Star Wars Episode VII "The Force Awakens" has been in the movie for weeks now. I managed to catch it on the second day of airing in Japan. The special effects were fantastic. After all, this movie was made with current day state-of-the-art technology. The special effects are of course much much better than those used 30 years ago.
The movie brought back memories (scenes?) from the original series, such as a planet-killing weapon of massive dimension (this time, planet-size); spaceships attacking this massive weapon (such as the X-wing attack on the Death Star); the father-son light-side/dark-side relationship; desert planet; icy planet; and so on.
So how did the movie fare? Did it gain new fans? Or lose old ones? It is probably still too early to say.
For me, I was hoping that Disney would have taken the underlying theme (aka the hero's journey) behind the original Star Wars, and used it to come up with a new story with new twists. Instead of portraying the struggle between light and dark to gain control of Anakin, the prequel trilogy (Episodes I, II, and III) portrayed Anakin in such a way that his fall into darkness was imminent. Episode VII is like reliving an old tale (from Episodes IV, V, and VI) with many similar twists. The hero's journey (or in this case, the heroine's journey) is still there; that theme remains intact. But as a sequel, there are just too many things that remain unclear.
A prequel needs to lead up to the story. A sequel needs to continue that story. Episodes I, II, and III managed to somehow lead up to the story (although not in the best way, see this article). I just hope that Episodes VII, VIII, and IX can somehow bring about something new that is built upon the foundation of the original story. I hope this sequel trilogy doesn't turn out to be one of those "just the same old thing" sequels, or one of those "nothing to do with the original" sequels.
Only time will tell. We shall see in a few years.
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