‘The Force Awakens’ continues original’s spirit

Christian Cortes, Entertainment Editor

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens’” is the seventh installment in the main “Star Wars” film series and the first movie in the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy announced after Disney bought Lucasfilm.

The film takes place 30 years after the defeat of The Empire, where an organization known as The First Order, a political and military organization inspired by The Empire, has risen and seeks control of the galaxy.

The movie starts with Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper defector, helping Poe (played by Oscar Isaac), a Resistance pilot, escape from an Order’s spaceship and crash land on planet Jakku.

Finn then meets up with a scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley), who has found Poe’s robot, which has a part of the map that could lead to the disappeared Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).

Together, they must get the map back to the resistance while The Order is trying to hunt them down.

The film has both new characters and old ones from the original trilogy, but the main focus of the movie is on Rey, Finn and a new villain named Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).

Some of the characters, like Stormtrooper General Phasma, don’t get enough screentime, only appearing in a few scenes throughout the movie. Hopefully, some of the side characters get built on more in the next movies.

Another complaint I had, at first, was that the main villain, Kylo Ren, seemed a little underwhelming, considering he is supposed to be the movie’s main villain. However, after I thought about it, he has more depth and character than any other villain we have seen before in the “Star Wars” series. The fact that he is not as menacing as he shows at first and that he has faults and weaknesses is what makes him unique.

The movie is true to the original trilogy. With a music score with familiar songs and cinematography techniques unique to the “Star Wars” franchise, like the scene transitions, it truly feels like  a “Star Wars” movie. Unlike franchises that do reboots and remakes to try to make them grittier or differ from the feeling of the source material, which usually ends up disappointing fans of the original movies and turning new viewers’ interest away, this “Star Wars” feels like a proper continuation of the series, and not just an attempt at monetizing from fans’ nostalgia.