Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (12A)
Review by Thomas Ogg
*This is a SPOILER-FREE review!
‘DO you want to go to the Jersey première of the new Star Wars film on Thursday?’ asked Ramsay earlier in the week.
‘Does an Ewok defecate in the woods?’ I replied.
Despite such enthusiasm, however, I felt an undeniable sense of trepidation as I made my way to Cineworld yesterday morning – and not just because I was about to spend a pre-film half hour asking grown men in fancy dress costumes to do Yoda impressions.
Rather, my apprehension could be summed up in two words: Phantom and Menace.
After all, a decade and a half ago myself and millions of others were similarly rushing to the cinema to watch a new instalment in a franchise we’d previously thought kaput – and the resultant film, as has since been almost universally accepted, was a monumental pile of Wookie dung.
The Phantom Menace was Star Wars creator George Lucas’ first directorial gig since the 1977 original; it was also a boring, wordy dud, with none of the light-hearted humour of the classic trilogy and, in Jar Jar Binks, the single most irritating character in motion picture history outside of an Adam Sandler movie.
The two prequels/sequels that followed were marginally better, but it was clear that Lucas’ creative mojo had very much gone from throbbing lightsaber to lukewarm, over-priced soggy hotdog.*
So, as The Force Awakens now opens in cinemas across the globe to intergalactic expectations, is history about to repeat itself? An encouraging early sign that another Menace Phantom
wasn’t on the cards came with the news that director JJ Abrams had been hired to helm the new film.
Abrams, of course, was behind the recent Star Trek reboots, which successfully updated a much-loved sci-fi franchise without once disparaging the classic source material; it also provided the excellent Leonard ‘Spock’ Nimoy with a graceful farewell (he died earlier this year).
Well, The Force Awakens may not be quite as unerringly superb as 2009’s Star Trek, but it’s not far off. In short, Abrams has done it again! In fact, without an ounce of hyperbole, I can say that this is easily the best Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes back (and that’s coming from someone who will argue to the grave that Return of the Jedi is a great film).
As with the Trek reboots, Abrams’ Star Wars film reimagines the franchise without ever losing sight of what made the originals so special. Indeed, many familiar Star Wars tropes are present and correct: the opening scrolling text; the complete disregard for the laws of space (there is no sound in outer space; no, not even when a big massive spaceship explodes); the odd screen dissolves that have always lent the franchise an air of likeable B-movie shoddiness. Hell, Abrams even has a Stormtrooper emit the Wilhelm Scream during a battle scene – how much more old school can you get?
Yet the director also pushes the film in a new direction – or at least in as new a direction as the studio (and fans) could allow – not least when it comes to the dialogue, which is (largely) great. Let’s face it, for all his creative genius, George Lucas has a tin ear to rival C3PO when it comes to dialogue (as Harrison Ford famously put it: ‘you can write this ****, George, but you sure can’t say it’). The dialogue in The Force Awakens, however, frequently sparkles, with laugh-out-loud one-liners sprinkled liberally throughout. Sure, there’s some token explanatory dialogue and a few predictable lines (someone even says ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’), but these are more than outweighed by the good stuff.
The actual storyline itself is a lot less sophisticated; in fact, it can be summed up entirely in a single sentence: good guys and bad guys race to find a lost map – that’s it. In other words, it’s a sci-fi Goonies. But plot simplicity isn’t a problem when everything else works so well.
Well, almost everything. The film does briefly sag in the middle and is at least 15 minutes too long, while the excellent Oscar Isaac is entirely wasted in a relatively nondescript supporting role. The Dark Side’s motion-captured Supreme Commander, meanwhile, looks and feels like something out of a Harry Potter film, which is no bad thing, but it’s not very Star Wars either.
Ultimately though ,The Force Awakens is about as good as anyone could possibly have hoped. The newcomers are uniformly good, especially Attack the Block’s John Boyega and Brit actress Daisy Ridley (who is liable to set male audience members to stunned), while the veterans seem to be having the time of their lives, particularly Ford who, for all his notorious grumbling, is clearly relishing every moment.
As, indeed, will you.
*To add insult to injury, Lucas then set purists’ pulse-rates pounding by tinkering with the original trilogy, adding in unnecessary and awkward CGI to all three films (the recent news that the films are now set to be reissued minus such unwanted additions has had online fanboys wiggling their lightsabers with joy).
