but with more merchandise opportunities. Since we last
visited, the bad guys in The Dark Side have morphed into the bad guys
from The First Order, which is now embodied by a Darth Vader sound-alike
named Ven (Adam Driver, playing villainy with the sort of petulant loner
anger that makes you suspect he's still living in his parents'
basement.)
But one of his Storm Troopers, Finn (John Boyega), has suddenly
realised that he's on the wrong side of history, as they say, and has
escaped, along with a pilot for the good guy rebels named Poe Dameron
(Oscar Isaac). They crash-land on Rey's planet, and she becomes part of
the propulsive plot of The Force Awakens: to find Luke Skywalker, who
has disappeared as thoroughly as Mark Hamill, whose career has become,
in the 38 years since the first Star Wars, a new life in the unseen
(albeit lucrative) world of voice actors.
And off they go into the future and also - in the screenplay by Star
Wars veteran Lawrence Kasdan, director J.J. Abrams, and a few others - a
visit to the past. This Star Wars, for all its futuristic sheen, is very
much a nostalgia trip, and at times you can feel the new movie straining
to be carefree and loose even as it is trapped by its own mythology.
Fans take this stuff seriously, and one must pay tribute to the
convoluted series of relationships and history that have grown like
cobwebs on the Millennium Falcon, the original spaceship that's dusted
off for a new voyage here.
Abrams is probably the ideal director for this material: an adept
director of sci-fi action - The Force Awakens has a propulsive forward
thrust - who also cares enough to stop occasionally to smell the droids.
About an hour into the movie, we welcome visitors from the olden days.
Han Solo (Harrison Ford), looking slightly grizzled but still game, and
Chewbacca, his abominable snowman companion, burst into the Millennium
Falcon with the words, "Chewie, we're home." Devotees will be in tears.
Their hunt for Luke takes them to evocative settings - a bar where
the flotsam and jetsam of the universe gather for drinks is an
especially welcome side trip - that honor the past even as they add
layers of family complications. The Star Wars universe has been
knee-deep in Oedipal subtext ever since Vader revealed that he was
Luke's father, and that, in fact, Luke and Princess Leia were twins. The
Force Awakens (another spoiler alert!) builds on that.
Eventually, all of the old favourites join the hunt, including Leia
herself (Carrie Fisher, who now looks like an old childhood sweetheart
who you meet for coffee after almost 40 years and realize, in her
careworn face, that you probably got really old too.) There's also room
for R2D2 and 3CP0, although that's just for the purists: the rest of us
will be satisfied with BB-8, a new droid that looks like what might
happen if Wall-E had mated with a soccer ball. He's an adorable little
rolling prototype for what, one imagines, will be a tsunami of themed
toys, Disneyland rides, movie spinoffs and continuing adventures.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens feels like a cleaning of the slate, a
dismissal of three dismal prequels and a return to the rocket ship fun
of the first three films. It's not as fresh, but it couldn't be: this is
a palate cleansing, a between-courses reboot that sets the stage for
what is to come. There's no end in sight. The force has awakened.
-The Ex-Press
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