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THE FORCE AWOKE by Mr Biffo

21/12/2015

40 Comments

 
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Even though it has never happened before, releasing a new Star Wars movie in December seems to me like the most natural thing in the world; even more natural than frogspawn, or a frond ('Frogspawn and The Frond' sounds like a 1970s American buddy movie... I can almost hear the theme music).

You see, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an unlikely mash-up of three things I sort of love - Star Wars, Christmas, and Disney.

Alright, Star Wars hasn't always been kind to us - indeed, the prequels were like watching a loved one slowly be seduced and brainwashed by a weird cult. Fortunately, I had just enough latent love for the Original Trilogy that it carried me through the mire, but it has been touch and go at times. Even for a dyed-in-the-head zealot like me.

​Christmas... well, it's Christmas. Again, hasn't always been kind, but more often than not it's the best bit of the year.

​Anyone who whinges about the commercialisation of it can shove this up their chimneys: I work my backside off for 11 and a half months of the year. Spending an unnecessary fortune on presents and food is my reward, especially when the days are short and dark and depressing. I'm going to spend my Christmas day rolling around on a big pile of receipts, while spooning cranberry sauce and chocolates into my gob.

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And anyone who whinges about the true meaning of the season being lost can go and worship their sinister made-up deities in silence.

And they can continue to stick their fingers in their ears over the fact that most of the traditions we associate with Christmas - even the date, for pity's sake - were stolen from pagans. 


Plus, let it now be known that I'm a big Disney fanboy. I was even a member of D23, their grown-up fan club. I love their movies, I love their theme parks, and while I accept that it's a big, money-making, corporate entity, at least the message they're pushing is driven by quality storytelling, and a certain wholesomeness. Frankly, I'd rather kids worship at the altar of Frozen than the Catholic Church.

When Disney bought LucasFilm, my gut feeling was that Star Wars was in safe hands. I'd believed that before, though, when George Lucas was in charge...


Anyway. The Force Awakens, yeah? I wish to talk about it. There may be slight spoilers. So read on at your peril, if you've not seen the movie. ​


CHRISTMAS FILM
It seems only right to me that a new Star Wars film - let's face it, the best Star Wars film for 32 years - should come out at Christmas. From the ages of seven to twelve, I rarely got much for Christmas, that wasn't Star Wars related. 

My mum could afford the occasional action figure throughout the year, and I once got an X-Wing from Belgium when my dad returned from an Army trip (he later confessed he'd picked it up in Debenhams, because my mother had guilt-tripped him into bringing me back a gift). And I once saved up for an AT-ST walker. But Christmas meant ships, or playsets - and they could expand my Star Wars storytelling exponentially.

Not that my bedroom wasn't already one big playset.  Pretty much anything in the house became part of the Star Wars universe. I had this wardrobe-shelving unit combo unit thing, which had a drop-down door that became a landing pad for spaceships. ​I got into huge trouble for turning a plant pot into the Dagobah swamp. I froze Han Solo in carbonite by placing him in a beaker of water, and putting him in the freezer.

Any other toy I had would be employed as a bit of Star Wars scenery, rather than what it was intended for; a Mastermind board game became the walls of the Cantina. Matchbox cars would be laid out to delineate the walls and corridors of an Imperial base. When my mum was given a huge box full of second-hand Action Man stuff, my excitement was solely about which parts I could scavenge for my Star Wars play sessions.

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OBSESSION
I never got people who didn't share my obsession with Star Wars, in much the same way that some people have a brain aneurysm when I tell them I don't support a football team.

I mean, why wouldn't you want to know every last bit of information about a galaxy that's so much more fun than the one we live in?

I still get irritated when I remember overhearing a toy shop mother suggesting her son spend his pocket money on a new "Star Wars Galactica" toy.

​And I get utterly incensed when I recall telling a boy in the queue to meet Boba Fett that we'd know it was the real one if his armour was bashed-up... only to later hear him pass off my fanboy observation as his own; if you've not put in the work to love Star Wars, don't try and steal my passion for yourself. Little shit.


Going into The Force Awakens, I knew that my love for Star Wars would not have survived another bad Star Wars movie. I was tense, nervous... 

And it wasn't awful.

