It’s been nearly two months, and if you haven’t seen it, I have to assume you don’t want to. Cool, have fun with that. You’ve probably skipped past this post anyway.

But if you’re still here, I have some thoughts about Episode VII that I want to talk about and I figure it's been enough time not to spoil anything... even though there are no spoilers here (I don't think).

However, I will be diving into it a bunch, so if you haven’t seen it, don’t read this.

Here’s the first trailer to separate out the opinion stuff:

OK, first of all, I loved this movie. This is what I’ve been waiting for since the first time I saw Return of the Jedi. It had all the fun movie-loving energy of the original. Because…

This was effectively a $200 million+ fan flick. But then, how could it not be? This generation of filmmakers grew up on Star Wars. JJ Abrams was 11 when the first movie came out. Talk about an influential time. But where he showed his genius as a filmmaker (not as a director, per se, but we’ll get to that later), is that he understood what this movie needed to be.

I’ve been saying for years that all EpVII needed to do was not suck. Seriously, that’s all it had to do. But it brilliantly was so much more. It was a glorious palette cleanser, a gentle hug that it was OK to love Star Wars again and not only that, Star Wars is cool again.

Was it the best movie of the year? No (that was Mad Max hands down). Was it even the best Star Wars movie? No (I’d say 3rd or 4th best). Is it nearly a beat-for-beat remake of A New Hope? Sure, but that’s wildly missing the point. Abrams and his team realized, or probably personally felt, that we were all betrayed with the prequels, and if they really wanted to re-launch this multi-billion dollar franchise right, they not only needed to give the fans everything they wanted, but vastly more important, give us everything we needed. And what did we need? A fun space fantasy with interesting characters and a good story. Also light sabers and Han freaking Solo.

With the seeming effortlessness (belying impressive skill) we got it.

So that brings up the question… how did we not get this before? Easy:

George Lucas loathes his audience

Let me explain. Let’s take another director everyone loves to hate: Michael Bay. His 21st century output is riddled with mind-numbing visual vomit seemingly directed by a horny 12 year old. But here’s the thing… notice how they’re all like that? Like, really consistently like that. Say what you want about the result, but you can spot a Michael Bay movie in less time it takes Shia LaBeouf to make that mewling sound his face makes when his mouth is open. So yes, Bay certainly thinks his audience is pretty dumb, but he has a razor sharp focus on that. I don’t like his movies, but you can’t deny his skill as a filmmaker. He has a voice and with it he is crafting a movie for a specific audience. Or to put it another way, he clearly cares a lot about making sure his audience gets exactly what he thinks they want out of his movies. You may not be that audience, but it’s clear he nails it because his movies always make a McDuck-ton of money.

Lucas lost that, if he indeed ever had it. Lucas, quite obviously, doesn’t care about his audience at all. He’s making movies for him, which in itself doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but when it’s clear he lost any sort of self-objectivity, and doesn’t have anyone around him to act as a sort of filter, it becomes a problem. (To put it a different way, every writer needs an editor, or as Stephan King says "Write with the door closed, but edit with the door open.")

The result is a sort of outward contempt that there even is an audience, that they’d want anything, and how dare anyone question him on what the right thing is.

This why the prequels failed so miserably. The lack of a cohesive or interesting script, the bland staging, and lack of anything that could be considered interesting from a directing standpoint all comes from that contempt. You could also call it blind arrogance, the effect is the same.

Basically, the entire prequel series could be summed up with “I know more about this than anyone, and if they don’t like it, that’s their failing.” Are there examples in cinema history that that sort of determination has worked? Yes. But it’s exceptionally rare.

This is why he fails as a filmmaker. If you don’t care what the audience thinks, why are you making movies for an audience?

The Perfect Foil

J.J. Abrams is the perfect foil to this. Probably more than any working director, he seems to care too much what the audience thinks. As flawed as the Star Trek reboots were from a Star Trek perspective, you can’t deny their effectiveness as movies. Abrams knows how to get you to feel exactly what he wants you to at exactly the right moment. Sure, other filmmakers are far better at crafting stories, but Abrams knows how to craft a movie.

The merits of that are for a different article, but it made him the perfect director for The Force Awakens. He gets the feelings right. Star Wars was always about a grand love of action/adventure movies, and the “cheap” thrills those movies provided. TFA has that in spades. It’s a grand story told well, with memorable characters, excellent set pieces, and incredible emotional moments. That part where Rey gets the thing then does the thing still gives me chills.

This is all why it doesn’t matter how similar it is to A New Hope. Of course it was. It needed to be. It's the movie saying "I know you were hurt before, but it's OK to love again." Originality can come with the probably-infinite additional Star Wars movies we’ll get from now until the end of time (a good thing, I say).

For now, like I said, all The Force Awakens had to do was not suck. The added bonus that it knocked out of the park was rebooting the franchise so spectacularly that not only was Star Wars a thing people wanted to see again, but it made people forget about the sewage that was the prequels (they don’t even need to be canon anymore they’re so easily forgotten).

Which is to say, yes, I loved the new Star Wars movie, and I can’t wait to see more.

(Also, yes, as you can see from the opening photo, I went to the premiere. That was a good night.)