[CaptainCrunch]

To start with, I'll get the emotional part out of the way. This was the movie that we all wanted when Star Wars returned with the prequels, this was a fantastic Star Wars movie that could really appeal to people that haven't vested in Star Wars.

When ANH came out in the late 70's it had a tag line talking about how a group of unlikely hero's came together and saved the Galaxy. That tag line really represents this movie. That's not to say that it was without flaws, there were several that I want to point out later on, I might be right I might be wrong.

I think to break this down logically I'm going to break this into different sections

The Cinematics

I think that one thing that came out here, is that JJ Abrams has a bit of a better hand in terms of editing the Lucas does, he seems to have a strong understanding of story flow and transitions. That's not to say that Lucas doesn't, but with the exception of Revenge of the Sith, the story had better flow then the prequels, and we didn't have awkward transitions that really bugged me about the prequels. We didn't have the clumsiness where the camera in the prequels seemed to hold onto the characters for too long after the dialogue ended and we were stuck holding onto the characters facial expressions like the end of a bad 70's sitcom where the characters froze while the credits rolled.

In terms of sheer lushness and backgrounds, I think one of the faults of Lucas is he had too many details in his mind and had to throw them into every scene. For the most part, TFA had clean simple backgrounds and because of that a lot of the visuals really held your attention, you weren't trying to capture a lot of movement in the background before the scene ends. That's not to say there weren't some clumsy moments in this movie where you were suddenly pulled out of the movement, I think the scene in Maz's bar was guilty of that at times. But I think JJ wanted to desperately recapture the Mos Eisley Bar in his movie.

Beyond some absolutely sets. one thing that seperates this movie from the prequels is the reliance on practical effects versus CGI effects. This movie marked the return of actual Storm Troopers, and Ship models and built sets, because of this the movie suddenly had a heft that was missing a bit in the Prequels, you actually felt that you were looking at actual physical people and things and not watching a cartoon. Because of this there was a certain realism that you felt in the battle scenes. The scene where Fin's Storm Trooper buddy dies and marks him with blood couldn't have been pulled off with CGI with the same feeling.

The Battles


Extremely well done, for the first time a long time, I felt like we had competent Storm Troopers, they moved like Soldiers and actually hit targets. The scene where they lit up Poe's X-Wing just felt really good. We also saw First Order Tie fighters taking apart X-Wings, and you felt that due to the troops on the ground and in space that we had a two evenly matched sides.

The Battle between riot control Trooper Steve and Fin was very well done, and you learned then that Fin wasn't a Jedi as Steve pretty well picked him apart and was about to kill him.

The other thing that I liked was the sheer power of Chewie's Bowcaster, which was throwing people backwards 10 yards at a time. I didn't however like the fact that Han was carrying it around and able to shoot it, that to me was cheesy, and I grumbled at that, Han's signature weapon is his blaster, it makes him into a gunslinger instead of a soldier.

The light sabre usage was extremely well done, as we went away from the highly trained and stylized light sabre battles of the prequels and went towards more of the weighty battles of the prequels.

I think one of the key factors in this was the level of training. Finn and Rey weren't trained light sabre users. Kylo Ren's light sabre suddenly made sense as he used it like a heavy broad sword instead of a rapier or saber. It was a unique interpretation, I also don't think that Ren is all that well trained but we'll touch on that later.

We really saw Rey and Ren cut loose and I loved the sound effects that were used, and I loved the visualization of tree's getting cut and slashed, but when Rey cut loose there was a real sense of weight behind her slashes and moves, and when Kylo used his light sabre there was a sense of raw power and aggression there, it was the epitome of someone captured by the Dark Side, and controlled by fear and desperation.

The Sound

The sound effects were great, and once again John Williams manages to take any scene and make them far more emotional. When the opening crawl kicked in with the familiar Star Wars opening, I felt my heart lift, when we had the villains a modified version of the Imperial March made me feel their menace.

More to come in a bit.