Are you tired of these lists yet?
Well you’re in luck! This is the last of our 2015 recap lists! When it came to going out to the movies, here was a lot to like this year. So without further ado, here’s the Psycho Drive-In Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2015!
Ant-Man
Directed by Peyton Reed Story by Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish Screenplay by Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, & Paul RuddI will freely admit that I loved Ant-Man. It was an interesting heist movie, a great superhero flick, and above all… FUN! Though it was a little too serious to be called “lighthearted,’ it was refreshing to watch a Marvel movie that wasn’t a world-threatening thrill ride. Not that Ant-man left us wanting more action. From the second Paul Rudd shrank down in the bathtub, the movie barely paused to catch its breath.
There have been movies that centered around a character shrinking down to teensy-weensy before; The Incredible Shrinking Man (and later, Woman), Fantastic Voyage, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, to name a few but never has the have the effects been more striking and disorienting that in Ant-Man. I watched the movie in 3-D and it was breathtaking! In fact, the scenes in which the main character was stuck underground, covered in ants, felt so claustrophobic I found myself holding my breath. If you haven’t seen the movie in that form, I can’t recommend it enough.
Though I saw the movie in 3-D, the characters themselves rarely stepped into the third dimension. I’m not going to fault the actors because I enjoyed everyone’s performance but the demands of an effects-driven script can only be served by “hit this mark, say this line, move the plot forward” acting. Individually, each character played their stereotype well.
When I first heard that Michael Douglas was cast as Hank Pym, I knew he would perform well but wasn’t really sold on such a character being so, well, old. As with so many things, I was wrong. His character helped expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe and opened an avenue of possible retro superhero stories. As I suspected, Douglas was excellent, bringing as much nuance as possible to the role of a jaded, guarded, genius.
Paul Rudd was Paul Rudd with better abs. I didn’t mind at all, he was as charming as he always is in his films and it fit the character perfectly. Having expanded into the action genre successfully, I’m hoping we can get less bromance from Rudd in the future. He’s confirmed for Captain America: Civil War and I believe he’ll still shine in such a large ensemble.
The big, bad guy in this movie was played by Corey Stoll. He’s the villain of a Marvel movie and he did what he could with what he was given. The character began smarmy and quickly jumped into batshit crazy with very little motivation other than money and the promise of thumbing his nose at Michael Douglas. He hit his marks, said his lines and moved the plot forward. Mission accomplished.
Yeah, I just spent a few paragraphs taking stabs at the script but, in truth, I only saw that stuff in hindsight because, while the movie was playing and on subsequent viewings, I’m fully strapped in and on the ride until the end. The other stuff be damned! Edgar Wright was initially slated to direct and his fingerprints are all over this movie. Whether his particular kind of quick edit and visual humor was scripted by Wright or just an homage from final director, Peyton Reed, I have no idea. All I can say is the action sequences felt like an Edgar Wright movie and you can never go wrong there. The third act was a phenomenal blend of heist adventure, big time superhero action, and ticking-clock thriller including the greatest train fight ever! Humor, which is never far from any moment in this movie, never felt forced and gave each character some enjoyable moments without feeling like a shoehorned bit.
In spite of a few flaws, Ant-Man was damn entertaining and one of my favorite movies of the year. I’ve watched it many times since it became available on Blue-Ray and my enjoyment hasn’t waned a bit. If you haven’t yet seen the movie, give it a try, you won’t be disappointed.
— Dave Hearn
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Written & Directed by Joss WhedonSo let’s say you have a complicated narrative universe of characters who must work both as interesting individuals but also need to occasionally coalesce into a dynamic team capable of saving the Earth. Is there any doubt that Joss Whedon is the guy you’d call to get the writing/directing job done?
This is the genius of the man: it would have been enough for Whedon to simply overcome the obstacles involved in creating a compelling story while trying to juggle these very diverse characters from films with different styles (and arguably of different subgenres) and storylines. Instead, in The Avengers (2012), he focuses the entire film on the apparent conflict in their personalities, revealing that it their very stress points with each other which serve to unleash their potential to fight off the threat against the planet. What should have been just a special effects-heavy superhero movie becomes a character-driven drama—with cool costumes.
