Category: Reviews

How I Learned to Like The Rise of Skywalker

This post contains huge spoilers for Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker, so if you haven’t seen it, please go no further than the adorable Aki Aki mother and child of spoilerdom…

Okay, all good? We’ve all seen it, yes? Fine, you have been warned.

If you’ve been following my blog since the release of The Force Awakens you’ll know that I’ve been keen on these films, making several trips to the movies to see them in 2D, 3D and fill-your-eyes-with-space-joy IMAX. I liked The Force Awakens very much, with a few caveats, and I loved The Last Jedi precisely for the reasons that some folk hated it. I saw Rise of Skywalker at the movies on the opening weekend… and never went back.

It’s like a knickerbocker glory dessert: it looks great on the menu, piled high with the things you love, but by the time you’re halfway through you’re either sick or exhausted of it.

It hurtles along at a reckless pace in the hope that the viewer can barely draw breath long enough to realise that the plot doesn’t make a lick of sense, characters popping in and out of scenes for nuggets of exposition, constant fake-outs with characters seemingly doomed one minute then fine the next, and threads that only make sense if you go and buy the novelisation… It is, as my dear old nan used to say, a bugger’s muddle.

Of course, I immediately pre-ordered the Blu Ray.

I mean, I’ve got all the others, so why have a gap in my collection? (Curse my completist tendencies!) When it arrived, the first thing I watched was not the film, but a documentary called The Skywalker Legacy. It’s over two hours long and is worth the price of the Blu Ray alone. It reminded me of all the good things in this film: the level of craft on this production is phenomenal. The design, costume, hair & make-up, visual effects, special effects, animatronics, stunts (the stunt coordinator Eunice Huthart is a joy to watch) are all incredible. These are top people at their peak and they make the film look and sound amazing, and they and the actors all put their heart and souls into the film and they clearly had a great time making it. Except one person…

Chris Terrio is a fine screenwriter. His work on Argo saw him nominated for many awards and he won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. There’s no doubting his credentials. On the Skywalker Legacy documentary he has the look of a deer in headlights, because he knows more than anyone (with the possible exception of JJ Abrams) the impossibility of what he has to deliver. Not only must he conjure up a blockbuster screenplay that wraps up a trilogy (never easy), he is also burdened with all eight other films in the series and countless spin off novels, comics, theme parks and cartoons.

As I was watching the documentary it dawned on me: how could this film be anything other than a disappointment? And I think Chris Terrio and JJ knew this too.

Once I accepted this… I was okay with the movie! I watched it again last night, and the same criticisms remain (it really makes no bloody sense whatsoever), but it works on an emotional level and for this soppy old sod that’s good enough for me. Also — and this is something Star Wars fans don’t like to talk about — the original films are full of similar story holes… (if anyone can explain the logic behind Luke’s plot to rescue Han in Return of the Jedi, then I’ll buy them a Mars Bar)

The truth is, nothing will recapture the giddy excitement of seeing those films as a child. I can remember each trip vividly, and all the emotional baggage of those films cannot possibly be matched by any screenplay, reboot or remake. I’m coming to terms with the idea that this universe will live on long after I’m gone. It’s not mine anymore, and I’m fine with that. I think… The Rise of Skywalker is the favourite film of some other child who had their mind blown by this incredible universe, and good for them.

Let’s end with the one person who never set a foot wrong throughout all nine films. Please be upstanding for Mr John Williams…

Should Writers Avoid Getting Political?

Back to Reality, the novel I co-wrote with Mark Desvaux for the Bestseller Experiment podcast, has been having a good run with reviews since its publication in 2017. Folks have liked it a lot and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. To meet our rather ambitious self-imposed target of ten thousand copies sold by the end of the Glastonbury Festival (our book climaxes at Glastonbury) we’ve been dialling up the advertising and asking anyone who’s read the book to leave a review. That means I’ve been checking the Amazon customer reviews fairly regularly, and that’s when I noticed that we received our first ever one-star review for the book. At first, my heart sank a little, but then I clicked on the review and had a read and this is what I found…

For context, here’s the part of the book that the reviewer objected to. Our hero, Jo, has travelled back in time from contemporary England to ‘90s Hollywood. She finds herself on a late night chat show where she reveals that she’s a time traveller…

There are two things going on with this review. First is an inability to make a distinction between the protagonist and the authors.

