Week 1 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens

My first week of the year is usually spent lying about on my parents’ sofas, hoping that spooning the dog will cure me of the incessant hangover that lingers until the second Monday of the month. During this hazy seven days, I will watch more films than I do in any other week, films that I have seen dozens of times which comfort me and make me less afraid of the year to come. These are the safety blankets that we collect from our childhood and adolescence, and I can’t review something that I so love and depend upon when life throws a curveball or a bottle of wine at me.

The only films that I watched this week that I hadn’t seen inside out, back to front, was CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, the adaptation of a play I adore, and STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. I thought Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was vacuous and underwhelming, and although you can’t compare the two, Star Wars was the tonic I needed after a sluggish start to 2016.

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I seem to go to the cinemas every January to see the Boxing Day blockbuster, after all of the teenagers and families have bored of it and the screens are now left to stoners, old people and nerds who class themselves as film fans but hate films longer than 100 minutes and/or if it includes a subplot about distant parents. I fall into the last category: I run on movies, I find cinema still so glamorous and romantic, even if this particular film that I’m about to discuss is one of the biggest cash cows this century’s has and will ever see.

The Star Wars franchise almost passed me by for two decades, save from a quick trip to the local Showcase (back in its better days) to be wowed by the Phantom Menace. Wowed because I was seven years-old. I finally had a crash course in the better trilogy a year or so ago, keenly supervised by an old boyfriend. I enjoyed them but I still don’t see how they accumulated such standing in our consciousness; it’s almost like how a tennis ball can hit a paving slab at a certain angle and spiral down the road at an increased velocity for what seems like forever, which is basically what Star Wars did.

Good looking people and aliens have always been successful box office draws, but something that episodes IV, V and VI have in spades is heart; a strong sense of silliness and whimsy did them a huge favour back in 1977. I know a lot of people were worried that JJ Abrams would run with the more serious vibes of Episodes I, II and III. But the divine right of kings that put him in place to pilot this juggernaut into the 21^st century was well fated.

The Force Awakens is, first of all, not overly long. Wikipedia describes Star Wars as a space opera and they’re not wrong. There’s nothing worse than trying to get the most from your £10 ticket fee yet trying to remember the time of the last bus home. One thing that kept TFA from hitting the 150-minute mark was not treating their fans like fools and introducing all of characters with wincingly forced exposition. Peter Jackson should have hung on for a while before making The Hobbit to see how it was done.

No one ever bothers to comment on the acting in science fiction or action films because that is often surpassed by what my housemate refers to as the ‘pew pew, zoom zoom’. The effects and CGI are excellent, but the acting as part of this is genuinely very good also – even relative newcomer Daisy Riley shows a lot of promise – as it can’t be too easy reacting to a tennis ball with sensors glued to it.

Lupita Nyong'o as Maz Kanata

Without drifting into the sweat-inducing minefield of spoilers, fan favourites don’t disappoint either. In the same manner as the Harry Potter films, the original cast members look like they’re having the time of their lives; they look well, and it’s probably because this homecoming has reinvigorated their careers and themselves. Don’t get what I mean? Harrison Ford has given an interview this year, when he famously would rather take a lightsabre to the face.

There is a real element of charming sincerity to TFA, whether that is from the glee in the actors’ performances, the sweet nods to the old days or just my dormant fangirl instincts kicking in, who knows, but I can’t wait for the next instalment.


Films of the week: It's a Wonderful Life; The Sound of Music; Stepmom; Tangled; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; The Family Stone; Bridget Jones' Diary; Star Wars: The Force Awakens.