So for the last year’s sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron, this meant that we now have a well-oiled team, and Joss could just concentrate on plot, right?
But that’s not how people work. They don’t have a single conversation, figure themselves and each other out, and settle down into a cozy and unaltering relationship. And an arrogance and self-centeredness like Tony Stark’s does not disappear when given the chance to single-handedly save humanity simply because he once managed to play well with others.
In Age of Ultron, the guilt we saw change him from war profiteer to demi-hero in Iron Man is the trigger that convinces him to work with Bruce Banner and Loki’s staff to resurrect a guardian program that will bring, in Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated words, “Peace in our time”–all while knowing that he does this against the almost-certain wishes of the rest of the Avengers. When things go wrong, and he instead creates the first cloud-based super-villain Ultron, it’s not just the team but its members who fracture badly (partly with the help of twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff) as plot and subplot pile on densely.
But as with the first Avengers entry, the story matters substantially less than the interplay of personality and, in this outing, the recurring theme of reproduction in almost every imaginable form. Downey, Ruffalo, and Johansson turn in great performances as Whedon gives them (and indeed each hero) substantial room to develop, but it’s James Spader providing the voice and mo-cap for Ultron who mesmerizes. His depiction of the self-righteous child, so like his father in his arrogance and single-minded genius but without his late-won actualization, is brilliant. Certainly no other actor has the voice to have delivered many of the lines Whedon wrote for Ultron—what would have sounded ridiculous in anyone else’s mouth (no other actor was considered for the role) instead has all the humor and malevolence one could hope for in a great villain.
And while Age of Ultron is less successful a first-time experience then its predecessor, this is mostly due to the movie losing an hour on the editing room floor. The result is that subsequent viewings are much more enjoyable: the final theatrical cut is so dense that it requires rewatching to unpack the plot, Easter eggs, dialogue, and great character moments. In the hands of any other writer/director, the sheer weight of the material might collapse into complete chaos. Instead, Whedon just barely holds it all together and gives us a film not unlike the human relationships he depicting: uneasy, a bit uneven, but rich, and worth the effort.
— Laura Akers
Bone Tomahawk
Written & Directed by S. Craig ZahlerKurt Russell can do very little wrong when it comes to acting, in my humble opinion. With a career that took off with Disney when The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, to when he became The Strongest Man in the World, or when he grew up and played Elvis, Snake Plissken, R.J. MacReady, and Jack Burton while working with John Carpenter. There was a bit of a drought in from the late-Eighties to the start of the 21st Century where he did a lot of work, but very little of it resonated with me. It was usually still very strong work (even Captain Ron has some entertaining stuff in it), but wasn’t iconic.
Then in 2007 he appeared in a little film called Death Proof as the homicidal Stuntman Mike and even films like Overboard were forgiven. This was the Kurt Russell I’d missed. Charismatic, witty, charming, dangerous, and comical all rolled up in one character. This year, Russell returns with two iconic performances – both of which made this list – with two iconic sets of glorious facial hair: Sheriff Hunt in Bone Tomahawk and John “The Hangman” Ruth in The Hateful Eight.
Bone Tomahawk is a very straightforward tale of old West adventure, but with an especially tight script and solid first-time directing by S. Craig Zahler. Well, I say straightforward, but it does involve inbred troglodyte cannibals, so it’s not exactly traditional. The strength of the film is in the way the script allows the performers to really show their chops as they make the long trip to rescue the kidnapped lady doctor (Lili Simmons) and deputy (Evan Jonigkeit).
Russell’s Sheriff Hunt is an honest and true man of integrity. His back-up deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins) is initially played for comedy, but he gradually reveals himself to be one of the most interesting and psychologically complex members of the rescue party. Matthew Fox plays former Indian-hunter Brooder with a cool arrogance that is only justified by his actual knowledge and skills. He’s a prick, but he’s a prick you want with you on a journey like this. And finally, there’s Patrick Wilson as the hobbled husband of the kidnapped doc. He knows he’s probably not going to make it home alive, but he’s determined to save his wife and nothing is going to stop him from trying.