This still manages to surprise some readers. To write crime thrillers, you don’t need to be a cop or a murderer, to write science fiction you don’t need to explore deep space, and you, dear writer, can write repulsive characters and not agree with their world view.

Although, for the sake of clarity, here’s where I stand on Donald Trump. The man is a misogynist, homophobic, racist, narcissistic fool and a failed businessman whose time would be better spent indulging in his sexual peccadilloes behind closed doors while the rest of try and save the planet from climate change.

In short, I’m not a fan.

But this is what writers do: we put ourselves in the shoes of these characters and try to imagine would those people might be like — and very often it can be based on personal experience — and we try to convey that in words.

As an aside, I think this is why there is such a liberal bias in the entertainment industry. Creators will try and see both sides of the argument in a story, character or situation and present them in a compelling way. That sense of fairness is very much a characteristic of liberals, especially in contrast to the meritocratic views of the right. 

The second aspect of the review is the disappointment in the reader that we’ve dragged the messy world of politics into their reading. This prompts the much bigger question: should writers get political? Sure, if you’re writing a political thriller it’s expected, but when you’re writing in an escapist genre like comedy, romance, science fiction or fantasy should the poor reader be inflicted with soap box politics? And is it worth it for the writer? Think back to The Dixie Chicks when they made disparaging comments about George W Bush and the effect that had on their sales. Isn’t it just safer to avoid any political content altogether?

Here’s the thing: all writing is political… if it’s any good.

Fiction isn’t like a family gathering where you avoid religion and politics. It should be a truthful reflection of what the creator believes, otherwise what is the point?

I’m not saying that our joke where Jo compares Trump to Hitler is some kind of profound insight into the human condition. Far from it. It’s simply the thing that stuck out for the reviewer. What that reviewer missed was the masses of other political content in the book. The themes of family, compassion, sexism, work, money and greed are threaded throughout the story, and if you don’t think those are political then you’ve not been paying attention to the world around you.

So, will we lose sales because we’ve upset some fans of Trump? Possibly. We’re hardly the Dixie Chicks, but to be honest if you’re a Trump supporter I don’t want your money. You’re going to need it when you realise you’re on the wrong side of history and need to pay for therapy.

In the meantime, I shall continue to write about the world through the eyes of characters that both attract and repulse me. It’s pretty much the only way I can make any sense of the chaos around me, especially that Trump fella… 

PS. To be clear, there are my opinions and not those of The Bestseller Experiment or my co-presenter -author Mark Desvaux…

Blade Runner Secret Cinema – MASSIVE SPOILERS

I was lucky enough to be invited by the Gollancz gang (pictured above – photo courtesy of Kate Williams) to the latest Secret Cinema immersive experience, and this one was based on one of my favourite films, Blade Runner. I had been tempted by Secret Cinema in the past – particularly the Star Wars one last year – but the expense and commitment to costume and character was always offputting. But, as a guest of Gollancz, there was no way I could refuse the opportunity.

For the uninitiated, Secret Cinema offers an interactive evening where you essentially become part of the film. An extra in the movie’s universe. And it begins from the moment you sign up. They email you with the name of the character you’ll be playing and your role in the greater story. You’re given instructions on how to dress and a selection of props to bring. I was Nathaniel Woodville (spooky, as I went to a school called Woodville and the name ties into one of my forthcoming books). I was scavenger and chose to bring photos (precious currency in the Blade Runner universe), and an umbrella. I wore a paper suit, covered with a plastic poncho, decorated with fairy lights borrowed from my daughter, and topped off with my wife’s snood and some goggles. It cost about thirty quid in total and I have to say I looked rather fetching…

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From the moment you arrive, the immersive experience begins. We were abused by the LAPD outside the venue (a warehouse near Canning Town tube), the security bag checkers inside, and the ticket inspectors. They tore up my ID and stole one of my photos! It was clear that we were scavengers. The lowest of the low.

This is where you have to make a choice. Sit back and enjoy the silliness and retain your own identity, or go full method and immerse yourself in your character. Well, I bloody went for it, dodgy American accent and all. I gripped by umbrella with both hands, shuffled aroud, hunched up and twitchy as Nathaniel Woodville. Poor Nathaniel had been ground down by the system and he just wanted to get offworld. I was into it, exercising acting muscles that had been dormant for some time and loving it.

