A few words on 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' - Chris At The Pictures

Thursday 17 December 2015

A few words on 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'



For the longest time I debated whether to even try reviewing this film. When you’ve been anticipating something for over ten years, a certain level of personal bias is to be expected. For me (and obviously, many others around the world) this is not a film, it is an event.

Everyone who knows me knows how much I love Star Wars. It doesn’t matter if you’re a close friend, one of my Twitter followers or someone I once drunkenly encountered at a house party; it’s one of the first things anyone learns about me. Some might think that’s a bit sad, but it doesn’t bother me. Better notorious by my enthusiasm for one thing than hatred for another, right?

I’ve loved these movies for longer than I can remember, and have bored friends and family to death talking about them ever since. Heck, I even wrote my own version of Episode VII back in 2005 at age ten during my post Revenge of the Sith sugar low, convinced that no-one else ever would. This conviction remained for the next seven years through endless rumours, supposed treatment leaks, faked trailers, the works…right up until the 2012 announcement that Disney had taken control of Lucasfilm and that production on the seventh chapter was underway.

Of course, I’ve been embarrassingly excited. Of course, I’ve counted down the years, months, days, hours, even minutes until the film reached release…but not without a very specific reservation. Being a fan of all six films is not something the internet hive-mind approves of: if you see an article about The Force Awakens that doesn’t contain an opening line about how ‘let-down’ or ‘disappointed’ everyone was with the prequels, you treasure it.

Sadly, this assumed ‘truth’ that everyone dislikes a sizeable chunk of the established canon appeared to have leaked into the production: all the talk of returning to the spirit of the original trilogy, to an old-school way of film-making reeked of an attempt to appease forty year-old fanboys, and a denial of half the stories which I loved growing up. As selfish and hypocritical as it sounds, I was worried that this film was not made for me.

Even as I took a seat in the crowded IMAX screen, my best friend at my side and a palpable aura of excitement filling the room, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong: not in the modern multiplex sense of ‘What if the image is out of focus?’, but something closer to the fear of having your heart broken by someone you love.

To cut a long story short: I had a bad feeling about this.

To cut it shorter: I was wrong.

I’m not in the right frame of mind to write a more coherent review until a second viewing, because trying to piece together my thoughts right now is like trying to keep water from slipping through my fingers.

"Everything's changed and nothing's changed...that's the way you want it to be, really..." - Mark Hamill