‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Is The Movie The Series So Badly Needed
After all the waiting The Force Awakens is finally upon us and it is as good as much of the hype said it would be. Considering the state the prequels left the series in, this film has had the unenviable and almost impossible task of salvaging the Star Wars mythos from the brink of oblivion.
When the original Star Wars was released back in 1977 it was unlike anything that had come before it. This is because George Lucas was and still is an experimental filmmaker. With fascinating films like THX 1138, Star Wars followed in that tradition in doing almost everything differently. Admittedly, much of what he’s done hasn’t worked out but they’re meant to be experiments after all.
This is why the prequels were mostly dreadful, as they were experimental in approach but also had utterly immense budgets. So it amplified their failings hugely and, unlike the original trilogy, Lucas didn’t farm out the directing work to a third party, something that would have likely tempered some of the awfulness.
In the case of The Force Awakens though, it’s all-new in terms of the crew behind the wheel but the actual content plays it incredibly safe. This is likely to undo the damage done by the prequels but as a result, it comes close to a remake of the 1977 original and is verging on being quite formulaic in places. Though, after the mess of the prequels, playing it safe was likely the right choice to get the series back on track.