This is the crux of why this film made both this list and the Best Indie Horror list: the characters and the performances. By the time it finally turns into a horror film in the final act, we’ve spent a lot of time with these characters, watching them struggle, argue, bond, and eventually learn respect for each other in a way that many films won’t devote the time needed to accomplish.
Does this slow the film down? It does. But honestly, the pacing isn’t something that bothered me at all while watching. If anything, it added to the tension and helped make Bone Tomahawk one of the best films I saw in 2015.
—Paul Brian McCoy
Ex Machina
Written & Directed by Alex GarlandI saw Ex Machina on May 12 (2015) for the purpose of writing a review of the film for Psycho Drive-In. However, as I was preparing to write my review of the movie nearly eight months ago, my managing editor, Paul Brian McCoy, told me that I didn’t need to write a review of it because he had received an unsolicited review of the film. You can read that review on Psycho Drive-In.
As soon as I saw the commercials for the movie, I knew Ex Machina was a film I wanted to see because it had several elements that I have thought about a lot over the years:
- The concept of true artificial intelligence—what it means for anything (biological or mechanical) to have true sentience or cognizance rather than to be merely following either biological or technological programming.
- The role of language in developing cognizance—which, as an English professor who dabbles in linguistics whenever I can, is a subject I am extremely infatuated by (I could easily digress here, but I will stay on task and focus on the film at hand).
- The social obligations between people within a society—which in the case of Ex Machina includes artificially intelligent machines as “people”—so, the obligations between people and sentient machines within a society; it’s a theme I often seek out in the movies and television programs I watch, and it is one I discussed in several of my reviews of the BBC series The Musketeers.
- Finally, Ex Machina touches upon a subject that I have pondered longer than I have any of the three elements I listed above: What it would be like to have intercourse with a sexy, feminine machine?
I’m not kidding! When I was at the height of what I like to call Pubescent Hormone Syndrome (PHS), Heavy Metal magazine came out with a cover in 1981 that left an indelible impression on my malleable mental and emotional states:
Sexy sentient robots and the possibility of intercourse is probably a common motif in the minds of pubescent 20th Century teens. I recall a comic book in the 1990s that was about a sexy robot that could be ordered and delivered by mail (it may have been published by Fantagraphics under that company’s Eros Comix imprint). Of course, this pubescent fantasy is also evident in many of the paintings of the great Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger. It’s also a plot element in the current (and excellent) AMC series Humans as well as in the most recent version of Battlestar Galactica from a few years ago.
Okay, but enough about sexy, female robots (or androids); I’ve been tasked (I volunteered) with the job of explaining why the film is one of Psycho Drive-In’s top films of 2015, and I have essentially had eight months to think about it (albeit subconsciously, since I have not actually been consciously considering this movie for the past eight months). If my thoughts on the film were a fetus growing in the womb of my brain, it would mean that I should be getting close to delivery, but it also means that inducing labor now is causing me to give birth to a premature contemplation of Ex Machina’s themes.
When I accepted this task (volunteered for this job), I was planning on re-watching the movie before writing this year-in-review segment. However, I discovered that it isn’t playing on Netflix or HBO—my two subscription movie services. I would have to buy a digital copy of the movie if I wanted to watch it (I no longer torrent copyrighted films after getting hit with two cease-and-desist orders for torrenting copyrighted material, and I no longer have the software that masks my IP address).
Thus, to watch the film would require me to buy it, and I can’t do that—not because the movie isn’t worth buying, but because my bank account is currently too low for me to justify spending the money. I could buy it in two more weeks, but not right now. Thus, this rambling piece about the movie is based on my one viewing of the film on May 12, 2015 when I saw it with a friend who was getting ready to move away—which may have caused me to not be entirely focused on all of the subtleties of the movie.
In fact, the one thing I clearly recall about Ex Machina is that the subtleties in the content were a bit difficult to grasp in a few places. I told Paul on May 14 (two days after seeing the film):
I’d like to be able to watch it on video so that I can stop, replay, write down ideas, et cetera.
For instance, the program for the artificial intelligence is named after Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Blue Book” lecture notes. They don’t do anything with that in the film other than drop it in as an allusion. I would want to go through the film more carefully and contemplate the possible connections to Wittgenstein.
