Got out of my local The Force Awakens premiere and I can’t stop thinking about it and how Star Wars has grown, changed, or not. I’m not sure if TFA was a “good film”, but I enjoyed it quite a lot. All this talk about good films, fun films, blockbusters and the rest… What is the connection, the overlap, between a film being “good”, well-made and without plot holes, and being enjoyable and fun? What’s the perfect balance between nostalgia, fan service and introducing actual novelties that made the original movies so special in the first place?
I don’t know what it is, but TFA pulled off what three years ago we thought was ridiculous to even think of: a respectable sequel to the original trilogy that changed the world of cinema forever. It could have gone wrong in a million different ways, but then again… was that so difficult? If anything, I’d say that the we, the Star Wars crowd, have certain buttons that at the end of the day should not be so hard to find and push!
Then again, in retrospect, when Episode III came out I was pretty hyped as well. Only later did I realise that it was a mediocre movie at best and that it could have been so much more. Funny how this all works. Probably has a lot to do with growing up.
EDIT: I made another realisation: Star Wars is like a fairy tale, right? Fairy tales don’t go by the same rules other stories go by, e.g. novels. Plot holes don’t have the same gravity, if they have any at all. There is no reason to suspend disbelief, because disbelief is suspended to begin with.
The Prequel Trilogy as well as The Force Awakens wouldn’t stand critical scrutiny as novels or ordinary sci-fi flicks, but if you just follow them through as you would a fairy tale, then yes, they work well no matter what. If you left it to fans on the other hand, it seems they would turn it into something more complicated than it’s meant to be.
Would a truly properly plot-thick Star Wars work? Maybe the spin-offs will give us an idea.