Darth Vader wo horobosu zo – Star Wars: The Force Awakens
There’s not much to say about Star Wars: The Force Awakens on its own without referring to it within the context of the six other films that came before it. As a standalone work it’s a solid sci-fi adventure movie, a longish but otherwise punchy, smart aleck-y experience that stands in contrast to the pseudo-intellectual bent of recent SF films like Interstellar and Ex Machina. It feels like Star Wars.
It also bears some of the now-established tics, both good and ill, of its director, JJ Abrams: good action scenes, imbalanced bad guys prone to shouting a lot, quick pace despite long length, an obligatory scene of mass destruction which serves no purpose but to raise the tenor of the central conflict.
But no one’s first impulse will be to examine this movie purely on its own merits. Say what you will about the idea of a “soft” reboot, Star Wars 7 will only – and rightly – be judged as an installment in the larger series. Does it live up to the pop-mythical standards of the original trilogy of the ‘70s and ‘80s? Does it exorcise the demons of the dysfunctional prequel trilogy of the ‘00s? How Star Wars-y is it exactly? Your ultimate opinion on the film will be linked inextricably to these kinds of questions, and your opinions on the larger series and what it means to you.
Therein lies the irony. I enjoyed this film, but I suspect it’s because Star Wars means far less to me as it seems to for many other people in my generation. Mythologies are defined by their transcendence of what’s possible to mere mortal engines like men, and thus impossible to be surpassed by anything within man’s own capabilities. To mythologize something on some level or another, is to encase it in a crystalline structure. Suspended there it can never be touched, modified or revisited. Immutable and eternal. How could a sequel to the Bhagavad Gita, regardless of its provenance or literary merits, be anything but unsatisfactory hubris?