A safe choice for J.J. Abrams

Rating: 7/10 (20 December 2015)

The long-awaited seventh episode of STAR WARS is apparently shattering the opening weekend box-office record all over the place, a decade after the prequel trilogy and more than 30 years after the original trilogy. The anticipation is understandably high, since this iconic franchise has been transferred to Disney and under the helm of J.J. Abrams, this first instalment in a new trilogy is self-evidently decisive to reboot the story and carry on the mantle to both gratify hardcores and new audience.
Saw it in the local multiplex in its 3D-format, Episode 7 is a generically formulaic effort, plays the safety card with viewers' nostalgia, one step a time, introduces back the core human-trio from the original trilogy, while builds a similar "destroy-a-much-bigger-Death-Star" plot for the next generation, freshly, this time, our protagonist is a girl named Rey (the star-making role for the new- comer Ridley), whose inherited prowess to control the force is exponentially stronger than Luke Skywalker (Hamill) in the original, befriends with a defected storm trooper Finn (Boyega) and gets acquainted with Han Solo (Ford) and Chewbacca (Mayhew), when they steers the run-down Millennium Falcon. A key plot device is Luke's whereabout, who has disappeared as the last Jedi. After Rey being captured by Kylo Ren (Driver), the son of Solo and Princess Leia (Fisher), who joined the dark side and becomes a commander of THE FIRST ORDER, governed by Supreme Leader Snoke (Serkis). Finn, Solo and Chewbacca infiltrate inside the Starkiller Base (a.k.a. a much bigger Death Star), whereas a fleet lead by the Resistance pilot Poe (Isaac), attacks from outside.
The same-old patricide complex again is inevitably exploited as the biggest plot-twist here (someone has taken the same route from Alec Guinness and Liam Neeson, as another victim of ageism in the franchise), but Adam Driver, valiantly saves the cliché from being over-dramatic and masks a discernible ambiguity in Ren's psychology, more impressively, Driver is the MVP among a melange of old-faces and new blood, whose malicious appearance and undecipherable temperament eclipse the one-dimensional cardboard characterisation plagued the rest of the cast (save our heroine, maybe).
As one can assure from a J.J. Abrams' vehicle, the picture is visually enterprising, and extensively restores the less florid palette and vast settings of the originals other than the more recent prequels, but on a minus side, the homage to the original also hampers Abrams' imagination, as inviting as the grotesque tableaux vivants in planet Takodana - where our protagonists encounter Maz Kanata (Nyong'o incognito), the keeper of Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber, the blatant repetition doesn't taste better in a second time, and using the same strategy, the Resistance successfully levels the base as Luke did in STAR WARS (1977), which shamefully attests, villains never learn.
Afterwards, gratifyingly, we don't have to wait to see Luke until the next episode, but cunningly, the film leaves us the biggest question mark in our mind about Rey's identity, is she Luke's daughter? or Leia's? We have a two-year span to wait for the answer, is this the sadness of being a Star War loyalty? OK, who cares!