Plagiarizing "Star Wars": The Problems with "The Force Awakens" | Far Flungers
The seventh episode of the “Star Wars” saga has three new leading protagonists. Rey (Daisy Ridley) is an enigmatic girl from the planet Jakku who’s clearly more than she first appears. Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is an audacious, first rate pilot and Finn (John Boyega) belongs to a new class of Storm Trooper that seems to have a conscience, which I guess means he wasn’t clone like his predecessors. In simple “Star Wars” terms Rey is a female Luke Skywalker, Poe is a Han Solo of sorts and the now older Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is the new Obi Wan Kenobi, based on his not too subtle looks in the briefest of scenes where we do get to see him. Han Solo and Princess Leia make their appearance as a separated couple trying to turn their offspring Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) back from the dark side of the Force. Kylo is basically the Darth Vader of the piece except for some personal doubts and severe daddy issues. He worships granddad Vader even if it means ignoring the fact that the latter was the one who most responsible for sending Emperor Palpatine and his Empire to their doom.
The new leads in "Episode VII" are interesting enough but the film’s main problem is that it never provides them with a worthy, original story to justify going back to this universe. What’s worse, “The Force Awakens” pulls the original trilogy’s beloved main characters from the state of “happily ever” that we left them, achieved with plenty of blood, sweat and tears, and puts them in situations that make you feel like the whole thing just wasn’t worth going through in the first place. Case in point: we now find the Han Solo and Princess Leia couple in one of those senseless, cinematic, marital crises, the result of their child’s rebellious ways, and this only serves to spoil our past memories of them.
Some three years ago when Disney announced the continuation of the series, I remember wondering what the point would be of going back to this particular universe considering that just about all of its the best and most iconic characters (Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine) had been killed off by their creator. "The Force Awakens" tries to come up with some new imposing protagonists but they don’t turn out to be anywhere as memorable as those of old. Kylo Ren seems striking at first but once he takes off his mask (unlike Darth Vader’s, it doesn’t seem to serve any real purpose) the movie character that he most brings to mind isn’t a Palpatine or a Darth Vader but rather Barbra Streisand’s equally troubled son in “The Prince of Tides." I would have happily settled for this new episode a villain in the same level as those in the much maligned prequels such as a Darth Maul or a Count Dooku.
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