Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Our Review

Ten years after Revenge of the Sith, Disney and J.J. Abrams brought the saga back with a film whose job was impossible: make Star Wars feel alive again without offending the memory of the originals. Their solution was to remake the 1977 film beat for beat, a desert planet, a droid carrying a secret, a masked villain, a planet sized weapon, and to hand the whole thing to two genuinely great new leads. As a structure it is a rerun. As a reintroduction it works like a charm.

Daisy Ridley’s Rey is the best hero casting of the modern era, fierce and lonely and delighted by her own power, and John Boyega’s Finn, a stormtrooper who defects on his first mission, is the freshest idea the film has. Their meet cute sprint through a Jakku scavenger town has more energy than anything the prequels ever staged. Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is the villain upgrade the series needed: a entitled fanboy with a lightsaber and a temper, scarier for being unfinished. Harrison Ford returns and is murdered by his own son in a scene that genuinely hurts, the single boldest choice in the film.

The complaints are fair. Starkiller Base is Death Star three and the film knows it, tossing out a destroyed Republic in a single throwaway shot. The mystery boxes, Rey’s parents, Snoke, Luke’s exile, are opened and parked for the sequels to solve. But the craft is undeniable, the practical effects restore the used future texture, and the cast banishes the prequel stiffness. Eight out of ten for a nostalgic, confident, occasionally too careful relaunch.