★ ★ ★ ★ ½
Note: this review comes a few days after my viewing of The Force Awakens, as last Thursday’s
midnight screening left me so shell-shocked that forming coherent thoughts was a bit of a challenge. With the dust slowly settling and the reviews
pouring in from every angle, here’s my two cents:
We pick up thirty years after Return of the Jedi to find that the galaxy-wide celebrations
heralding the end of tyranny were a tad premature. Farm boy-turned-saviour Luke
Skywalker has disappeared, and the villainous First Order has seized the power
gap left by the Empire. While a small Resistance group led by the courageous General
Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and dashing pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) muster
the will to fight back, other pockets of rebellion begin to emerge, primarily
in the form of disillusioned Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and lonely desert
scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley). Heroes old and new converge, all threatened by
mysterious and erratic First Order acolyte Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).
Having touched on my own hype and expectations in a previous
piece, I’ll dive right in with the essence of my reaction: The Force Awakens is everything I never knew I wanted in a Star Wars film.
Rather than a familiar trip down memory lane (we’ll get to
that later), it left me feeling how movie-goers back in ’77 must have felt
walking out of A New Hope: so many new
creatures, locations, spaceships, characters and sounds fly straight off the
screen at you that it’s impossible to comprehend them all in one sitting. Abrams
and his team have done remarkably well in continuing the extraordinary world
building of the previous six films with very little exposition outlining the
state of the galaxy far, far away.
Our new heroes are wonderfully engrossing: Boyega brings the
charisma and humour he established back in Attack
the Block, whilst Daisy Ridley is an absolute revelation as Rey, snatching
the title of 2015’s best female character from Fury Road’s Imperator Furiosa
with ease. Isaac slips effortlessly from rising talent to full-blown movie
star as Poe, an energetic and daring fusion of Harrison Ford and Bruce
Campbell. They’re all joined for the ride by heroic rollerball droid BB-8, who
proves to be so much more than just ‘the new R2-D2’.
But the surprise star of these wars is Driver. When J.J. made
great strides to iterate that Kylo Ren would be like nothing we’d ever seen,
boy, he wasn’t making it up! Ren is gifted to us as an amalgamation of weighty physical presence and emotional complexity
hitherto unseen in this saga, but which Driver embodies perfectly.
When we do get throwbacks, nostalgic nods and Easter eggs,
they’re just as wonderful: the moment Han and Chewie step into frame, it’s the
audience more than the characters who own the line “we’re home!”
Ford is visibly having a ball, and his interaction with the
young newcomers has a sweet and often very funny meta-textual thread running
through it. Other treats include rip-roaring homage to classic scenes from the
original trilogy, injected with fresh vigour by Abrams’ swift direction, John
Williams’ magical score and Dan Mindel’s fabulous cinematography. Any doubt
that this film wasn’t made for me quickly vanished with the sight of TIE
fighters emerging, wraith-like, from a burning horizon: a shot realized frame-by-frame from a dream I had as an eleven year-old.
Thrills, drama, humour, and jaw-dropping moments of wonder aplenty…what
more could we have possibly asked for? It’s not perfect, but I didn’t need it to be. I’m
not even a little embarrassed at how much of a stuck record this whole piece makes
me sound; I loved it.
