On the other hand, The Force Awakens is too full of "classic" Star Wars moments. Remember in A New Hope when Luke was all like "Ugh, I wish I had less sand and more power converters" as he looked off into the twin sunset of Tatooine? Remember the music that played, "Theme For An Angsty Farm Nerd" by John Williams? That scene is ingrained in our heads. Well, the aim of The Force Awakens seemed to be a movie that is nothing but these scenes, a montage of "This is FUCKING IMPORTANT" moments. And it's not a bad film by any means. But it does feel strange to watch a Star Wars that seems to be asking me for a standing ovation every few minutes.
However, if you took this flaw from The Force Awakens and applied it to The Phantom Menace, suddenly the latter film gets the gravitas it needs to pull it out of the Watto-filled pit that it's dug for itself. The Phantom Menace desperately needs moments that we'll remember when we leave the theater, moments that feel even slightly Star Wars-ish. Sure, these moments are often ripe for parody the second they hit our corneas, but a grand, sweeping, orchestral bombshell is infinitely preferable to Qui-Gon taking future galactic douchebag Anakin aside to give him a Jedi anatomy lesson. To paraphrase a quote from the most annoying kid in my seventh-grade class, "WHAT WERE YOU SMOKIN', GEORGE LUCAS?!? HAHAHA. DRAGON BALL Z, EMINEM, ETC."
And if you took some of those sweet, inexplicable oddities from The Phantom Menace and sprinkled them throughout The Force Awakens, you'd get a movie that really felt like something we'd never seen before. Imagine that ninja vampire in The Force Awakens. He doesn't even have to be the main villain. You can still keep My Chemical Romance Vader, but throw in Darth Maul as a side quest. That shakes things up and holds The Force Awakens back from being A New Hope: Remix Edition. You might get a scene in which Rey fights Darth Maul. Rey. Fighting. Darth. Maul. If that doesn't sell you on a whole new trilogy, I don't think there's a lot of hope for you.
159 Comments