Star Wars Episode 7 The Force Awakens Review (SPOILER FREE)

This is the spoiler free version of force awakens. For the spoiler full one, read here.

If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why Pokematic "Hi."

So I'm a Star Wars fan. Like, REALLY big fan. I can recite episode 1 from heart. I have all the movies on both DVD and VHS (I'll get Blu-Ray once I want to justify the purchase). I have a bunch of the toys and light sabers. I'm not like some of the fans that have Star Wars rooms, or life size Darth Vader statues, but I'm as big a fan can get without people thinking it's weird (not that I'm afraid of that lol). But yeah, I love Star Wars, and it's been 4 years since I saw a movie on the big screen (Episode 1 3D re-release). Time to talk about the Star Wars return to glory. So because I don't want to ruin anything, I'll try to keep this as spoiler free as possible, and only refer to things that were reviled in press releases and trailers. That, and technical aspects that don't spoil anything (except the surprise of awesomeness).

So this time around the movie is about a new cast of characters; Rey, a scrap hunter on Jakku, and Fin, a storm trooper of the new First Order (the guy that doesn't wear a helmet in all the trailers). Han Solo is also a big part as sort of a mentor of sorts to Rey. The big enemy this time around is the First Order, a revival of the Galactic Empire lead by Kylo Ren, a new Sith Lord with the cross guard light saber. These guys are great. They carry the story REALLY well. I won't spoil it (you can read that here), but they play off each other amazingly, the stakes are great, and they are all quite flushed out.

OK time for some technical specifics. Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamel all reprise their rolls as Han Solo, Princess Lei, and Luke Skywalker (respectively). All of them bring life to their characters great. Like, these are what I would think these characters would be like after 30+ years. Canonically, this is like 30-40 years after the events of Return of the Jedi, so age wise this is perfect. I really feel like "this is what old Han, Lei, and Luke would be like." The other great thing is that they aren't the main focus of this movie. Like, this is definitely Rey and Finn's movie, and they play the main characters well. Their actors are great. It feels like their life depends on fighting this tyrannical force that is the First Order. Then the first order is great. One thing people praise the original trilogy for is that you can obviously tell that Vader and the Empire are the bad guys, and fault the prequels for is that the trade federation and separatists don't really feel menacing. The First Order definitely feels menacing. Like, when you see Kylo-Ren in the opening, and his first commander guy, you know "these are the bad guy, and they mean business." The actors are great.

Now for some set designs and what not. I was really curious to how they would do this, because the galaxy kind of went to crap after the events of Revenge of the Sith, and I wouldn't consider 40 years enough time to rebuild a galaxy, especially considering that there's a new tyrannical force of evil. However, the real world movie technology is also far more advanced than that of the late 70s/early 80s (which is why the prequels looked so good). I was wondering how they would make the galaxy look run down and imperialistic, while also utilizing the movie magic of today. Without giving too much away, it works REALLY well. This feels like it's the same world we left after Return of the Jedi just much later. Lots of the set pieces show remnants of the original trilogy to really establish that this is after Jedi, but not to the point that it's forced. It feels natural and what would probably happen after the fall of the Empire. It's great.

Now for the directing. So we all know George Lucas is no longer directing as Star Wars is now owned by Gisnep (Disney with the fancy letters lol), so they need a new director. Due to his work on Star Trek, they got J. J. Abrams to direct, and thus bread the joke of "if he screws up star wars, he will forever be known as Jar Jar Abrams." Well, he won't be known as Jar Jar, because this was GREAT! J.J. really hit it home. He made it feel like I was watching an epic adventure of epic proportions. Even though there was a lot of CG, it felt really real, and that was based on how everything acted and was directed. It does feel like a bit of a darker movie in terms of tone, and that through my dad off some since the prequels were so colorful (except for the end of Revenge of the Sith), and the original trilogy was all PG-level, but it works really well. It isn't for younger audiences since it is PG-13, but it's still really fun. I gotta give J.J. credit.

Before I go, I have 1 more thing to talk about. All of the marketing made it seem like this wasn't going to be an EXACT continuation without any reference to this being "Episode 7." Well, when I saw the text crawl (same style as with every other movie, great), it said
"STAR
WARS

EPISODE VII

THE FORCE AWAKENS"
I'm SO glad they kept the numbering. This REALLY is episode 7. I do wonder what the numbering will be when they do the Han Solo origin story though, since that takes place between episode 3 and 4. Maybe it'll be "EPISODE III.V" or something lol.

Well, this has been Pokematic for the spoiler free part. Maybe I'll see you in the spoiler full section. If not, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Review

So how does the new 48 frames per second, 3D, and 4K resolution do? Tune in to find out.