As we now know, The Force Awakens is really, really good. And not even really, really good in the way that I told myself The Phantom Menace was, after I emerged from seeing that, bewildered yet certain that my lack of enjoyment was somehow my fault.


Obviously, I have a few quibbles about The Force Awakens - love is conditional after all. There's one shot that's horribly green-screen-y. The giant bad guy is wretchedly CGI, and moves around in that unnecessary way that most CGI characters do (what about a bit of subtly and stately stillness, Serkis? Did The Emperor's hologram in The Empire Strikes Back keep leaning towards the camera so we could see the quality of the make-up job?).

Plus, a few of the planets felt a bit too obviously somewhere in the UK or Ireland - right down to the overcast weather. But then, perhaps the woods in England are as exotic to overseas audiences as Redwood National Park was to me as a 12 year-old. I look forward to Episode VIII being set in a Cornish tea room.

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HOW MANY COMPLAINTS?
I have no complaints. Star Wars is back.

The new characters are great - they all look like they're having fun... as opposed to the way the prequel actors all looked as if they were being held hostage, and forced at gunpoint to read a statement decrying Western involvement in the Middle East.


What makes it feel like Star Wars is the lightness of touch, and the attention to detail.

From subtle camera moves which evoke those from the original (see the way the camera pans around Rey's speeder, just like it did with Luke's landspeeder in A New Hope), to the mechanical clank and squeal of a heavy metal door, which brings to mind the noise of the entrance to Jabba's Palace (to me, that is simply how doors in the Star Wars universe sound...). The tannoy announcements on the Starkiller Base, the echoing of the chasm that Rey climbs down... all are pure Death Star.


These are all things that only a tragic old obsessive like me would pick up on, but for most people watching they'll be absorbed without them even noticing. The outcome is a successful recreation of the unexpected alchemy which made the original Star Wars into The Biggest Thing Ever.

And I still get needlessly irritated when lesser fans try to pretend they're something else. Such as the article I read online about the questions raised by The Force Awakens, which included speculation about Starkiller Base somehow having a connection to the Starkiller character in The Force Unleashed. Because, yeah, it's really likely that JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan had that non-canonical video game in mind when writing the movie...

​I seethed, and nearly fired off an angry email to the editor.

​Yes, I know. Alright? I know this isn't normal. I can't help it.


OH, GEORGE!
I do feel for George Lucas, though. He seemed a bit broken and depressed at the premiere of The Force Awakens. The grief the prequels got has clearly taken its toll on him, and selling the company he created has evidently not been easy; he's compared it to a divorce. 

Yet, I don't think there was much about the Prequels that were cynical. Indeed, he was making the movies he wanted to make. He saw the Original Trilogy as hamstrung by the technology of the time, and wanted to go nuts with CGI, and on a much reduced level I can kind of relate.

It's slightly like Digitiser2000 compared to the original Digitiser; it would be all too easy to make this site a carbon copy of the original Digitiser, with blocky visuals and limited word counts, but I'm not the man to do that.

You've read Games of my Years: Digitiser was a product of adversity, both corporate and technological. I'm not in the same place I was back then, and I've no desire to pretend I'm back there. George Lucas could never make a classic Star Wars movie again, and you can't blame him for that. In most ways, The Force Awakens is far more cynical than the Prequels.

But it also happens to be a much better Star Wars movie.


I think George realised that it has to fall to someone like JJ Abrams, who loves Star Wars as it was. A fan, who would relish the chance play with the best action figures and playsets in the world, and enjoy obsessing over the detail that he recognises as Star Wars.

​And thank the maker he did.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
THE GREAT STAR WARS BAKE-OFF! 23 TERRIBLE STAR WARS CAKES
MOVIE MAGIC: 10 BEHIND-THE-SCENES SECRETS OF STAR WARS
IT'S TIME TO LINE UP FOR STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS!

40 Comments
Admiral Spiney O'Sullivan
21/12/2015 12:06:16 pm

The Force Awakens was good, if very much a best-of compilation of most of the good bits from the original films.

