A great film flawed by lack of ideas

Rating: 8/10 (24 December 2015)

8/10
The overriding feeling was one of relief. This is a great movie that finally erases the memory of The Phantom Menace, a film so poor there is an argument that it should be removed from the canon in an act of mercy. Yet The Force Awakens, just like that other great mega-franchise reboot of our times, Casino Royale, suffers from a fatal flaw. It was a lack of editorial ruthlessness that prevented the overlong Royale from eclipsing Goldfinger as the best Bond. In Force, it is lack of innovation that does for its attempts to steal the Star Wars crown. The 1977 original and The Empire Strikes Back will continue to bicker over which is king.
My wife, far from a Star Wars fangirl, doesn't suffer from the nerdish sentimentality of those (overwhelmingly male) of us who were brought up on the films in the 1970s and 1980s. She thought the second use of the Death-Star-with-a-serious-weakness device, way back in 1983, was already one too many. Through a combination of self-gratifying belief-suspension and undeserved, geekish fondness for the series, I let it pass in Return of the Jedi. But even I could not forgive it again. She and I turned to each other over the head of our six-year-old in the cinema and she shot me a sighing, knowing glance. Does the Empire/First Order have no learning mechanism? To lose two death stars in the same manner might just be considered unfortunate; to lose three, implausibly imbecilic. At first, I thought the scriptwriters might spring a surprise – a "do you really think we are that stupid?" moment that would have led the Resistance into a trap and twisted the tired old plot device on its head. Instead, I was left with a familiar yearning for better material, "who writes (or, rather, doesn't write) this crap?"
To a lesser extent, Han's demise suffered from the same problem. JJ Abrams' fanboyish desire to reference Ben Kenobi's death in A New Hope rendered what should have been a shocker too heavily cued. I knew ten feet, and ten minutes, from Han and Ren's face-to-face confrontation that Solo was done for. The ending of the greatest Star Wars character, a swashbuckling hero to millions of boys who rejected the measured superiority of Luke, ended up, like the lightsaber murder itself, strangely bloodless.
Still, Force manages to entertain despite its lack of ideas. It's a rare cinematic adventure that whistles along for all of its 130-odd minutes without a lull. So used have cinema audiences become to overlong pictures, that my middle-aged bladder was expecting the usual 20-minute ordeal at the climax. But no, Abrams cut the tape at exactly the right time, leaving us guessing as to what had happened to Luke and, presumably, setting up the next two movies in the new trilogy. If Han's demise was telegraphed, Mark Hamill's tiny cameo was a genuine surprise, at least to me. Perhaps his lack of appearance in any trailer should have provided a clue. But it takes bravery from a director to reduce a hero of the canon to a few seconds to whet the appetite for a later movie.
For all his reliance on old scripts, Abrams wasn't without courage. The Englishwoman Daisy Ridley was cast as the new Han, despite being a complete newcomer whose former highlights extend to appearances in the mediocre British hospital soap Casualty. She performed wonderfully. Even her blunt Disney jokes carried on her cut-glass RP: again, this was audacity from Abrams – posh English accents are usually reserved for the bad guys in American cinema. Her compatriot, the equally brilliant John Boyega, also engaged, even if his (very convincing) US accent was faked. Perhaps it was his Peckham upbringing, very different from the English private school education of Ridley, that led Abrams to insist that Boyega learn to speak with an American voice. After all, Del Boy and Rodney were serially mistaken for Australians when they visited Florida from SE15 in Miami Twice.
The British actors were a joy, but the real hero of the film is film itself. Abrams is one of the few modern directors to resist studio pressure to use the much cheaper digital. His retention of celluloid here gives the landscapes and characters a physical, visceral – almost homemade – quality that recalls the timeless majesty of the 1977 original. The cinematography is simply stunning, and the visual storytelling free from the overcut, explosive morass that confuses inferior sci-fi adventures. The battle scenes are easy to watch – an immersive pleasure – thanks to the director's supreme signposting.
Perhaps because of the film's artfulness, most audiences will let Abrams' over-reliance on the dusty Star Wars plot library ride. But if not quite a direct remake of A New Hope this is certainly a homage to it. I turned to my boy the morning after we saw the film and asked him: "So what's your favourite Star Wars?" "I'm not going to say the last one," he replied. Had Abrams pushed for new plot material, he might have done.