It's 1977 Again!

Rating: 8/10 (17 December 2015)

I wasn't even a twinkle in my mother's eye when the original Star Wars film came out in May 1977.
But I can now imagine what the audience must have felt after watching it back then.
The Force Awakens is unabashedly and unashamedly a reboot of the Star Wars franchise and is remarkably reminiscent of the movie that has since been relabeled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope; the desert planet at the start, the good and brave underdog taking on and beating the might and evil Dark Side with their planet of a weapon.
But as we've seen recently with Daniel Craig as James Bond and JJ Abrams' own rendition of the Star Trek franchise, a reboot is not at all a bad thing particularly for a franchise like Star Wars in dire need of getting back to its roots and growing new shoots.
For a start, Abrams dispenses with the overuse of CGI that Lucas was obsessed with in the prequels and reverts to what he knows best – the similarities to Star Trek and Super 8 are uncanny with spectacular, panoramic real time shots echoing back to the original Star Wars films.
This is definitely how our mum and dad watched movies when they were in their teens. The emphasis this time is clearly on the dialogue and plot – all credit here to Lawrence Kasdan, the brains behind Empire Strikes Back which until this week was indisputably the best ever Star Wars film made. None of the corny and painful lines that hampered the prequels; there is a lot more soul and depth in each of those script books.
In the buildup to this movie, the focus was always going to be about Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, the original trio.
In the end, it was Ford and newcomer Daisy Ridley who stole the show out of an outstanding cast.
Even in his 70s, the man who also played Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan and the President in some of the highest-grossing films of all time, is still a class act and is just as fit and healthy as he was back 38 years ago – hard to believe that he had to take time off from filming to recover from a plane accident. Han Solo came back with a bang and so did Chewy, even if he had aged due to a dysfunctional son who was leading the Dark Side's revival.
If A New Hope was Alec Guinness's farewell to the trilogy, The Force Awakens will be remembered as Harrison Ford's farewell to the trilogy; although with Disney now owning Lucasfilm, we might not have seen the last of Han Solo yet if Harrison Ford's enthusiasm at age 73 is anything to go by.
While we might have seen the last of Ford in this trilogy, we definitely haven't seen the last of Daisy Ridley. The 23 year old Londoner is the best thing to happen to the Star Wars franchise since the franchise came out itself, putting the wooden performances of Hayden Christensen to shame. Every film star has a memorable breakout role that people will talk for the ages; this is one definitely to top the ages.
Special mention must go to Carrie Fisher who may have had her own highly publicized battle with her own personal Dark Side in the years after Return of the Jedi but might very well have breathed new life into her stagnant acting career. The princess with the golden bikini is no more but in her place, is a character more beautiful than one could ever imagine. The Force Awakens is a film with tremendous depth and quality all across the park that we're all dying to watch again and again and then get the DVD or download the film when it becomes available. Whether the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences comes to the party and nominates it for an Oscar is very much in the air. Nevertheless, it is more than mission accomplished for Disney, Abrams and Lucasfilm in terms of not only re-engaging the fans it lost between 1999 and 2005 with those prequels but gaining a new generation of fans born in the 90s and noughties. Suddenly, it feels like 1977 all over again.