Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Anyone tempted to gripe about plot revelations in the following review should aim all their fanboy wrath square at The Force Awakens' writer-director JJ Abrams. Even before the famous music kicks in and the scroll text pops up to inform us that “Luke Skywalker is missing...” you all know the spoilers. Abrams has recreated beat-for-beat, with a fetishist's eye, the first Star Wars film A New Hope. Don't get us wrong, the cover version is classy, but the arrangement sticks too close to the original.

We have a cute droid who has an important message to deliver. This message leads to a wise Jedi warrior. A bad guy wearing breathing apparatus wants to intercept that message. Said droid is helped by a plucky orphan from a desert planet. Plucky orphan teams up with a charismatic but reluctant hero. Together they join a resistance against a genocidal army in league with dark forces. The genocidal army have a planet-sized weapon of mass destruction with one weak spot (clearly no-one filled out a risk assessment form after the first two Death Stars were blown to bits).

That JJ Abrams has created a facsimile should be no surprise. Instead of making his own creative mark on mainstream film culture, this talented director has become the master of the cinematic recycle. If you have a rusty old franchise that needs scrubbed-up and retooled for a new generation’s diminished attention span, he’s your man. Thankfully, he brings a great deal of humour along with his slavish fanboy devotion. Like his Star Trek reboot, The Force Awakens is all-out goofy at times. BB-8, a roly-poly robot who looks like R2-D2 redesigned by James Dyson, gets most of the jokes, despite only being able to communicate in squeaks and bleeps.

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And unlike series creator George Lucas – who oversaw three prequels so awful he’s been kept at a Wookiee's arm's length from this new trilogy – Abrams realises that fans don’t come to these movies for their proto-mystical mumbo jumbo about the power of the force (although there is a bit of that from new character Maz Kanata, a wizened Yoda stand-in voiced by Lupita Nyong'o). They also don't come for the minutiae of the geopolitical machinations of this galaxy, far, far away (no mention of trade route taxation here). What Star Wars fans love about the series is its derring do and low-level B-movie cheesiness.

During its blistering first half we jump from one breakneck escape to another, where thrills are balanced by slapstick and no situation is too terrifying for the characters to pass up an opportunity to crack wise. Oscar Issac, as pilot-ace Poe Dameron, sets the tone in the first scene when he answers a threat from Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, a Darth Vader wannabe who does some heavy-breathing due to a decorative respirator, with a Spaceballs-esque joke about not being able to make out his mumblings beneath the mask.

Abrams also has considerably more skill with actors than his predecessor. Not only does he get a feather-light performance from perennial grump Harrison Ford, who slips back into his Han Solo schtick with glee, he elicits engaging performances from all of the new cast members. Driver plays his dark lord as a petulant man-child prone to temper tantrums who’s visibly dueling with the conflicting emotions inside him (Hayden Christensen tried, and failed, to do something similar as Anakin Skywalker in the prequels but it came off as trapped wind). And the superb Daisy Ridley, as Rey, a young scavenger with untapped gifts, breaks free of the franchise's damsel in distress trope, giving a kickass turn that will have lightsaber sales up 1000% in the females aged 5-to-10 demographic.

The movie's standout, however, is young English actor John Boyega. We knew he had charisma in spades from Attack the Block, but who knew he was this funny? He pulls off pratfalls and puppy love, and play straight man to BB-8’s cute-as-a-button droid. He’s so good that he makes you forget his character Finn, a Storm Trooper with PTSD, makes no sense. How can we square that someone trained to be a killer since he was an infant can be so undamaged, so well-adjusted? It’s a shame Abrams didn’t take inspiration from the psychological complexity of the series’ strongest entry The Empire Strikes Back when he was pinching some of its plot points.

The Force Awakens isn’t shallow, though. Its most stirring moment isn’t in the space battles or a lightsaber duel, or its mushy reunion between Han and Leia, but in a seemingly throwaway line. When Finn first meets Rey, he’s posing as a member of the rebel alliance and Rey reacts with innocent incredulity. “I’ve never met someone like you before,” she says. “Well this is what we look like,” says Finn defiantly, “some of us look different.” As a sly 'fuck you' to any idiots uncomfortable with this supremely talented black actor taking a starring role in this traditionally all-white space opera, it’s glorious.