Once inside, we became embroiled in a mission to overthrow the powers-that-be and create a blackout. We had to go to Taffy’s bar and find a singer called Luna. She gave us a photo to deliver, and a message to pass on, but we were busted by the LAPD and thrown into a cage. Then I was singled out and interrogated by the cops. They were led by an actor who kept the scene on track with the story, but all the dialogue was improvised. They wanted to know why I had been speaking to Luna, and I told them I was a fan. “Then sing one of her songs…” So I then started a nervous rendition of “One more kiss, dear” from the film’s soundtrack. That seemed to help things and I continued to deny everything. Then, after bribing the cops with two photos, I was set free… But they were tailing me and I had to lose them by doubling back, scurrying into a crowd and turning my fairy lights off. This was thrilling stuff.

I sort of lost track of the story at that point, but by then I was already immersed in the world. All around me were sights and sounds familiar from the movie: ads for off-world colonies, sweeping searchlights, and a rain machine that doused Chinatown in “acid rain”. The sets were incredible: Taffy’s bar, the police station, and various eateries were all pretty faithful facsimiles of the film’s originals.

The anticipation to the promised blackout was building and we poor, oppressed scavengers began to gather in the main square, dancing in unison, raising our umbrellas in protest and getting absolutely drenched. I never went raving in my youth, but I imagine it must have felt something like this: a crowd chanting and moving as one, and thinking that anything was possible.

Once the story was over we were directed to the three movies screens where we watched the Final Cut of the film. This for me was the least successful part of the evening. The sound and picture wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen, the crowd was restless, a few were inebriated, many got up for drinks, stomping up and down the metallic seating.

Actors moved about in front of the screens and the scaffolding during key scenes, miming the dialogue – erstaz Roy Battys and Rick Deckards… It didn’t really work for me. Stage acting and film acting are two different disciplines and it all seemed a bit silly and unnecessary after what we had just been through. The flashes of lightning and red pulsing lights as the spinners flew over the Tyrell Corp buildings were much better at building the atmosphere, but it was pale in comparison to the intensity of the main event.

I had a long journey home, and lost patience with the boozed-up chatterers behind us, so I left about an hour into the film, returned to my locker, got out of my costume and put on some dry clothing. Then came the strangest bit of the evening… returning to the real world, walking through Canning Street tube station knowing that if I tried to interact with any of the real people in the same way that I had interacted with my fellow Secret Cinemagoers, they would have veered away from me, called the police, or thumped me. Part of me wanted to turn around and go back in.

From talking to friends who have been to a few of these, the Blade Runner Secret Cinema had the most successful version of the interactive element. My scavenger story was competing with the cops’ stories, with the replicants’ stories, and yet it all came to a head with a transformative moment where, for a moment, lost in time, we were all in the Los Angeles of 2019, seeing things that you people would never believe…

How Rian Johnson just saved Star Wars

This blog post has MASSIVE SPOILERS for Star Wars The Last Jedi, so if you haven’t seen it yet, please scroll no further than the porg of spoilderdom…

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Ready for spoilery thoughts? Here we go…

“You have to kill the past,’ says Kylo Ren in Rian Johnson’s take on the Star Wars saga. To say that this film has been divisive would be an understatement, but the film wears its themes on its sleeve, and the viewer soon discovers that this will be no ordinary Star Wars story. It opens with a comedy sketch co-starring Adrian Edmonson, followed by Luke tossing his lightsaber over a cliff, then the Resistance fleet is all but wiped out, General Leia is ejected into space, Admiral Ackbar discovers that even he can’t repel scripts of this magnitude, and no one says “I have a very bad feeling about this,” or any of its variants, which might be a first for the series.

This is an irreverent movie, and thank the Maker for that. I enjoyed The Force Awakens and Rogue One very much, though both were quick to doff the cap to tradition and tiptoed very carefully through the minefield of fan expectation. Johnson’s film streaks gleefully through the minefield, flipping the bird at any man-baby fanboy appalled at the liberties he takes (and it does seem to be all men complaining… We really have to stop getting so petulant about stuff like this, guys).

As I watched, I kept thinking; “I didn’t know the Force could do that,” and “Ooh, that’s new!” and it engaged me in a way that a Star Wars film hasn’t done since Return of the Jedi, and it’s given me a fun quote that I’ll be using on my kids for years to come: “Congratulations. Everything you just said in that sentence is wrong.”

