Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Director: J.J. Abrams
Starring: John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Harrison Ford, Oscar Isaac, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Domhnall Gleeson, Lupita Nyong'o, Anthony Daniels, Andy Serkis, Max Von Sydow, Mark Hamill
Certificate: 12
Genre: Sci Fi
Awards: None

What other film could I do for the last review of the year if not Star Wars?

The seventh film in the series, The Force Awakens has taken the world by storm and, in a number of ways, it deserves to. Set thirty years after The Return Of The Jedi, Luke Skywalker has disappeared and the galaxy seems to be in a civil war between the first order, lead by a strange being named Snoke (Serkis) and the resistance, lead by general Leia (Fisher).

On a lonely sandy planet (sound familiar?), a young girl (Ridley) finds a droid being hunted by stormtroopers for information that it has from one of their prisoners. She meets a turncoat stormtrooper named Finn and the two escape the planet with an old veteran in order to find the resistance.

As somebody who quite enjoys the prequels (although I grant that they could never be called good films, they are admirable failures at trying something new), it was somewhat disappointing that The Force Awakens does not seem to have much ambition and instead seems just a newer version of A New Hope. Yet the film is still incredibly enjoyable and any fan of Star Wars is bound to have a good time.

The old faces returning are all great to see, although some seem to be there for no reason (cough, 3PO) other than for fan service but that is what this film was always going to be, a film for the fans. It is great to see how the world has gone on and the technology and the fact that it feels like a Star Wars film but The Force Awakens, to me, shows that the Star Wars film of the future aren't going to do anything new and exciting. Like Marvel, the films are likely to be entertaining and keep an audience hooked but the dream of something radically different is dead. This is not altogether a bad thing but it makes the Star Wars universe a smaller world.

****Good