Thanks for the memories

About an hour into the mega-event (can a film this hyped even be called a movie?) Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you can almost hear how the conversations at Disney offices must have gone before director J.J. Abrams began shooting. The reason nobody liked George Lucas’ prequels is because they didn’t include enough references to the original trilogy. They didn’t have enough of the fun stuff.

Rest assured. Abrams got the message. The Force Awakens is so crammed full of fun stuff it’s like an economy-sized jar of Prego. A re-creation of the intergalactic bar scene? It’s in there. A revived Millennium Falcon? It’s in there. A certain cameo from a certain beloved character? Don’t worry, this is no spoiler. Because if said character appeared in 1977’s space opera classic, then yes, with only one or two notable exceptions that Disney will no doubt utilize in upcoming entries, he or she (or it) is in there.

For millions upon millions of Star Wars fans, such heavy doses of nostalgia will alone make Abrams’ relaunch worth watching. And there’s no question that it’s a lot of fun to see the old Rebel gang back together. However, unlike Abrams 2009 reboot of Star Trek, The Force Awakens doesn’t completely fire on its own lateral thrusters. There’s so much of the past crowding the screen, the future doesn’t have enough room to make its own claim on our imagination.

The two principals of the Republic’s new guard, orphaned scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and renegade stormtrooper, Finn (John Boyega), are likable enough, but there’s something consistently bland about them. They’re rushed from action scene to action scene too quickly to develop any real chemistry. It doesn’t help that one of cinema’s all-time great couples—Han Solo and Princess Leia—reunite in the background, reminding us of what we’re missing. A Resistance flyboy named Poe (a fantastic Oscar Isaac) presents the one new character with enough charisma to compete with our old favorites, but his role is small, and we get the feeling it’s not going to grow much bigger in the two upcoming sequels.

The backstory of how the evil Empire, destroyed at the end of Return of the Jedi, grows into the essentially identical First Order is given similarly short shrift. Though 30 years have passed and the Rebellion has morphed into the Resistance, things haven’t changed much. Even the uniforms for both sides remain the same. On the one hand the continuity is comforting. On the other, the lack of new detail flattens out the believability of the world. How could so little have changed in that amount of time? Conversely, how is it the Rebellion appears to be passing into myth when so many players in that conflict remain on the scene? Abrams seems to trust that his viewers’ enthusiasm for the source material will paper over certain logical inconsistencies.

Still, far be it from me to be the movie-critic Grinch stealing Christmas joy from sci-fi fans everywhere. The Force Awakens may not be everything A New Hope was, but it offers plenty of entertainment and visual treats, particularly for parents who can take their kids without risking anything more concerning than a few instances of minor profanity (exclamations of “hell” being the main one I noticed). The Force Awakens has to be one of the mildest PG-13 action movies to hit theaters this year.

Another bonus, despite its title, this Star Wars doesn’t emphasize the “force” as a New Age concept nearly as much as the previous films. For both heroine Rey and villain Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), the force is more akin to a superpower than a mystical intuition developed through spiritual discipline.

And if the experience doesn’t quite live up to your memories of first meeting Luke, Leia, Han, and the rest, well, you can always have new hope for the next, already announced Star Wars adventure in 2017.

Listen to Megan Basham’s review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on The World and Everything in It.