Film Review: Star Wars – The Force Awakens

Release date: 17^th December 2015

Director: J. J. Abrams

Starring: John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher,

Runtime: 135 minutes

Genre: Science-Fiction

Watched in: 2D

Rating: 4/5 stars

I had so much anticipation for this film and was so excited to be able to see it in the cinema. I was still too young to see the prequels in the cinema so this was my first time seeing a Star Wars film on the big screen. My mum introduced me to Star Wars around seven or eight years ago and I watched the originals first and then the prequels. I could never understand why some people hated the prequels quite so much. I’ve always rather liked them. No, they weren’t perfect. In places the acting was terrible. But the originals weren’t exactly perfect either.

And so we come to Episode VII, The Force Awakens. I didn’t know what to expect as they’d managed to be so secretive about the plot. The music and action scenes were great and I really enjoyed the film. They went quite heavily on nostalgia, a bit too heavily in my opinion, and borrowed too many plot elements from the originals. I would have preferred them to do something different. Part of it felt a bit repetitive (if you’ve seen it you’ll know what I’m referring to but I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it yet). This is probably in part due to the backlash the prequels got. Not wanting to make the same mistake after the venomous reaction to the prequels from many fans, they went too far the other way, relying too much on nostalgia rather than making something new and different with a sprinkling of nostalgia.

I loved the new characters. Rey was a really great character, I think she’s probably my favourite character of the new generation. Finn was also great. I would have liked to have seen more of Poe, but maybe he’ll come into the next films more. I thought the villain, Kylo Ren, was very good. Can’t say too much about that without spoiling things, but I liked that he was different to Darth Vader as I was a little concerned at first that he was going to be really similar. I liked what they did with his character.

So overall I thoroughly enjoyed it and am really looking forward to the next ones. I feel like this was a bit of a tentative start to the trilogy, relying on ideas from the originals to not get backlash from fans like with the prequels. Hopefully they’ll expand their horizons for the plots of VIII and IX. They’ve got a great set of characters to work with.