It’s not perfect. The middle is pretty baggy, Snoke is still uninteresting as a villain. and threads are set-up and resolved a little too quickly – mainly the excursion to Canto Bight and Poe Dameron’s mini-mutiny – though one has to wonder if the latter of these was affected by the sudden passing of Carrie Fisher. (Pauses to sniff and make excuses about something in my eye)

Fisher is heartbreakingly good in the few scenes she’s conscious in, and it makes you wonder how great she would have been had she lived to complete the role. Hamill shines, giving a career-best send-off to a character that started as a callow youth, and ends a grizzled, regretful war veteran in hiding. His final vision of two suns setting is a wonderful bookend to his story, and a genuine lump-in-the-throat moment.

For me, the most thrilling part of this film is its message that anyone can be the hero now. You don’t have to be a Skywalker, or even a distant second cousin, or a collection of immaculate midichlorians, as many thought Rey to be. You can be Rose, or her sister Paige, or that stable boy and his friends at the very end. Heroism doesn’t require a special lineage, you don’t need to come from a renowned family, or be in the top percentage of society. In a time when we’re seeing the powers-that-be on their worst behaviour, that’s a very important message for any yoot watching this film. And this is a film for the young fans; giving them ownership of the series with a range of diverse and interesting new characters. Maybe that’s why the older fanboys are so distressed…? Someone else is playing with their toys and they’re not playing by the rules…

Curiously, and refreshingly, the film doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. Rian Johnson has cleared the decks and JJ Abrams now has a free reign to wind-up the trilogy any way he pleases. I hope he has as much fun with his new film as Rian did with his, and takes advantage of how Rian Johnson just saved Star Wars saga from disappearing up its own continuity. The fact that none of us has the first clue where this is going next is really exciting and I can’t wait for Episode IX.

Book Review: Paperbacks From Hell, Grady Hendrix

I don’t often do book reviews here (never crap on your own lawn, folks), but Grady Hendrix‘s Paperbacks From Hell was such a happy surprise that I can’t resist. I met Grady when he launched the book at the MCM Comic in October and we bonded over happy memories of rabies scares and The Omen novelisation…

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Bought from a second-hand bookstore on holiday for 10p… it warped my fragile little mind.

His book is a history of horror fiction in the ’70s and ’80s. It covers pulp paperbacks, the blockbusters, the fads, the won’t-they-think-of-the-children? outrages, the forgotten gems, the best-forgotten misogyny and racism of the times, the cover designers and artists, the die-cut paperback covers, the editors, the imprints and the authors – many of whom are now only remembered by aficionados.

If you’re a writer, or you work in publishing, and you want a primer on how trends wax and wane, how brands come and go, how one-hit wonders can change an industry, then this book is essential reading. Whatever genre you write in or enjoy reading, you can learn a lot from Hendrix’s astute observations on the publishing industry’s ability to squeeze the lemon till it’s dry, and then to toss it away for the next juicy fruit that comes along. In these pages you’ll see writers’ careers soar, then nosedive, taking all the copycat pretenders with them. You’ll see how politics, social change, and a bust and boom economy can affect the public’s reading tastes (think of how the fear of foreign animals coincided with the UK joining the Common Market… time for a resurrection of the rabid dog genre, perhaps?).

It’s relentlessly entertaining, very funny, and Grady’s love for the genre in all its forms is soaked into every page. One word of warning: having read this, you’ll be hightailing it to eBay to buy at least a dozen books just to see if they’re as good/bad/terrible/gruesome as Grady says they are. I shall be seeking out Let’s Go Play At The Adams’s, Michael McDowell’s Blackwater series, and reacquainting myself with a delightful young man called Damien Thorn. Happy reading.

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Rogue One – the fanboys have taken over the asylum (spoilers agogo!)

Be ye warned, I have all the spoilers in the article below and we can only proceed on the assumption that you’ve seen Rogue One: A Star Wars story and stayed awake to the very end.

 

Are we cool…?

 

Very well.

 

Let us begin with a trailer showing a ton of shots that did not make it to the finished film…

I’ve seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story twice now, and I enjoyed it very much.

There has been chatter, some negative, about the stream of in-jokes and easter-eggs in the film, and no one has summarised this better than Adam Roberts in this article. But, despite all the scaremongering news of reshoots and rewrites (like this was the first film ever to suffer this), we have been gifted a very enjoyable film.

