Via Wired.com:

YOU KNOW WHAT movie is seriously pretty fun? Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You no doubt saw it last year—probably multiple times—and your initial reaction was likely either “OH MAN, BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME, FINN HEART POE 4-EVA” or “Enh, it’s totally fine, too many New Hope nods, Rey is cool tho.” Those were the prevailing online attitudes about the movie throughout its winter-long, record-disintegrating box-office run, and they made perfect sense: This was the first Star Wars movie in a decade, and it needed to not only restore what had become a robotic-feeling franchise to greatness, but to also re-energize the base of (admittedly somewhat older) Star Wars devotees who felt the series had already peaked decades ago.

The Force Awakens had to be a million different things to a gazillion different fans, including myself, and that may be why, on first viewing, I wasn’t overjoyed or underwhelmed. I was simply…whelmed.

But after a bunch of re-viewings, and a few scene-specific replays upon last week’s home-video release, it became clear that, when removed from the suffocating context of huge expectations and attention, The Force Awakens is all it needs to be: Namely, a really good Star Wars movie, with zippy dog-fighting sequences and sly Solo one-liners and some really dope menswear. The dippier elements of the movie—much like the rusty elements of the original trilogy—feel less frustrating, even less visible, when you allow yourself to wade into all the creature-weirdness and space-skirmishes and just the general Admiral Ackbarness of the whole thing. I’ve loved this franchise for nearly four decades, and I never expected to get that kind of grin-spurring, head-swimming buzz from a Star Wars movie ever again. I was (thankfully) wrong.

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