So, yeah, I’ve returned to the concept of the role of language in developing cognizance—in developing our critical thinking skills or cognitive abilities. However, I won’t go off on that tangent. At least not until I have a chance to re-watch Ex Machina and take notes so I can better understand what Wittgenstein’s Blue Book lecture notes have to do with the development of the sexy and artificially intelligent female android.
— Thom Young
The Hateful Eight
Written & Directed by Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino’s eighth film also stars Kurt Russell’s facial hair in an outstanding ensemble cast, much like Bone Tomahawk, but being a Tarantino film, The Hateful Eight is something unique and unto itself. The first two hours of the film is a wonderfully crafted character study of horrible people living in the aftermath of the Civil War, and then the final third of the film turns into a slaughter that would make a bloodbath like Ash vs Evil Dead jealous.
At its most basic, The Hateful Eight is the tale of a racist white man and a racist black man coming together to defeat an international coalition of bastards set on rescuing one of their leaders and ravaging the countryside. It is at times cartoonish, at times heartbreaking, at times offensive, and at times horrifying; but it is always honest. The film isn’t just a western about eight strangers trapped together in a blizzard, it’s about race in America today and nobody is innocent or spared being exposed savagely.
Even the characters we’re set up to sympathize with initially, Kurt Russell’s John “The Hangman” Ruth and Samuel L. Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren have dark sides that make it extremely hard to like or root for them as the film goes on. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Daisy Domergue is beaten like a drum by The Hangman, forcing the audience to initially react negatively towards the violence and then forcing us to confront the horrible racist garbage she spouts. Tarantino’s intention here is to fuck with the audience’s sense of right and wrong, making it plain that rarely is anything in life a simple black and white.
This is a film that wallows in gray areas and shifting moral allegiances.
Speaking of which, The Hateful Eight is Sam Jackson and Walton Goggins’s movie. Goggins does an amazing job playing the racist southern Sheriff Chris Mannix, who essentially grew up as a Rebel soldier under the guiding hand of his father, leading a ragtag group of marauders after the war was over, murdering and pillaging black towns, keeping the dream alive down South. Jackon’s Major Warren used the war as an excuse to murder as many white men as possible, sometimes not discerning what color uniform they wore.
Now with the war behind them, Major Warren is a bounty hunter (with a bounty on his own head) and Mannix is on his way to a new post as Sheriff of Red Rock, Wyoming. If Tarantino wanted to say something about institutionalized racism in law enforcement, there it is. And if he wanted to say something about the delicate nature of white guilt and suppressed racism it’s all encapsulated in the form of Warren’s Lincoln Letter.
There’s not room enough here to really dig into all the things going on beneath the surface of Tarantino’s grindhouse history of America, but The Hateful Eight is not the same sort of revisionism we’ve seen in his previous two films (Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained). If anything, this is more a response to race relations in this country over the past couple of years in his own idiosyncratic style, hearkening back to Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction. This isn’t arthouse. He’s never really been arthouse. This is that magical combination of art, cheese, quality, and schlock that it seems only Tarantino can ever truly pull off.
And I didn’t even mention the glorious use of 70mm film that makes even a film about people trapped in a cabin together seem expansive and beautiful.
— Paul Brian McCoy
Inside Out
Directed by Pete Docter & Ronnie Del Carmen Original Story by Pete Docter & Ronnie Del Carmen Screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, & Josh CooleyOne of the reasons Inside Out was one of the best movies of the year is because it made viewers think of how our minds work, and how our emotions are actually part of our minds. I especially liked how the characters in the movie were various human emotions (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust) that all lived together in the brain of a girl named Riley.
Everyone is able to relate to the characters—so it was a movie kids enjoyed, but all the adults I know seemed to like it, too, because it was funny how the emotional characters would have different reactions to things that were going on in the outside world. Then, when they showed the emotions in other people’s brains, it was interesting to see how everyone’s feeling characters were different. We all have the same emotions, but our emotional reactions to things are not all the same. The movie did a great job of showing how people are all alike but also completely different at the same time.
