Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens – Review

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2017)

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens – Simply an outstanding piece of cinema. Lemme start with the story; Firstly straight from the beginning the iconic rolling credits mixed with John Williams amazing score puts a massive grin on my face, the actual credits explain the following story very clearly. The story itself is told beautifully through JJ Abrams vision who does justice and more to George Lucas' universe. JJ manages to perfectly pace the film with no scene being boring or useless. A huge amount of pressure paid off.
Chewbacca and Han Solo in a still from the Star Wars: The ForceThe striking visuals are so delightful to look at with vibrant colours and great cinematography, your eyes never look away from the screen with every gorgeous frame. A step up from the prequels and their awful CGI it is a breath of fresh air to see practical effects used in this film. Furthermore, the humour is quite surprising, with BB-8 gaining a lot of laughs, even if it is just a robot it has lovely characteristics like many of the human characters.
Regarding the characters – they all done an incredible job. In my opinion, the stand out performance was Adam Driver who plays Kylo Ren, an awesome antagonist who shows his dominance and emotion through his body language. Alongside him is Domhnall Gleeson who also stood out for me although not being in it much he does steal every scene he is in with his passionate anger. Meanwhile the two protagonists Finn and Rey both have excellent chemistry through humour and emotion – not to forget Poe Dameron a cool and lovable person played by the impressive Oscar Issac, credit to JJ for telling everyone's story just enough for us to keep on wanting to learn more about them, a great set-up for Rian Johnson to further our understanding of the characters.
Filled with pleasant and 'unpleasant' surprises, this is a film that will go down as one of the greats, with excitement, laughter, sadness, happiness and a range of other emotions pumping throughout the whole film. Flaws? A few minor ones but nothing major that ruins the film. Best film of 2015 – Easily. Best Star Wars film I've seen – Yes. Will be interesting to see how Rian Johnson reacts to this with Episode VIII. To conclude, just go watch it.