I saw this at the usual HAT Kobe 109 cinema, joined this time by my sister and her boyfriend, over from Aus. A non-film related highlight entailed said boyfriend re-entering the wrong screening after a mid-film 'horse-watering'. Apparently, the blurry screen and sea of 3-D wearing heads gave it away. Fnarph.
To the film. I can't remember the last time I was so chuffed to be in the cinema. The warm glow of nostalgia and comfort began pretty much right away and remained for the duration, irrespective of any extant critical faculty.
Yep, I didn't (still don't) care that
The Force Awakens is, by and large, a remake of
A New Hope, huge metal ball in space included. And I didn't mind that there were constant 'lifts' direct from the original three films, from word-for-word dialogue to the iconic screen wipes.
These elements were mixed satisfactorily with new ingredients, namely the characters of Rey and Finn, played with great verve by Daisy Ridley (looking spookily like a young Keira Knightley) and John Boyega. Ridley holds her screen time confidently with old pros and this is as much to do with her character's 'flesh and bones' as with her acting ability. She's the protagonist of this film and probably the next two also and thankfully, the character AND the actor seem to have the chops to carry it all off.
Boyega is also fantastic and this was a slight surprise for me. His character could have been a human Jar-Jar Binks - lightweight, disposable, enthusiastically annoying - but again the writing and performance put paid to those fears. He has a couple of important scenes and his 'arc' is probably the largest (most arcy?) in the film. His very human fear and cowardice at the start of the film smoothly transition to cheeky chancer, then selfish realist at Maz's cantina, slowly winding towards smitten (almost) hero by the end. Notably, here he's saved and over-shadowed by Rey (echoes of another strong female lead from this year in
Mad Max's
Imperator Furiosa).
The break-neck opening really rattles along and I couldn't wipe the smile off my face for probably the first 30 or 40 minutes. A highlight was the re-introduction of the Millennium Falcon (see pic above) on Jakku, the desert planet home of Rey. It's handled with a real lightness of touch and wryness and kudos must go to the writer/director J.J. Abrams and the co-writers, Lawrence Kasdan (returning to the Star Wars industry after co-writing the screenplays for
The Empire Strikes Back and
Return of the Jedi) and Michael Arndt, who has a nifty collection of films to his credit as well.
A word or two about the other stand-out performers: Adam Driver is suitably weird, darkly menacing and full of teen-like angst - as though he dropped in from
We Need to Talk About Kevin. He also goes fully bonkers at times with his red sword/sabre thing, mostly on fairly pricey looking equipment. He stops short of becoming a caricature, possibly due to the one brutal moment that will remain unspoken.
Not much more needs to be said about Harrison Ford. Suffice to say, his entry with Chewie brought a shiver to my spinal region and even a slight tear to my left eye. He's a charisma machine, that old geezer and still bursts with star-wattage. He has most of the best lines too - "Oh, YOU'RE cold!?" to Chewie in the snow and telling Finn to "Bring it down" when he's getting in the face of Phasma.
So apart from a few plot requirements that seemed a bit hmmm (Why did R2D2 wait so long to reanimate with the key part of the map? and What happened to Captain Phasma?),
The Force Awakens got the job done. Witty, warm and exciting can't really be sneered at.
1. Valhalla Rising (2009)
Laughably crap, this contains a scene where Ewan McGregor disarms a would-be assassin by casting his fishing line at him. And that's a highlight.
4. Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