In the outside world, Riley was going through a lot of changes, such as moving to a new town and a new school, moving into a rundown house, and having a dad who was suddenly too busy to spend much time with the family. I liked how each of the emotions felt different about Riley’s new experiences. People are able to relate to the mixed feelings in Riley’s mind caused by the changes in her life because everyone experiences changes in their lives and have had similar confused feelings. Even a person who has never had to move away from her friends, like Riley did, may have similar reactions to watching friends move away or parents getting divorced, etc. We all have “voices” in our heads when we think through our feelings about things that happen in our lives, and it was great to see this idea made into a movie.
— Kara Young
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Directed by Matthew Vaughn Screenplay by Jane Goldman & Matthew VaughnWhat makes Kingsman: The Secret Service such ripping great fun is its self-awareness. As part of a continuing effort to ensure that Mark Millar becomes the most-adapted comic book writer of all time, his creator-owned story published under Marvel’s Icon imprint is brought to life. Well, sort of. Liberties were taken. But as a certain Scandinavian princess might attest, they weren’t entirely unpleasant liberties. At the risk of delving into pedantic text-to-script analysis, it seems worth acknowledging that the comic begins with the failed rescue of actor Mark Hamill from a remote Swiss chalet. In the film, Mark Hamill himself portrays the generic professor being held against his will in a similar setting. As I said, perspicacious self-awareness is the order of the day.
Screenwriter and Director Matthew Vaughan is no stranger to comic book adaptations. In the past decade, he has brought both Kick-Ass films (also sourced from Millar comics) and been responsible for two X-men movies (First Class, which he wrote and directed as well as contributing to the story for Days of Future Past). In Kingsman, though, he donned his bespoke suit and tackled the superspy genre with genteel reverence even as he nodded wryly at its tropes. And that’s what makes it all work. It’s a throwback to the great Bond films of yesterday. Samuel L. Jackson’s Richmond Valentine is Dr. No, Hugo Drax, and Ernst Blofeld all rolled into something completely and entertainingly new. Colin Firth is stellar as Harry Hart (aka Galahad). He seems born to be a gentleman spy, evoking perfectly the very image of John Steed, umbrella and all. Taron Egerton, the young actor who falls backwards into the center of this ultra-violent maelstrom finds his footing among the power players of this movie with tenacity and aplomb. Even as the young character Eggsy squares himself amongst his considerably aristocratic fellow conscripts, the actor Egerton confidently matches toe-to-toe with such luminaries as Michael Caine and the aforementioned Firth.
As a spy thriller, Kingsman has all the trappings of the genre without ever feeling like anything less than a respectful nod. As an underdog story, it reaps satisfying rewards. As a post-modern Pygmalion, it rises confidently to its occasion. As a wry parody of the overbearingly campy spy movies of the Sixties and Seventies, it is just barely shy of ingenious. The violence is comic and extreme, with a soundtrack that offers a pulsing accompaniment. It’s really the most fun one can have watching people’s heads explode. One thing can be assured: Vaughn and company have set an impossibly high standard for Kingsman 2.
— Rick Shingler
Mad Max: Fury Road
Directed by George Miller Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, & Nick LathourisGeorge Miller proved in 2015 that you can go home again (even if Namibia stands in for the Australian Outback) in his loud, aggressive, and surprisingly feminist Mad Max: Fury Road. Arriving thirty-five years after the original and a decade after Mel Gibson’s implosion made watching the Max series feel weird, Miller went practical over pixel, injected a healthy dose of humor in the age of the pretentious blockbuster, and found the perfect stars to bring his vision to the screen.
Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa is a revelation. In a role that should garner some Oscar buzz, Theron goes tough without going ugly, no small feat considering her shaved head, war paint, and steampunk nightmare prosthetic. Furiosa also serves as the film’s moral compass and motivating force, allowing Tom Hardy’s Max to exist as he should: taciturn, ruthless, and surprisingly vulnerable.
Hardy, one of cinema’s most compelling actors, embodied a Max Rockatansky that was rarely in control of his own situation. His unglamorous introduction and transition to a piece of medical equipment fade slightly as Hardy dishes out heaps of vehicular, ballistic, and hand-to-hand mayhem, but this incarnation of Max is a little less superhuman and much more interesting. It should also be noted that despite the strength of its lead performances, Mad Max: Fury Road is not exactly a chamber piece.
