84% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe’s thoughts: It’s alright; Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe (I put both of these because it’s somewhere in the middle of the two statements)
Watch it if you: Are a fan of Star Wars (obviously); Want to see some cool CGI and action scenes
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....
Basically, this film is centred around the events of the opening crawl of Episode IV: A New Hope, so that's not a spoiler, and if you think it's a spoiler then what are you even doing here, go watch the original movies!
I for some reason was not that excited about this film. I think it was just a mixture of the first trailer (think back to the terrible ongoing siren, together with the "I rebel" line), and the news about 40% of the movie being reshot, that just made me feel really uneasy about the whole thing.
And while there certainly are a lot of flaws in this film, it turned out to be pretty good!
Some standouts of the film were that it was fun, enjoyable, had great action sequences, cinematography, and CGI, and actually had a different feel to other Star Wars films (and not just because they did things differently with the opening crawl and the soundtrack).
But unfortunately, I didn't feel satisfied with the movie until quite late into the film.
In fact, the whole first part of the film is pretty bad. It's really messy, with scenes shoved in randomly, the movie making us feel like we were just hopping from planet to planet for weird expositionary scenes, and it felt like they were trying to put in all this information they thought was necessary, when in actual fact it was really redundant.
I mean, seriously, in the first half an hour we probably hear of a defected Imperial pilot carrying a message about five times, and it's like... We get it; can we move on now? That probably would have been better if they could have changed it and made it into some part of an opening crawl to make a tighter, shorter, and more cohesive film.
But instead, what we got was a badly written, and quite frankly a bit boring, first half with a lot of unnecessary scenes (telepathic tentacles, really?).
Thank heavens this was only the first part of the film though! Perhaps this is why they ended up rewriting 40% of the movie; they just realised how terrible it was!
The film gets better towards the middle, and once it gets over the hump it really picks up in the last act. So much so that you actually kind of forget how messy the first part was.
Later in the film, we get introduced to the planet Scarif, and I loved the concept of it; it looked really cool, with all its beaches and everything. But it also provided a really great war zone.
The action and fight sequences in this film really did look really gritty and combat-like, and it was just so different to other Star Wars films I thought it did a great job at that.
It also felt like a different Star Wars movie because of some of the portrayals of the Rebel fighters. It's not like a cookie-cutter bad-guys-are-bad-good-guys-are-good film; you get into some real sketchy morales here, and there is one scene near the beginning where you're just kind of left there like, Oh... that guy's a dickhead! And it was interesting to see glimpses of that in this film.
Which brings us to the characters and actors.
I liked the acting here; it was interesting seeing Felicity Jones in an action role since she looks so sweet and like she wouldn't hurt a fly.
I also found it amazing that they were able to cast a child actor that resembled her. That is so hard to do, and although she looked more like Felicity Jones in the trailer than in the actual movie, I thought that was a solid effort (although I'm not sure if they used a bit of CGI to make her look like her likeness).
Donnie Yen as Chirrut was great in this, but his character seemed a bit... unbelievable. I see the necessity in some of his characterisations, though, to explain bits about the Force and show the power of it all and how it has this sort of religious feel to it, but some of it seemed really ridiculous.
One last character I wanted to talk about was Forest Whitaker's Saw Gerrera. I have mixed feelings about this, because I'm glad he didn't really act like how he normally does, but what was up with his voice? I felt like clearing my throat every time he said something; it was really weird.
Apart from those minor issues, though, I found the acting to be pretty good, and the characters quite enjoyable to follow.
Another thing that I really liked about this film was that it addresses and shuts up one major flaw in the original series. There is one thing in A New Hope that is so ridiculous, yet this film centres around a really smart and reasonable excuse to explain that flaw away. Although, it doesn't make the same flaw in The Force Awakens go away...
So it wasn't a fantastic Star Wars film, but it was really enjoyable, if you can get past the mess that is the first act. The action sequences, cinematography, set pieces, acting, and CGI were great. The soundtrack wasn't the best (my heart would leap, and then just break, every time we heard something that sounded like a familiar theme, only for it to change and feel a bit weird at the end), but apparently they only had about a month to do it.
It's also really interesting and exciting to see how they blended it into Episode IV; this was probably the rewrite they had to do, since it was reported that it was the ending they had to change. And even without this ending, they had great continuity, with characters showing up from previous films, and even having some motion capture done for characters so that we could see familiar faces (even though the actor/s may already be dead by now). They did a really good job with this motion capture business, but it was still heading towards uncanny valley territory, although I think it wouldn't have been as bad if it weren't for my mum constantly whispering into my ear that it was CGI.
One last thing: Darth Vadar isn't in this film much. He doesn't do much here, and is a bit of a let down. He looks super short in this film, and not as authoritative as a result, but you know what? He more than makes up for it at the end of the film.
A few side notes:
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