 

I’ve seen plenty of rave reviews, some saying it’s the best Star Wars film for thirty-odd years, though I wouldn’t go that far. When watching it for the second time its flaws became more apparent, and it got me wondering about the future of this series, which is very close to my heart, and the future of this kind of shared-universe storytelling.

But let’s start with the movie itself. It has a finale to rival any other in the series, and it’s full of incredible moments, but second time around I found the journey to reach that epic climax was slow and stodgy.

My biggest problem is our leads. Felicity Jones and Diego Luna are fine actors, but they’re both saddled with dour characters with downturned mouths. They’re very earnest and sober and lack any of the verve of Finn or Rey, let alone the swagger of Han Solo, or the infectious energy of Luke and Leia. They feel very one-note all the way through, and it’s hard work to care for them.

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Cheer up, guys… might never happen. Oh, wait…

I blub at the drop of a hat at the movies, but I felt curiously unmoved by their sacrifice at the end. It was as if they knew they were doomed from the start and allowed their story to play out with a defeatist tone. How many kids will want to be Jyn or Cassian when acting out their adventures in the playground? I suspect Rey and Finn will remain the top ‘bagsy’ for some time.

The story is a patchwork of rewrites and you can still see some of the stitching. There are visual clues of discarded story threads, such as the unexplained wreckage of a still-smoking X-Wing on Jedha, but that stuff just adds to the intrigue of a bigger story, and can make for fun speculation.

More problematic are some of the character beats: Bodhi Rook is interrogated by the big jelly-Cthulu-like creature which, Saw Gerrera assures him, will make him lose his mind. Yet, one quick chat with charisma vacuum Cassian Andor and suddenly Bodhi is tickety-boo. Wouldn’t it have been more fun to rely on a defective defecting pilot who is one sandwich short of a picnic? And what should be a perfectly simple plan by Bodhi to hook-up a cable during the final battle needs explaining not once, but twice, and at great length… it feels like a cut-n-shut script solution to a bigger story problem.

And why did Saw Gerrera need to die when he does? Okay, he might have had to stop to oil his legs, or take a fresh puff from his oxygen mask, but he was perfectly capable of getting to a ship with the others. It makes absolutely no sense, other than that’s where Joseph Campbell says the mentor should die if you’ve been studying The Hero’s Journey. I suspect there was more to this story thread, but it was lost somewhere in the rewrites.

And speaking of ships, why do space ships in science fiction movies land so far away from their final destination? You travel halfway across the galaxy to your quarry’s farm in Iceland, and park two miles from his house. Why??

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“Sir, this is a really long walk, shouldn’t we have parked maybe a little closer to the–?” “SHUT UP!”

We also have an utterly pointless excursion by Krennick to see Vader’s compact and bijoux residence with hot and cold running lava, which feels like an awful lot of unnecessary shoe leather for such a short conversation. Wouldn’t a quick holo-call have done? Then Vader could have at least stayed in the bath…

But, much of this is nitpicking. Overall, the film was a blast. One for the fans, made by the fans. I think this film marks a turning point in the Star Wars canon, and how these kinds of films will be made. This is where the fanboys have taken over the franchise. Yes, The Force Awakens was made with affection and nostalgia, but, crucially, it was written by the man who wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi. Not a fanboy.

With these stand-alone stories we’re now seeing a progression to a different kind of storytelling, where men (and it is all men writing and directing these films) of a certain age, who grew up playing with their Star Wars action figures, are now getting to play in the sandbox of the Star Wars movie universe. When I first saw the trailers for this film, it reminded me of the games I would play with my toys as a child. Stories that focused away from the main saga, and were free to dabble in corners of the universe that we’ve not seen before. And it is play: watching the end sequence of this film – a triumphant, crowd-pleasing finale – it played out like a live-action version of the game Star Wars: Battlefront, each problem they were presented with felt like the next level of a platform game. Even Vader’s thrilling moment scything through rebel soldiers was seemingly taken straight from the Battlefront Hoth map…

Don’t get me wrong; this is all fun stuff, but these adventures are feeling less like iconic movies, and more like serial TV. We have a very capable show runner in the redoubtable Kathleen Kennedy, and we have the Lucasfilm Story Group (mostly comprising of women, which is encouraging), to keep everything on track. I don’t envy them. This must be like a game of Jenga, where writers have to make extremely delicate manoeuvres to ensure that the whole edifice doesn’t come tumbling down.

