Fun fact, I went to the movies by myself for the first time in my life. Reason being everyone that could potentially go with me were all not able to for several weeks. I wanted to see it on opening day, at least week, so that wasn't going to work.

Either way, since I'm completely avoiding any spoilers, this will be very brief and ridiculously controversial if you take general opinion as wide known fact; I don't dig the original trilogy as much as most people do. I don't necessarily think the prequels are much better, but I do think parts of them are better, as parts of the original trilogy is better. But in all honesty, I never thought any of the Star Wars movies were particularly great. They all have issues, every single one of them. Even 'your' precious Empire Strikes Back is not without serious flaws.

That is, until The Force Awakens. I genuinely believe this to be the first actually great Star Wars film. No doubt it has flaws, but of the couple things I could mention, they are all nitpicky and didn't squander my enjoyment of the film. Heck, I can't even remember the parts I didn't like except for one minor thing. Whereas whenever someone brings up some Star Wars any other movie I'm instantly reminded about the stuff I don't like about it.

What makes it so much better in my eyes, is that it addresses all the complaints I have with the other films. First, I just don't think the Star Wars universe is that interesting. I can't tell you any other species apart from humans. If we're talking Mass Effect, all that stuff is tremendously interesting and I could name every single one of the top of my hat. In short, I hated it when the movies focused on the stuff that didn't interest me. This one does not, pretty much ever. It is constantly interesting, which is a feat given its long runtime.

Secondly, I think most of the Star Wars movies are either poorly acted/cast or directed. I don't think I found a single line of A New Hope convincing, much less the physical acting that was going on. In the prequels it is very clear who is acting well/casted appropriately and who isn't. Some just feel out of place. In The Force Awakens I thought every cast was spot on. I especially liked the performance of 'the bad guy'. I could see strong emotions and his voice was perfect for the part.

Lastly, while I'm sure something will turn up in the future, there is nothing about the plot that is nonsensical. Everything seems to happen for a reason and it feels coherent. Can't say as much about any of the other movies. Especially the original trilogy was dropping it hard for me here. 'Because this scene consists of characters that can't die yet, the opposition will now have 0% chance to hit for no in-universe reason'. The mark of any old Star Wars movie. It's luckily mostly absent here. Things feel powerful. Even Stormtroopers seem less like fodder and actually capable soldiers, dare I say for the first time ever.

So far, I have said why the movie isn't bad, rather than why it's good. I'm doing that on purpose because perhaps there is someone out there like me that liked Star Wars, but didn't feel like any of the movies were that amazing. Well, here is one that just might be. There is one reason why I thought it was great instead of mind blowingly awesome. It isn't a story spoiler of any kind, but it might spoil some so I put in in tags. To define the type of spoiler, in Empire there are a lot of starship and walker dogfights. If you consider that a spoiler for Empire, then the following is a spoiler for The Force Awakens: there aren't any impressive light saber fights in the entire film, which was very disappointing because it felt so powerful when there was some action there.

Either way, go see this movie. It is great, emotional and has a healthy amount of genuine humor. You won't waste your money or time seeing this.

5 / 5