[CaptainCrunch]

ok some more

The Cast

Somehow JJ Abrams managed to find the right people to play the right roles. Of course its easy with the existing cast, Harrison Ford came back strong as Han Solo, but it was a different Han Solo then we had come to know and love in the Original Trilogy. Gone was the cocky opinionated brash Han Solo, This Han Solo was old and worn down by age and by situation. While he was still decisive and willing to look for a fight, he was also weary and looked tired and beaten up. Clearly the fall of his son Ben had destroyed his self possession, and he played a man that had spent years wandering between the Stars trying to basically get lost. Harrison Ford is an amazing character actor, and he slid into the Han Solo character easily and made him believable.

Carrie Fisher returns as former Princess Leia now General Leia leader of the Resistance. While we know the years haven't been kind to her, she carried a kind of stoic dignity in this role and was utterly believable as a general in what was a very short role. Like Han Solo, this was a woman who had a long fall and she was like her mother Padme, a very sad woman. Interestingly enough Carrie played the role in a very subtle understated way and she oozed heart break.

Peter Mahew put on the dog suit and became Chewbacca, its a rare strength that someone who growls and uses facial expressions can convey a character like he can. He and Harrison Ford work extremely well together as a Mutt and Jeff couple, and Chewbacca fed off of the humorous lines with ease. The scene when Finn is trying to treat his injuries was extremely funny. I also loved how he handled Han Solo's death, it was with a Wookie's anger and grief and reaction and it was well done. I felt that he was a bit ripped off in the end when we didn't have what could have been a very emotional scene between Leia and Chewie when they returned to the Resistance base.

Daisy Ridley hasn't done much prior to this, but she was phenomenal, She managed to capture every emotional moment, and was also a good enough physical action to not look out of place when she needed to be the action hero. Lets not cut corners here, Rey is the primary protagonist in this story and she carried that role extremely well. Her scene when she had the vision of the Jedi Academy slaughter was very well played, as was the scene when she confronts Finn who just wants to flee. She gave the performance that we had hopped Natalie Portman would have given in the prequels.

John Boyega was very good as Finn, I have to admit that it took me a while to warm up to him in this movie because his turn as a Stormtrooper wasn't well done, but he really hit his stride half way through the movie and its clear that he's taking up the Han Solo mantle. I guess what I didn't like was that his character as a whole didn't make sense. This was someone that was raised from birth to be a soldier, and a extremely loyal StormTrooper, but he spent most of his time being the accidental hero. I think that the writing of his character was a bit on the questionable side, I also didn't like that when it came to fighting he was extremely indecisive, you would think that a born and bred soldier would have none of that indecision.

Oscaar Isaac as Poe, did a decent job for a generic role. He is suppossed to be the square jawed hero, and he played it well, but there was nothing that really gravitated me towards caring about his character. He is literally the Wedge Antilles of this movie. I thought his best work was in the torture scene but I thought he could have shown more fear and emotion, I guess.

Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, Probably what I would classify as the best performance in the movie. He did a phenomenal job of playing two roles, the first in the mask as the embodiment of the Dark Side of the Force and a fallen Jedi intent of gaining enough power to be as strong as his Grandfather, when the mask came off he played an entirely different role, a confused and lost person who is unsure of his place in the universe, a man who had one foot in the dark and one in the light. However his best work was saved for when he murdered his father, I'm going to talk more about this later, but you literally saw the indecision, then the heartbreak as he talked to his father, and then the resolve as JJ brilliantly took the light away from the scene. His performance during the duel when he beat his wounded side in order to heighten his pain and anger and resolve thus giving him more power was brilliant. You got a sense though that there was a little of the lost teenager left when he offered to teach Ray the ways of the force.

The minor roles

Domhall Gleesan as General Hux. I think he was bought on board more for his aryan looks and accent then as a major character. What this movie lacked was a Grand Moff Tarkin type of villain who was brilliant and ruthless and smart and subtle. Hux was none of these things, he was basically a evil foil to fire a weapon and didn't have much impact on this movie. In my mind this is one of my big character complaints as it basically reduced the First Order to the useful tool role whereas in ANH Tarkin was a representative of a strong villainous group. In this case, the First Order takes a backseat to the battle on the metaphysical level.

Lupita Nyong'o as Maz, I had this expectation of more as the wise thousand year old character, but she really didn't amount to much more then, this is our Yoda replacement, but the character was relatively two dimensional, and I didn't really feel any attachment to what she was saying.

Gwendoline Christie as Phasma was the Boba Fett from ROTJ in this movie. She looked menacing, sounded bad a$$, but was tossed in a garbage chute. She represents the wasted opportunity of the First Order that could have been so much better. I know she's been cast in the next movie, but at the very least they could have given us one good action scene where she does something amazingly cool so that we'd care whether or not she was a threat.

Andy Serkis as Snoke, I'll be touching on this character later, but I don't think we got enough for us to develop this character. He was meant to look awesome and sound threatening and powerful, and the first part I don't think was achieved, the second part was, and I'm unsure of the third part.

BB-8, love this droid, and I put him as an actor because he does play a character, as the obvious replacement for R2D2 in the upcoming movies, for some reason BB-8 does a better job of emoting emotions and you can almost understand what he's saying. I loved loved loved the thumbs up scene as cheesy as it probably was, and the electric shock torture on Finn reminded me of Chopper in Rebels.

Still a lot more to come later, I'm going to talk about the plot, the links to the original series, and some of the theories that I have concerning Rey and Kylo and Snoke.