The Star Wars universe is no longer the vision of just one man, it’s a big business that will be squeezed for all its worth for at least the next two decades, in movies, TV, games, theme park attractions, books, toys, food and clothes. Along with Marvel, Disney, DC, Harry Potter and Bond, this is industrialised storytelling and it’s here to stay.

There was a time in the late ’80s where I felt like I was the only Star Wars fan in the world. The films were done with, they had stopped making the toys, and a fan could almost know everything there was to know about the saga. And then, when something new came along, like the Timothy Zahn books, it was a thrilling event, but an isolated incident. Those days are gone, and eventually we’ll reach a saturation point where I fear I’ll be sick to the tits with anything Star Wars. I’m guessing this is what fuels a lot of the impotent male rage you see online; the idea that something that was once special to them is now cherished by the masses, and – heaven forbid – girls. But to complain about this is to reveal a thin skin. I love that my kids are enjoying a golden age of Star Wars, that they can enjoy exciting stories with a cast of characters as diverse as those in The Force Awakens and Rogue One, but already I can see a day when the bubble bursts. All it takes is a disappointing opening weekend and the franchise will begin to die. And, with each new iteration of an increasingly-complex storyline, the odds of a disappointment will increase and the Jenga tower will fall, and the masses will suddenly be interested in a new shiny thing to decorate their bedrooms with. So, let’s enjoy it while we can. Just because a thing doesn’t last, it doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. The fanboys and fangirls are running the show, and they’re off to a pretty good start.

 

 

 

 

Because what the world really needs is another blog on Star Wars… My thoughts on The Force Awakens (MASSIVE SPOILERS!)

UPDATED – SCROLL DOWN FOR JOHN WILLIAMS’ THOUGHTS ON REY’S THEME…

Okay before we get into this, let’s try a little warm-up. Get on your feet, jog on the spot a bit, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, and just keep repeating to yourself: It’s only a film, it’s only a film, it’s only a film…

I mean, obviously, in about five hundred years’ time, after the atomic wars and the mutant uprising, Star Wars will be the basis for a worldwide religion, but until then let’s just remind ourselves that it’s a story designed to entertain and delight. I mention this only because the release of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS has brought out the cray-cray in people, and not just the wonderful geeks queueing in cosplay, but the morons who tried and failed to generate a boycott of the film because John Boyega happens to be black, or the fuss over Max Landis’ assertion that Rey is a “Mary Sue” character, or my friend on Facebook who went off on a rant about how the whole series is “one huge expungement of western guilt”, which is an interesting interpretation of the films, perhaps straying from the filmmakers’ conscious intent, but it got him so much flak that he just got more ranty and it became embarrassing for all concerned (by the way, all of Hollywood is one huge expungement of western guilt… start picking at that thread and the whole system collapses!).

So, anyway, the film…

BE WARNED – FROM HERE WE’LL BE IN THE SPOILER ZONE – DO NOT PROCEED UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN THE FILM!

 

YOU’RE STILL HERE AND HAVEN’T SEEN THE FILM? YOU’VE ONLY GOT YOURSELF TO BLAME!

 

LAST TRAIN OUT OF SPOILERVILLE…

 

OKAY, HERE WE GO…

 

I’ve seen it twice, once in 2D, then in 3D, and I loved it both times. If anything, seeing it the second time without the weight of expectation and me being a smartarse trying to second-guess the storyline, was even more enjoyable.

It’s not perfect; essentially a greatest hits, tribute band, mash-up of the first trilogy. But with a $4.5 billion investment at stake they were always going to have to play to the gallery a bit, especially that big Chinese gallery at the back, which can make or break your membership into the billion dollar box office club, and China doesn’t have the social and historical association with the series which can guarantee a big turnout. So, the order of the day was to stick to what works and put it in a safe pair of hands… Who’s done this kind of high-risk reboot before? Hmm. That JJ guy seems to know his stuff… So let’s take all that as a given, put it to one side, and enjoy the film on its own terms. Here are my thinkings…

Things that niggled:

There is a Star Wars tradition known as the Terence Stamp Contingency, whereby they hire great actors, make a huge fuss about them in the pre-release publicity, and then not do very much with them in the finished film: here’s hoping Max Von Sydow, Domhnall Gleeson, Lupita Nyong’o, Gwendoline Christie, and the guys from THE RAID can console themselves with a few deleted scenes on the Blu-Ray.