Miller took great care in creating his world, from the monstrous Immortan Joe, played in all his revolting glory by original Mad Max antagonist Hugh Keays-Byrne, to the War Boys, particularly Nicholas Hoult’s Nux, whose Kamikaze assaults were at once terrifying and a welcome source of comic relief. And this is without mentioning the Doof Warrior, the brides, Rictus Erectus, and the rest of the characters and constructs populating the film.
More profitable movies were released this year and others drew bigger crowds. There was even another reboot of a beloved science fiction franchise from the Seventies. None of them packed the grimy punch of George Miller’s magnum opus.
It was so shiny, and so, so chrome.
— Mike Burr
The Martian
Directed by Ridley Scott Screenplay by Drew GoddardThis year we got treated to a lot of movie awesomeness, including one of the best sci-fi movies I’ve seen in a long time. No, not Star Wars, though I was impressed and delighted by J.J. Abrams effort with that classic franchise. No, I’m talking about The Martian starring Matt Damon, stranded on an alien, inhospitable planet.
When his expedition has to do an emergency extraction from their Mars base due to extreme weather conditions, Mark Watney (Matt Damon, in case that wasn’t clear) is accidentally left behind when he’s separated from the rest of his crew. Waking up with low oxygen and a punctured space-suit, Watney makes his way back the abandoned Mars habitat he and his crew had been living in. After his miraculous survival, and an inventory of his supplies, Watney has to figure out how he is going to survive long enough to be rescued.
One of the greatest things about The Martian is that it’s what I would classify as ‘hard science fiction,’ basically a form of science fiction that attempts to create a believable futuristic/advanced world based on technology we have today, and known scientific facts. A lot of science fiction relies on objects or alien intervention, or just randomly placed lines of dialogue, to explain the miraculous feats of their futuristic worlds. Examples of the latter would be the sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who, Dilithium crystals from Star Trek (though pre-JJ Star Trek does like to border on ‘hard sci-fi’ with how detailed they can get about their technology), or y’know, The Force, from Star Wars. Hard science presents us with puzzles for our protagonist to solve, impossibilities that become possible with the raw application of knowledge and science. Not just science, but science that we currently know about.
The Martian delivers a healthy dose of ‘man vs. nature’ in a spectacular fashion, delivering an experience not unlike Apollo 13, but MARS. Still, because of the fantastic nature of the story it ends up being somewhat predictable in its outcomes, and certain characters, notably Donald Glover’s astrophysicist character, don’t get enough depth or screen-time. Still, I hope to see more films like this in the coming year. If not, at least we’ll get another Star Wars movie!
— Jeffrey Roth
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Directed by J.J. Abrams Written by Lawrence Kasden, J.J. Abrams, & Michael ArndtPerfect? No. Entertaining? Quite. An improvement over Star Wars as we have come to know it? Definitely. A step in the right direction? Absolutely.
The one – no, two – things Star Wars: The Force Awakens got dead right was in providing us with a pair of lead characters who have both the spunk and gravitas to carry the new, de-Lucas’d edition of this franchise into the future. Finn and Rey are great examples of how heroes in the Star Wars universe can come from entirely new directions. The first time we’ve ever seen a Stormtrooper with his helmet off, it turns out to be Finn (he’ll never turn back to the Dark Side! right?); and Rey extends nicely on both Luke and Leia before her, in different directions. (Having the old-guard heroes back on the screen is also fun, although that’s mainly Han and Chewie, with Leia, Luke, and the ‘droids in what amount to cameos.)
But it has to be said: the rest of the movie is a mixed bag. The plot’s essentially a jumble-sale version of the ’77 Star Wars, and the jury’s out on whether Kylo Ren is going to shape up to be a villain worth reckoning with or merely another Draco Malfoy who needs to be spanked and put to bed. The not-always-consistent pacing means some of the most important moments end up feeling emotionally smothered. Another potentially great character gets shortchanged because of what appear to be last-minute editing decisions.
And even though the movie sports a judicious mix of both practical/mechanic anal effects (viva BB-8!) and modern digital ones, it isn’t the use of former vs. the latter that made the original Star Wars films great; it was their heart and soul. The original trilogy had it. Its fans had it. This movie has it, too. Maybe not as much as it could, but it’s there, and it’s a good start.
— Serdar Yegulalp