The Power Awakens’ Nonetheless Holds Up 10 Years Later

It is laborious to imagine that it has been ten years for the reason that Star Wars sequel trilogy kicked off with 2015’s The Power Awakens. It signifies that 11-year-olds who had been sitting within the theater, probably watching a Star Wars movie for the primary time, are actually 21.

Though there was plenty of criticism that The Power Awakens was too just like A New Hope, the 2015 movie was a juggernaut on the field workplace and created a web-based frenzy as everybody debated Rey’s origins and the thriller surrounding Luke’s disappearance.

Sadly, issues took a little bit of a tumble with 2017’s The Final Jedi. Rian Johnson took an formidable swing by specializing in the Power connection between Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), delegating former Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and Resistance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) to minor subplots that hardly served the story.

Though Johnson seemingly arrange Kylo Ren to turn out to be the villain within the ultimate installment of the trilogy, Emperor Palpatine’s shock return utterly walked again Ren’s descent to the darkish facet. After a confrontation with Rey, he returned because the redeemed Ben Solo to tackle Palpatine. He handed away on the finish of the movie, utilizing the final of his energy to resurrect Rey, and seemingly light into the Power.

Sadly, as the one son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, this meant that the Solo/Skywalker bloodline has seemingly disappeared. Though Rey was revealed to be born from a clone of Emperor Palpatine, she makes use of the identify “Rey Skywalker” on the finish of the movie, stirring extra controversy amongst followers.

However this is not about The Rise of Skywalker, which was really the final Star Wars movie to seem in theaters method again in 2019. On the tenth anniversary of The Power Awakens, followers had one factor on their minds: hope.

Throughout the six-year run of the prequel trilogy, followers highlighted a fair proportion of disappointment and controversy. Whether or not it was Jar Jar Binks and a research of how excessive taxes and unchecked company energy led to the Galactic Empire in The Phantom Menace, to the melodramatic strains and unpolished CGI sequences panned within the seven years following Revenge of the Sith, there have been many missteps followers hoped to overlook.

Followers had been feeling hopeful about the way forward for the franchise when Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, and the announcement of the sequel trilogy had them desirous to see extra Star Wars on the massive display and see what occurred to Luke, Leia, and Han after the Battle of Endor. Sadly, the sequel trilogy finally fell flat as a result of lack of a cohesive imaginative and prescient and completely no define for the place the story would go after three movies.

That being mentioned, The Power Awakens began off robust. John Williams’ iconic rating and the parallel beats of A New Hope actually helped the story really feel like Star Wars, whereas introducing a brand new technology to a brand new band of heroes to root for. The characters are fascinating sufficient, and Oscar Isaac’s Poe does a fantastic job bringing the humor early on to steadiness out the truth that the sequel trilogy mainly opened with a bloodbath. It’s not overly violent, although, and is actually extra fascinating than beginning a film with a debate about commerce coverage.

Finn later frees Poe from the First Order, and so they crash on Jakku. It’s right here that Finn runs into Rey, and the story actually begins. Though Finn and Rey spend a good period of time collectively, Rey by no means meets Poe till the very finish of the movie, and even then, it is only a fast introduction. Followers hoping for a brand new “trio” had been shortly upset, as Rey heads off to seek out Luke and so they aren’t united once more till the top of The Final Jedi. It makes their scenes collectively within the ultimate movie really feel extra compelled than earned, because the viewers barely had any time to see their chemistry develop on-screen.

John Boyega will get loads to do within the first movie, the place he even wields a lightsaber towards Kylo Ren. Whereas it could have been poetic to see a former Stormtrooper turn out to be a Jedi to take down the First Order, Rian Johnson relegated Finn to a facet character, and his Power sensitivity was handled as a working joke that by no means landed the punchline within the ultimate movie.

Likewise, Kylo Ren makes a high-quality villain, if that is what he is purported to be. It might need been extra dramatic if he hadn’t proven his face so early on within the trilogy, as it could have allowed the story to play with the thriller of his origins a bit longer.

Nonetheless, The Power Awakens did give followers loads to speak about, and though most weren’t proud of the route that the trilogy took, it did introduce a brand new technology to a solid of fascinating characters that would have instructed a really compelling story with a unified narrative imaginative and prescient.

Now, ten years later, it is clear that the movie arrange the right combination of hope, humor, and motion that followers have come to count on from a Star Wars film. Taken by itself, it’s nonetheless movie… so long as you do not focus an excessive amount of on how the trilogy ends.