The Maz Kanata sequence: so Finn suddenly realises out of the blue the First Order can’t be beaten, decides to do a runner and then five minutes later, he’s back. Did we believe any of that? An oddly muddled chunk of the film that could maybe have benefitted from a bit of a trim.

Snoke: he’s clearly compensating for something with that enormous hologram. Maybe he’s a Jawa fed up with jokes about his height? I’m sure more will be revealed as the series goes on (a current leading fan theory is that he’s Darth Plagueis), but for the moment he seems a tad… unfinished… The CG made me think of THE MUMMY, and that’s not a good thing.

Nostalgia: I think this harks back to the “greatest hits” agenda that set the tone for the film. I love an in-joke or callback as much as the next uberfan, but I wonder if they’ll become grating with repeated viewing? New rule for the next film: no in-jokes. Not one. Make your own history.

Stuff I’m on the fence about:

The 3D: The Star Destroyer poking out of the screen was a genuinely gasp-inducing moment, and 3D conversions have come a loooong way since I last saw one, and the aerial sequences were cool in a Disney-ride way, but I’m not sure what it added to the film, and there were a number of wide shots where small buildings looked like models. Not something I noticed with the 2D screening.

R2D2 seemed to be running a Apple OSX software update throughout the story. Seems a bit of a waste of a much-loved character, but then is there room for two cute robots in the same movie?

There are GRABBERS in the film! An odd crossover, unexpected, but welcome…

What I liked:

The opening crawl: Luke Skywalker has disappeared! Wait, what?! That’s how you grab people’s attention. None of this trade embargo balls.

Rey’s theme. The score doesn’t have an immediate, bombastic theme like the The Imperial March or Duel Of The Fates, but it does have a beautifully light and subtle theme for Rey, which makes me want to gaily skip off with a knapsack on my back and have an adventure of my own.

 

UPDATE: John Williams on Rey’s Theme and the promise of adventure…

Han’s death. We all knew that they only way they were going to get Harrison Ford back was by offering him the glorious, redemptive death scene he was denied in Return of the Jedi, didn’t we? And it was pretty heavily telegraphed from the moment Han chose to go back into the lion’s den. It didn’t quite land for me the first time, but on a second viewing there’s so much going on. I love the way he touches his son’s face before he falls away. And compare the dialogue here — “I don’t know if I have the strength to do this. Will you help me?” — to Revenge of the Sith’s “The Jedi are evil from my point of view” clunk-a-thon. These are two human beings here, father and son. Kasdan does this stuff so well, and I get a bit lip-wobbly now just thinking about it.

Kylo Ren: Now this is how you do inner-torment and a young man turning to the dark side. Adam Driver is a fine actor and Kylo Ren promises to be the most conflicted and interesting villain of the series.

Skellig Michael: The first Jedi Temple is off the South West Coast of Ireland. Whoda thunk it? And which of us will be the first to swing a lightsaber there? I hear tourist trade is already booming. It’s heartwarming to see such an extraordinary location being used to great effect. And so windswept that it’s done wonders with Luke’s hair.

Rey and Daisy Ridley: Yes, the scene where she whips Luke’s lightsaber out of the snow, yes, when she flies the Falcon through the wreck of a Super Star Destroyer, but most of all for yelling “Oi, gerrof!” in a London accent in the cockpit of the Falcon… a first for the series, I think.

Finn and John Boyega: this guy is my new hero. On the press tour he’s been funny, smart and charming, and he’s the perfect mix of fanboy and actor. He’s got great drama and comedy chops in this movie, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Poe Dameron: So good they brought him back from the dead. Apparently his character was supposed to die in the Tie Fighter crash, but Oscar Isaac escaped the Terence Stamp Contingency to live again, leading to one of the lamest “I woke up and you were gone” plot hole patch-ups ever. But, who cares? I want to see him and Finn having more adventures.

BB8: the adorable bastard child of R2 and Wall-E, so expressive and done for reals as shown on this cool website.

The fun: this has more gags than most comedies, and has such a delightful tone that it could draw criticism for being too light, but man that stuff is hard to get right, and this tone is the biggest callback to the original Star Wars, and one the filmmakers should definitely keep for the remaining films.

So, yes, they played it safe with the plot, and here’s hoping they’ll take a few more risks next time, but when a film is made with so much verve, love and delight that I can forgive its minor sins and enjoy for what it is. A film. An entertainment. A delight.

May the Force be with you. Always.