Right, I don’t want to say too much about this one, because I’m a nightmare for dropping accidental spoilers. This is the first movie released since Disney took over the franchise from George Lucas, and I have to say I’m very pleased with the result. I thought the last three movies (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith) were pretty disappointing. The special effects were spectacular, but the heavy use of CGI gave me the impression that I was watching a poorly-scripted cartoon.
The Force Awakens takes us back to the original three movies (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi): less reliance on special effects; a familiar (and better) story, and an element of humour that has been missing from the last few outings. ( Jar Jar Binks was annoying, not funny). The acting isn’t the best (aside from decent performances from Harrison Ford and Adam Driver), there are a couple of holes in the storyline that are no doubt going to raise Jedi-nerd eyebrows, and the whole plot did seem very familiar. But on the whole it’s a great movie that fully deserves the pile of money it’s going to make in film tickets, soundtracks, DVDs, Blue-Ray, special edition DVDs, special edition Blue-Ray…
Eight out of ten.