Vibrant Spiritual Successor That Falls on the Shallow Side of the Force

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2015)

Disney and JJ Abrams swing hard in their effort to repair the damage done by Episodes I-III, with mixed results. Spiritually it's dead-on, a loving tribute to the original trilogy that's a stylistic and thematic clone (with several not-so-subtly borrowed plot points) that makes for great fan service. Few cinematic properties have the rich, sprawling mythos of the Star Wars universe, and Episode VII is wise to draw from that at every turn. Those shared past experiences with familiar characters, settings and devices go a long way; without six films' worth of enhancement to help prop it up, this is just an average sci-fi picture. Wonderfully produced, with long, regular opportunities to appreciate the efforts of its all-world concept artists, somewhere the steep sense of scale was lost. It's a rather thin movie, all told, one that feels decidedly less sweeping and grandiose than its precursors. Less of a space opera than an interplanetary sonnet. The new cast members seem deep and interesting, so there's plenty of hope for future installments, but it's a little unsettling that Harrison Ford so thoroughly outshines them all. It's nice to see the rest of the old gang again, even if Carrie Fisher completely phones her performance in, but Ford is the film's heart and soul. Somewhere in the next installment, those new characters are going to need to step out of his shadow and carry things on their own. A promising step forward, teasing some intriguing potential directions for the rest of the new trilogy, but lacking a lot of the invariables that made A New Hope and Empire the timeless classics they remain today. Much better than the prequels, in any case.