(This is a spoiler-free post because I’m not a massive douche-nozzle. Feel free to read on in a carefree manner)
I am a massive Star Wars fan, so it’s probably of no surprise to anyone that I had a brilliant time this morning at a midnight screening of Episode VII: The Force Awakens. This movie will naturally draw comparisons with the prequel trilogy and fortunately for all of us, The Force Awakens is a million times better than The Phantom Menace.
People will probably be quick to point at that fans like me hyped the Phantom Menace when it came out, and I’ll put my hand up as guilty on that count. I enjoyed Episode 1. It’s a Star Wars movie so I was always going to like some aspects of it. But my overriding memory of that movie as a cinematic experience was that I got a massive headache during the podrace (the sound was really loud and it went on for aaages), that Jar Jar was, well, YOU KNOW, and that the lightsaber battle at the end was cool. On the whole though, it was like being set up on a blind date with an attractive guy with a good job and a nice personality who you should really be into…but there’s no spark or chemistry there. So you go on a second and third date, because you think maybe you’ll come around eventually but it just never happens.
This was not like that.
I want to aggressively make out with The Force Awakens in the car park, get it back to my place, and shag its goddamn brains out.
Eventually, we’ll marry and live in a cottage by the sea, having ill-advised beach sex at every opportunity.
Even without its Star Wars associations and automatic fan-based popularity, The Force Awakens is probably my favourite action-adventure blockbuster movie of the last few years. Often I’ve been let down by these kinds of films, as there seems to be a trade off between explosions and elaborate and impressive set pieces (which, for the record, I really enjoy) and any kind of emotional connection with the characters, sense of peril, or just basically giving a stuff what happens to anyone in the movie (looking at you Terminator and Die Hard franchises).
I’ve been unmoved by many big budget efforts in this respect, but The Force Awakens (and my other fave from this year, The Martian) really gets the balance right.
Is it derivative as all get out? Yes. Does that really bother me very much? No. I’m too busy gazing in childlike wonder, swooping along with a TIE fighter or X-Wing or laughing at the corny one-liners, or getting emotionally punched in the guts to spend much time worrying about that.
This film, does indeed feel like being back in a universe I’m familiar with, in a way that the prequels never did. As the movie opened I found myself thinking, “yes, we’re back in that place of wonder and spectacle and adventure and there is more of the story – hurrah!”.
Han Solo said it best when he remarked to Chewbacca, “we’re home”.
Having said that, here are the few things that annoyed me about the movie-going experience –
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The ultimate power couple. It was a midnight screening and the movie didn’t start until about 12:15am. The theatre itself opened at 11:15pm and staff were actively encouraging people into the cinemas from that point on. We eventually went in at about 11:30pm and found that the 45 minutes of trailers were on a loop so we saw several of them twice. We were hoping for a special Star Wars related one but those hopes came to nought. I can tell you that The Jungle Book looks like a good option for the kids when it eventually comes out. Then the screen was blank for 10 minutes. Then, after midnight we got 10-15 minutes of just boring old “here’s what the food in the cafe-bar downstairs looks like” advertising. There were audible groans every time the next ad started. Then there were a couple more trailers. As someone who, save a 15 minute cat-nap had been awake since 5am and was very much in danger of nodding off, it was INTERMINABLE. I understand why they did it. Multiplexes aren’t designed to cope with 8 theatres emptying out all at once, so I guess it makes sense to stagger it a bit, but it was pretty effing annoying. I feel there was a “failure to manage expectations” on that one. On the upside, Reading Cinemas gave us free movie tickets as a spot prize for our costumes and also collected tinned food for City Mission, so they were pretty cool in some respects.
- Lens flare. Fortunately there was precious little of this but it still always bugs me when I see it, especially in 3D films which seem on the one hand to want you to be as immersed in the experience as possible, whilst also signalling “this is all seen through a lens external to your eyeball, dummy!” I can’t wait for this stylistic “flourish” to be over.
- Leia’s face. It’s had stuff done to it and it looks weird and it was a touch distracting. I’m not making any judgments about what Carrie Fisher does with her own body, I’m just saying her face didn’t move like a normal person’s and for me it detracted a little from her scenes.
- That thing that happened. I’m not going to be like that person on twitter who posted a massive spoiler and then deleted the tweet (you cock), but suffice to say, “ugh”. Not from a storytelling point of view, just from a “I am a person who feels things” point of view. You’ll know what I mean when you see the movie (seriously though, go see the movie).
- I needed a little arrow telling me where Lupita N’yongo was because I totally missed she was a bespectacled midget alien.
So, as you may have noticed, there was almost nothing I didn’t like about this movie. Only two years until the story continues, in the meantime I’m adding “Rey action figure” to my Christmas list…