If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why Pokematic "hi."

So I just got back from seeing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Before I get to the review, let me inform you that I have not read The Hobbit nor any of The Lord of the Rings books and I wasn't a big fan of The Lord of the Rings movies. I'll get to why I didn't like them later. But I was stoked to see this movie. Why? 3 reasons; 48 frames per second and 4K resolution mixed together with well executed 3D, so I heard. I'll get to those, but first the story.

As I mentioned, I have not read The Hobbit, so I won't talk about accuracies and how well it compares to the source material. It starts out with Bilbo writing down the story of his adventure with Gandalf. We see Frodo and an old Bilbo. Now 60 years earlier, and we see a young Bilbo being visited by Gandalf. Gandalf puts a mark on Bilbo's door and that invites over Dwarfs. See, the Dwarfs got displaced from their home because of a Dragon and they have been nomadic for a while. A group of 13 Dwarfs meet at Bilbo's house for dinner and meeting before they set out on the journey. Bilbo wasn't to sure about going out on this journey, but at the last minute decides to go. After that, they encounter trolls, Elves, goblins, Orks and others. The story is interesting and executed well, and didn't feel nearly as slow as the other movies in the LOTR trilogy. According to my reliable sources, aka friends and relatives who've read The Hobbit, it strays from the book a fair deal, but has the same feeling, or something like that. I haven't read it so I can't say for certain, but I trust them. I don't care. I was entertained.

Now the reason I didn't care to much for the LOTR movies was because there was to much "we're walking, we're walking, out of the woods but this means walking in the fields." There was action later in the movies, but just to much walking around for my tastes. It was like 30 minutes of action, 90 minutes of walking around. I know that it follows the books better or something, but it's to dull for my ADHD attention span. It's not like there was much funny or wit, just talking and walking. This movie however, kept me entertained with the "we're walking" parts. The Dwarfs were really funny and provided lots of comic relief during the "we're walking" parts. If they weren't being funny, I was being stunned by the amazing scenery beautifully shown at 48 frames per second at 4K resolution with 3D done right. I was entertained the entire 166 minutes.

Now as I've mentioned, it was 48 frames per second, 4K resolution, mixed together with 3D done right. Now for those of you who don't know, movies are normally shot and show at 24 frames per second. 48 frames per second offers double the frames per second than conventional movies, which equates to smoother movements from everything. This level of smoothness takes some getting used to. Early when watching it felt like the video was sped up, but after some time, it began to look really good, especially during the fight scenes. Also if you don't already know, movies are normally shot and shown at something like 1080p resolution or something. I'm not entirely sure if I was seeing 4K resolution or really good 1080p/whatever it is, but the film was shot in 4K and that's a much higher resolution than normally. I saw every little detail in the movie, and it looked amazing. As a movie regular, I've seen bad 3D where hardly anything was close to depth and I've seen good 3D where it looked like it was right there, and this was good 3D. So 48 FPS and 4K resolution mixed together with 3D done right, you get a movie where it looks so real it looks like I'm looking through a window into Middle Earth. And even though there is "we're walking" scenes, I didn't care because I was busy taking in the amazing visuals.

OK, so Peter can direct good photography, but how about the CG characters? Well remember how Gollum/Smeagol was "the best CG character to date" when 2 Towers and Return of the King came out and remained such for a while, well they outdid themselves this time around. They all looked amazing and super realistic. I felt like I could touch the scenery and real characters, and I felt the same with the CG characters. The fat chin on the Goblin king swung like it would in real life, and the real guys looked like they were really interacting with the CG guys. There was a scene when Bilbo had to be CG, and it looked really close to that of the real Bilbo. Sure, all the CG characters still had that CG feeling, but we're still a while away from getting CG characters to be mistakable for real, especially when there is no real counterpart to compare to since orks, trolls, and others don't actually exist and are only real in the imagination, but they moved, reacted, and did all that they needed to look as real as physically possible. Hey, if Gollum/Smeagol wasn't hyper anorexic and had disproportionally large eyes, I might have mistaken him for real.

Bottom line, see this movie, but be sure to see it in the high frame rate in 3D. It's well worth it and is the only way to truly enjoy it. I don't know how it will be in 2D 1080p home viewing, but it's definitely worth it in the movie. It had it's slow points, but it kept me interested with it's stunning visuals. Sorry if I focused more on the technical specifications than the plot and characters and stuff, but what blew me away was the visuals with an entertaining enough story. Now I'm compelled to rewatch the LOTR trilogy since this got me interested. We have them all on Blu-Ray since my brother likes them, so why not? Hopefully the 1080p on our 40 inch will be more entertaining than DVD (once VHS) on our 27 inch tube. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.