We left our review later than most, as we wanted to wait a couple of weeks once that initial excitement passed.
You see like most, upon seeing Star Wars: The Phantom Menace we initially loved the experience but upon reflection came to dislike it.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens will leave fans, like us, thrilled but wanting more, you see rather than be a fantastic new film, this is a great piece of nostalgia, which will leave you remembering the original trilogy from the Seventies
J. J. Abrams has done a great job but sadly doesn’t really offer much new to this much-loved franchise but does take us on a fantastic ride. This is one of our favourite films of the year, certainly no memories of the recent trilogy here.
So the film then. We follow initially the story of captured by the empire, Poe (Oscar Issac) and his scene-stealing droid BB-8. Sending BB-8 with much-wanted maps for the rebels to a wasteland (much like c3Po and R2D2’s original adventure) with a new found friend, Finn (John Boyega) a Stormtrooper who wants to escape, as he can not live with what the Empire are doing (this is a great concept but is sadly not looked into further, following the escape)
Their escape craft crashes into the wasteland, Finn assumes Poe has been left for dead and is on the run with the highly valuable BB-8. Upon a chance meeting with Rey (Daisy Ridley) they go on the run from the chasing empire in a spaceship left for scrap, that craft turns out to be the iconic Millenium Falcon.
Upon hiding out to lose their pursuers, they come across the ship’s most recent owners Han and Chewbacca. Fans will go wild for the return of Harrison Ford and Peter Mayhew.
Sadly the initial meeting for me is one of the poorest sequences, with an over used CGI sequence of chasing monsters, however from their blink and you may miss them use of stars from The Raid as men who are owed a debt from Han (with such a brief appearance, this maybe a great concept for a spin-off movie)
Han takes Finn and Rey to new character Maz (Lupita Nyong’o) in a location that will bring back fond memories of the Cantina scene from Star Wars: A New Hope which will eventually get them back to General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and we get to see those 2 iconic droids again C3 (once again, voiced by Anthony Daniels) and R2
I really don’t want to talk more especially about new bad guy Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) as this will start bringing all the spoilers out.
Yes, Luke (Mark Hamill) also returns but for me the films biggest issue is its pace, it just goes so fast, which means characters which are surely meant for better things such as Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) and we have a new evil leader, Snoke voiced by Andy Serkis in yet another great CGI role.
As stated, this is one of the best films of the year, you will be brought back memories of the originals, from chess boards to Admiral Ackbar, but yet you may feel you’re not getting anything new.
There is plenty in this film to be excited about but hopefully more questions will get answered in the next instalment and maybe some of its own ideas