But I'm still not sure why they thought it was a good idea to have Admiral Ackbar kill Luke in the first 10 minutes. I mean, I get that Acknar is somehow now The Force Incarnate, but there's just no way that Luke Skywalker can be killed by suffocating him under a bantha. Even the New Jedi Order series writer wouldn't have done something that stupid, and they crushed Chewbacca with a moon.

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MrPSB
21/12/2015 12:13:58 pm

Biffo must be made up that they made Peelbacca canon, though.

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MrPSB
21/12/2015 12:08:27 pm

I enjoyed the Star Wars as it was a good old romp, and nobody talked about trade negotiations.

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Peelbacca360 link
21/12/2015 09:12:24 pm

Or had a FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

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Chomboss Wankuss
21/12/2015 12:20:58 pm

Why is the new Stars Wars baddum like a low-rent TV guy surprised by a small bird?

Because he's (Jeremy) Kyle-Oh! Wren (Kylo Ren)

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Nathaniel Woomspune
21/12/2015 02:01:28 pm

James!!!!!

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Dacanesta
21/12/2015 12:24:36 pm

tense and nervous? Try getting stuck in traffic even though you set off well in advance, jumping out of the car and onto a train, arriving five minutes late but thinking that's ok coz of trailers, but then seeing Kylo Ren already torturing Poe and missing the crawl and max Von sydow and ALL THIS AFTER WAITING 32 years and counting down each and every day and trying desperately to get tickets for first showing and realising you'd misses the crawl and the opening booming music and even a bit of plot. Therefore.....I HATED it. I can never have that moment of excitement when those words came up on screen that everyone else has, whether they enjoyed it it or not in the end.....
I've given it a second chance anyway, obviously, and much better this time, but I'm so very sad to say that apart from a couple of moments that I'm just not getting a buzz. I shall be trying a third time though! I will get my buzz! But, in the most basic of terms, I like BB8, new characters, and Chewie is just the best. I'm trying to forgive it being a remake basically (bids is one thing, identikit plot is another), less urgency somehow in xwing/tie fighter battles, guardians of tr Galaxy moments, then weird aliens in hans ship that are somehow boring, actors sometimes being actors instead of characters, tooooo much fan service (that's relates to identikit plot), and.....I'm finding that I have less problems now. I had a million the first time I saw it, probably coz I felt it was ruined by me being late.
I think we all see the same movie and some forgive problems more than others. I'm getting there definitely. I want desperately to like it. I'm just pretty sure the critics are overrating it. Can I say, in Star Wars terms, it's a 7/10?

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Nathaniel Woomspune
21/12/2015 02:02:04 pm

James again!!!

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Dacanesta
21/12/2015 02:09:31 pm

I need to get it out of my system! I'm still figuring it out.....I'm like Kylo, being torn apart. Who dis anyway!

Nathaniel Woomspune
21/12/2015 03:48:13 pm

Someone who loves you... (Steeley Dan)

Alan
21/12/2015 01:03:05 pm

I'm 49 year old,qued in the cold back in the day to see the original film in my bell bottoms and tank top(punk hadn't reached southport)so yea I was there at the start of it and over the years have on release times qued on opening day to see this franchise,in fairness disappointing me in the process too so I as ever dusted down my ever thinning hair only to be disappointed again this time it really might be the end frankly.
It didn't "feel" like Star Wars there I've said it,now no doubt there'll be person after person berating me for that comment but take away Han,leia and chewie it could have been any other sci if film,or a remake of Star Wars which is just what it was of course.

For my money what it was crying out for was a complete new start set many years ahead of the timeline we know so well but to get this was as disappointing as being told by my mum no you can't have the At-AT back in 1980,it's just such a shame.

I'm glad people are enjoying it but I wonder if they'll feel the same a year down the line,who knows I may even change my mind but I doubt it.



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Admiral Spiney O'Sullivan
21/12/2015 01:36:12 pm

Many of the other scifi films out there have been trying to ape Star Wars anyway, so of course this feels similar. Look at the new Star Trek series, which I'm convinced was written by people who got ginned up, downed some club drugs, watched Star Trek Nemesis, then got confused and watched Star Wars before trying to write a Star Trek movie through a severe haze of Beefeater and E.

