Star Wars: The Force Awakens

This seals my love for Star Wars once and for all. Thank goodness for J.J. Abrams for showing how much he loves Star Wars and not letting the next episode just be a way to get bucks out of viewers. I almost don't understand how he did it, but the atmosphere is there with everything, from beginning to end. How could I live without that? (12/17/2015)

A decent pilot episode for a very expensive TV series. There’s no sign of the force, in fact, there’s not even the Sith darkness I felt so palpably in the old trilogy, or in Revenge of the Sith. If I were fifteen or sixteen, and Episode VII was the first thing I'd ever watch in the Star Wars universe, I'd have no motivation to seek out the older episodes. And that’s sad. I enjoyed it quite a bit, that's for sure, but I didn't find anything in it that would give it cult-status or timelessness, like the old episodes. If I had to use a comparison, Abrams's film is something like Terminator 3, decent Hollywood craftsmanship, but nothing more. (12/28/2015)

I don't mind the criticism that it's all too derived and the whole movie is the most expensive fan made affair of all time. I would even add doubts about the main villain, which so far looks more like he’s from a Marvel blockbuster... Yes, part seven fuses proven motifs and practices primarily from episodes IV and VI. Unlike Star Trek, Abrams moves in a much more stylistically grounded universe, but that doesn't mean he doesn't serve us a total abrasive delight, as Dan Nekonečný would say. After 136 minutes, the film rushes forward and the runtime is simply subjectively terribly short. The obsession with the overpaid mise-en-scène has disappeared, Mindel's camera moves more with characters who don't just recite theatrically, but rather breathe. The digital haze of the new trilogy has given way to materiality. Stormtrooper skirmishes are pure pleasure and there is no choice but to move the spin-off Rogue One among the most anticipated films of 2016. The new characters learn quickly. Emphasis on well-dosed pathos, gestures, timely winks - they learn it all with ease. But of course, the battlefield belongs to veterans who awaken the Force of Nostalgia. Star Wars has ceased to be an epic galactic saga about the taxation of trade routes and relations between various representatives of galactic politics, and they are returning to a fairy tale with everything that it encompasses. Epic arc, ancient scenes, big beautiful words. If the new trilogy was criticized as an operetta, this is an opera again. We may not seem to have much in common with 1977, but for me, this epic of the eternal battle of good and evil is as important today as it was in a time dominated by villains. Not so much because it contains a very complete feminist undertone (which torments Czech mental apartheid), but rather because it again fully recalls the validity of Yoda's thirty-two-year-old words: "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." Abrams may have just built a bridge between the old trilogy and the new universe, but it's a bridge that is a joy to walk on. (12/16/2015)

Disclaimer for fans: if anyone liked this film, I’m glad for them, the problem is mine. Star Wars has never meant anything to me, and The Force Awakens didn’t hype me for any experience, either. The plot is very predictable, I didn’t see anything original o interesting. The variations of the themes of previous episodes may be fun for the fans, but they don’t mean anything on their own. The dialogues are made of empty, nostalgic phrases, the characters have unexplainable deep bonds, even though the story takes place in, what, a couple of days at most? Sometimes this aspect becomes almost a parody, like, for instance, when Kylo Ren says that Han Solo is for Ray the father she never had (even though it seems that they’ve known each other for only a couple of hours), or when Finn and Poe reunite and fall into an embrace almost as if they’ve gone through at least the Vietnam War together, but actually the only thing they’ve done is a semi-successful escape from a ship that can’t have taken more than half an hour. Really, sometimes it feels as if it was written by an idiot, or by someone takes the viewers for idiots. And this sci-fi cancer will now take space at the cinemas for another few years and will employ many young hopeful directors who instead of this could be working on something more meaningful. Great :-/ (03/23/2016)

I’ve been waiting for the story to continue for many years and suddenly it was over. The result? I could find a lot of reasons to criticize the seventh instalment. Mirka Spáčilová in her review for Mladá Fronta did not disappoint. Sadly, she only stated in her review what could be somehow expected of this instalment. I wouldn’t be surprised if she just got up after the opening credits and left. Anyone could criticize that the story dilutes the original trilogy and does not bring anything new. However, introducing new characters in a universe like that is also a craft that not everybody can do, and I think J. J. Abrams managed it really well. Personally, I feel that towards the end of the year I couldn’t encounter better movie in the cinemas. There are fewer digital effects than real ones, which is really to the creators’ benefit. New characters played by Daisy Ridley and John Boyega are also really nice. Adam Driver also fulfills his mission in this story. He is a scumbag at first glance with clearly a weak will to be a weakling. However, the circumstances make him into a real monster. Add in an epic story like in the first trilogy. What else could you ask for? I really don’t know. (12/24/2015)