Yesterday the fam and I headed out to Longmont’s new theater to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We ended up with tickets to a 3D show, because it was the most convenient time given other things going on that day. As it turned out, the 3D was really well done– it wasn’t one of those instances where it felt like the 3D effects were over the top just because they could be.
And yeah, the movie was awesome. Like many people I know, I intentionally didn’t go hunting for plot spoilers on the internet. Also, secretly, I didn’t get my hopes up too high. I remember The Phantom Menace all too well. So it was a pleasant surprise to find that J.J. Abrams did a marvelous job– along with screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
The special effects were amazing, as they seem to be in big-budget movies these days.
Daisy Ridley was incredible as Rey, who was a great character. It’s interesting to see how many books and movies in the last few years have featured strong female leads. I suspect that next Halloween we’ll see a lot of little girls dressed as Rey, just like we saw a lot of Padmes a few years ago.
I admit that I shook my head about a spherical robot… what a horribly inefficient design. That said, R2-D2 has probably the least useful mode of propulsion of any robot ever invented, so maybe BB-8 is an improvement. My take on it: there seems to be a lot of hover technology in the galaxy– heck, they even slapped it on a chunk of carbonite– so they should just build robots that hover. But anyway, I digress.
And finally, it was fun to see some familiar faces. Harrison Ford was brilliant, and I like what Abrams did with his character. He threw out some great lines and had that familiar happy-go-lucky swaggering attitude.
I’m excited to see it again next week with Dirk. He and I probably watched The Empire Strikes Back a hundred times on sleepovers when we were growing up, and can still quote pretty much every line.
Well done, J.J.