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Dacanesta
21/12/2015 02:18:14 pm

Totally agree.
Second time around is more enjoyable though, but I said he same thing.....it keeps being said that its star wars-y, and I don't feel it is. It's not just light Sabres and x wings and beeps and bloops and music and sandy places.....after all these years even I don't k ow what it is, but I related shall way through that i felt like I was just watching a movie.....and as. I always bellow, Star Wars isn't just a movie! It's on another plane, another level......I think as you said that all that fan service won't wash ince this sits as part of a collection. It'll be the 'oh that's when they had to assure fans that it wasn't gonna be like the prequels so they splashed nostalgic goo all over it but it's largely unwatchable now bar any moment when chewbacca is on screen'.
Like you, I'm guessing, we WANT so desperately to like it, but for me it is proving a bit hard to like. Maybe when the others come out the scope of this one will rise (ie if rey is connected to kylo Ren somehow then it makes the happenings more interesting/tragic in hindsight).

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alan
22/12/2015 12:27:53 am

On balance i would say the new droid bb8 was fun and JJ did pull perhaps the last great Harrsion Ford performance but again,and i my view he did the same trick with star trek,Abrams just pretty much remakes whats gone before yet by critics he's revered as a visionary film maker,i just dont get it.

Spielberg,Cameron,Nolan (and i thought Batman Begins was terrible) are visionaries they take a film and bring it to life what i saw the other day was a flat reheat of what had gone before it even down main weapon being we had we'd seen before just a little different.

Clearly Disney ran scared of doing something new and i think its a shame Star Wars should be blazing a trail that others follow not treading carefully step by step in the footsteps of the films that have gone before it.

Glyn
21/12/2015 01:14:04 pm

Pretty much agree with everything there (except the bit of nastiness about Christmas and religion).

They did a great job of balancing old and new and it actually lived up to expectations. There was some intrusive CGI but some nice practical effects as well.

Even as a fan who read all the legends stuff I was happy. It will be interesting to see who the next director is.

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Old Red
21/12/2015 02:03:09 pm

It should be David Lynch, it would be the only right thing to do. Then we can finally put the whole 'What would Empire have been like if Lynch had made it instead of Dune.'

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Dacanesta
21/12/2015 02:11:48 pm

It's Rian Johnson. The next one after that is Colin Trevorrow.

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Glyn
21/12/2015 02:28:19 pm

Thanks, I didn't even know it was confirmed

Admiral Spiney O'Sullivan
21/12/2015 03:14:29 pm

"Hokey old religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid".

Seriously though, it's a little meanly-phrased, but the pagan thing is an interesting bit of history.

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Mr Biffo
21/12/2015 09:17:34 pm

Well... just call me Scrooge.

Euphemia
21/12/2015 01:30:16 pm

I especially liked the "nasty" bit about Christmas and religion.

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John
21/12/2015 02:25:40 pm

Yes! More truth, truth good.

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colincidence link
21/12/2015 02:21:46 pm

Damn that Kyle Owen

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gaijintendo
21/12/2015 03:46:49 pm

I was sincerely hoping this entire post would just be about Christmas.

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Super Bad Advice
21/12/2015 04:15:44 pm

It wasn't perfect (but then, seen through a cynical eye, nor was A New Hope). But it was fun, funny, action-packed and real. No one walked left and right down a corridor reeling off huge swathes of boring exposition and the lead roles were all perfectly cast. And - with apologies to those who didn't get the same vibe - it absolutely felt like Star Wars in a way the prequels never did.

I like to think somewhere in the world, Hayden Christensen is watching TFA (and specifically Kylo Ren) and thinking "Oh!, So THAT'S how to do that. Wish George had mentioned it rather than pratting about with his new director's chair and going on about how ILM was all his idea."

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PaulEMoz link
21/12/2015 04:47:53 pm

I loved it.

LOVED IT.

The thing is, it could never really be what many people wanted it to be. Only the original Star Wars could ever be that. But it is unquestionably a continuation of the story that seemed to end 32 years ago, done very well indeed. It has action, humour, heart, emotion, fun and adventure... just what was needed in this particular film.

I sat there, for the first time in I don't know how long, feeling excited and breathless and getting dust in my eyes at certain moments (damn filthy cinema... it must have been that...).

My 13 year old nephew hated it, and said it felt absolutely nothing like Star Wars. He can fuck right off.

