Initial thoughts on Star Wars: The Force Awakens

John Boyega: the real MVP

Just a few assorted thoughts on the new Star Wars film before an official, proper article/review.

1. Anyone going in for purely the nostalgic value, rest assured; the funny little references, inside jokes, verging on fourth wall humour and awesome callbacks to the original trilogy are all incredibly well done.

2. Performances are mostly good and in some cases excellent. The MVP is definitely John Boyega. Daisy Ridley gave a very effective leading turn that carried the dramatic beats of the film quite well. Oscar Isaac despite being a bit limited in terms of screentime gives such an interesting blend of the dramatic and comedic, very remnicisent of a certain someone. The veterans are all solid (I'll say no more yet). Adam Driver has slightly off moments but is mostly fantastic. Gleeson is a pretty effective villain, Serkis is extraneous. Ngong'yo gives a very interesting portrayal I'm intrigued to see. As for Von Sydow he was disappointing but had a lot of screentime/impact (I'll let you decide which is which)

3. Special effects were pretty much impeccable. All the skyfighter scenes were impeccably shot.

4. Some of the dialogue was kind of on the nose and forced, and to be fair a lot of the humour and wit was derived from the performances of Boyega and Isaac.

5. I'll get more onto this in a future article but I thought this was J.J. Abraham's first ever time where his directorial style didn't distract from the finish product. There are hints of it here and there but overall he does a great job of immersing it into the Star Wars universe.

6.  Only problem with this film really is the unused potential which I'm sure will be exploited in the sequels. Some of the dynamics, dramatic heft, and several characters I'm sure will get to in a bit.