Ah the Force Awakens… is… AWESOME! Of course it is! You’ve seen it, of course you have. I’ve seen it twice!
Wait what? You haven’t seen it!? Why not!!?… Never fear though to whet your appetite here is my spoiler free review!
Firstly, you may recall a few months ago I did a blog post on the trailers of The Force Awakens. Allot of what Star Wars fans thought we knew, we in fact didn’t. Also since then Disney have said the whole expanded Universe is no longer official cannon. Which in short means all the books, comics and computer games are no longer recognised as part of the official mythos which is now the 6 films that have gone before only. And even then it looks like in The Force Awakens J J Abrams has ignored the woeful prequels as much as possible. You wont find midichloreans mentioned anywhere!
That said the expanded Universe is being used as inspiration, so in my previous blog https://www.phoenixfm.com/2015/05/24/the-force-awakens/ you will find mentioned Ben Skywalker and Jacen Solo. Well forget that as tha’ts expanded Universe talk which no longer counts….. but it does inspire the film. That’s all I can say without giving too much away.
So onto the film itself which we have already stated is awesome to the max to coin an 80’s phrase. But why? Well it has everything you would want from a Star Wars film. It’s like it has taken everything that was cool about A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back and dropped all the baggage of the toy agenda. This is a film that has been made by a Star Wars fan who is all too aware of the mistakes of the past. The Force Awakens, is funny, exciting and at times very sad. It’s also probably the darkest Star Wars film to date and the 12a certificate is justified.
The 2 young (British!) leads are fantastic. John Boyega as the charismatic, unlikely hero Fin and Daisy Ridley as star of the show and future awesome Jedi Knight, Rey. These 2 have a wonderfully believable chemistry on screen, their acting is superb and they are more than worthy to carry the franchise through the next 2 films.
Old faces R2D2, C3PO, Chewie, Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker – but at this stage we don’t know if any of them will be back for future installments. That’s not true we know one definitely won’t and we know one definitely will. It would be nice if Lando Calrissian popped up in the next installment.
Film baddie Kylo Ren is just as brilliant as we hoped he would be from the trailers. But actually we learn from the film that he is a highly complex and tortured character who is just starting his dark side career. We are going to see him develop into a powerful foe as Rey and Fin develop into powerful heroes. He is indeed a worthy heir to Darth Vader.
But the character I’m most excited about is Supreme Leader Snoke (though I’m not thrilled by his name!) He is a guy clearly strong with the Force but like Kylo Ren he (at least claims to be) no Sith. He is extremely mysterious and in my opinion very scary looking, though here we only see him as a hologram in a couple of scenes (much like how The Emperor was introduced to us in The Empire Strikes Back). But who is he? Well we don’t really know other a force user who is leader of the First Order (the new Empire).
The Force Awakens is everything you could hope for. If you’re a Star Wars fan you will love it (you may even shed a tear or two). If you’re not a fan – give it a go. I know a few who have been converted to the cause on the strength of this film.
I can’t wait to the next installment. There are plenty of cliffhangers to be resolved and character developments that have been teased at, and if it is anything like The Force Awakens, then the next installment will be a very good film indeed.
Chris
@CW_Stagg
All picture copy write their respective owners
