Assignment 17: Hooray for Hollywood (Tyler Gorman)

Over the break I went and saw, like most other sentient life forms on planet Earth, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. It was, in short, the best thing to happen to the franchise since Return of the Jedi. J.J. Abrams has taken the franchise in a direction that it desperately needed to go after the failure of the prequels, expertly avoiding a recreation of the cinematic failure that was The Phantom Menace, albeit through recreating the cinematic success of A New Hope. In many ways The Force Awakens is a retelling of the story of A New Hope with different (much better-developed) characters and some interesting plot twists, but it's different enough that critics of the movie's "unoriginality" are generally more frowned upon than agreed with. George Lucas' universe and characters mixed with Abrams' style (which, I've noticed, is very lens-flare-filled and almost felt more like Star Trek than Star Wars) makes an incredible movie that sets the story up well for Episode VIII and is perfect for Star Wars fans of all kinds, whether fanatics who have every line of the movies memorized and have read every book ever published, or a child who's never even heard of Star Wars until The Force Awakens.