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Dangerous Dave
21/12/2015 05:49:56 pm

I enjoyed the film, but I felt it was far too similar to A New Hope. It felt as close to being a remake, without being a remake, as it possibly could. So much so that the films biggest shock became painfully obvious around half hour before it happened.

It was good fun and a big step up from the last 3 films, but it's also the most unoriginal of the lot. I don't think i'll be looking back at it as fondly once the next film hits.

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Obi Sesspitto T'wanky
21/12/2015 10:33:35 pm

It wasn't just A New Hope that was pillaged but The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi too (the Solo / Ren revelation, the main Jedi character being sent off to train with an exiled Jedi Master, Ren being torn between the light and the dark etc.).

In many ways the whole film was basically Star Wars: the Greatest Hits as played by a young cover band. It was an exceptionally good cover band though (seriously, the new cast - particularly Driver and Boyega - are superb), and on the whole I really, really liked the film. It felt like Star Wars, which after the spiritless prequels is, to me, by far the most important thing.

And really, I don't begrudge them basically remixing the original films for the first of the three new films, as long as the favourable reception given to this one gives them the confidence to do something new with the next two. Most of all, I just hope the First Order don't end up making Death Star MK IV, or my eyes will roll so hard and fast that they'll pop out of my skull and roll around on the floor like two little BB8s.

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Hamptonoid
21/12/2015 11:06:48 pm

Exactly! I was enjoying it so much that I hadn't realised that I was being hoodwinked until the death star ("now with added trees!!") appeared. Still enjoyed it, though.

Admiral Spiney O'Sullivan
22/12/2015 12:15:23 am

Exclusive script extract from Star Episode VIII: The Force Reawakens:

"That's no sun: it's a battlestation"

Picston Shottle
21/12/2015 06:06:06 pm

I think we should start a petition for Mr Biffo to be the screen writer for Episode VIII.

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PaulEMoz link
21/12/2015 06:21:06 pm

Too late for that, but Episode IX is not out of the question...

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Glyn
21/12/2015 06:32:29 pm

Maybe biffo could just write one scene and we could try and guess which one...

Little Blue Fox
21/12/2015 06:33:00 pm

I thought Starkiller Base is calked Starkiller Base because Luke Skywalker was called Luke Starkiller in the first drafts for A New Hope? Or something?

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Mr Biffo
21/12/2015 09:16:09 pm

Well... yuss. Exactly. As for me writing Episode VIII... yeah. "From the writer of Pudsey The Movie" is exactly what they need.

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Admiral Spiney O'Sullivan
22/12/2015 12:17:23 am

I found that film in a basket of DVDs in Tesco the other day. I was very tempted. My desire to support Biffo's gin fund was sadly curtailed by my desire for anything relating to Simon Cowell to not get my money.

optimark prime
21/12/2015 10:14:48 pm

Digi at it's best! :)

I remember laying white bed sheets over pillows, creating Hoth.

Speeder bikes, Ewoks and Biker Scouts relocating to the garden where the grass and bushes replicated Endor....

I would argue that The Force Awakens was the best Star Wars film for 35 years!

Most importantly, if felt like a proper Star Wars film, and took me back to the excitement I felt as a child.

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Bruce Flagpole
22/12/2015 10:11:09 am

It was great. It felt like star wars. If it was just a cynically planned exercise to tickle my nostalgia buds so I didn't notice them prepping a thousand spin offs, well they did a grand job.
Cos i don't care that i did notice, cos I was also having fun. More fun at a film than I remember in a long time. I had that urge to just rewatch it again and again, something I've rarely felt since...the original trilogy

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mooter
25/12/2015 09:36:46 pm

I loved it...but then I came out of the cinema thinking I enjoyed The Crystal Skull...oh and Terminator Genisys.

Saying that, I wondered why the hell people were saying how great Phantom was on the way out.

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ted sallis
28/12/2015 08:11:28 pm

yeah it wiz ok thot the characters bonded quicker than luvvies in a reality show, Poe and Fin must have known each other for all of an hour. Fin an the lassie a day or two yet they are screaming each others names if they are separated for more than 2 seconds. people are too desperate tae like this. it's naw bad naw great

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