Star Wars sees Leia remind us to keep on fighting

Star Wars is Star Wars is Star Wars. Some may deride such a suggestion, but while it’s an oversimplification, it also contains more than a grain of truth. After all, the second trilogy pushed many of the original fans away from the initial trio of movies precisely because, however much George Lucas wanted to explore trade wars in those outings, that was not what fans felt was ‘real’ Star Wars. Jar Jar Binks was simply the sickly icing on an unappetising cake.

Two years ago, I came out of a cinema and said – after I’d stopped shaking – that JJ Abrams had ‘given us back Star Wars’.

However much The Force Awakens was effectively a remake of 1977’s A New Hope, the utterly vital thing was that it contained the spirit of Star Wars that fans recognised from the first movies, wanted again and instantly warmed to, as opposed to soul-sapping tedium of the second trilogy. It really was a ‘new hope’.

Last year’s Rogue One was still recognisably Star Wars, but with added grittiness.

And so we arrive at at the tail end of 2017 and The Last Jedi – the sequel to The Force Awakens.

If I don’t feel as overtly euphoric as I did when exiting the Waterloo IMAX two years ago, it’s because my expectations have already moved way beyond fearing the worst.

As Rey seeks the help of Luke Skywalker, the Resistance is close to being wiped out by the First Order.

But Luke, who has been in self-imposed exile on the craggy island of Ahch-To, has no intention of returning or of helping Rey learn how to use the Force that has stirred in her.

Writer and director Rian Johnson has done a top job here, creating a tense roller-coaster of a cinematic ride that allows for many things.

It all has an added gravity – and poignancy – with every sight of the late Carrie Fisher, to whom the film is dedicated.

But while it absolutely has the ‘feel’ of true Star Wars, there are also differences.

There is a darker mood and even a (slightly) more philosophical one, with many of the actors having the opportunity to explore more nuanced aspects of their characters.

Of course, while the Empire has always been fascistic, current events give this aspect of the films a certain increased power. 

But have no fear, there are lighter moments.

These include Chewbacca and the porgs – small birds on Ahch-To. If they remind you a tad of puffins, that’s because they are. Filming on Skellig Michael, the crew was faced with a plethora of the birds and, since it’s a World Heritage Site and they’re protected, it was decided that the best way to deal with this was to use CGI to turn them into part of the film.

I really do want a vulptex – a crystal snow fox (Swarovski could make billions) and the space horses (fathiers) manage to be cute without that being a distraction.

It hit me, while watching, that I cannot recall an action film with so many female characters. But what’s important here is that, in general, these are not specifically male or female roles, so it really makes no difference.

Points are suggested about gender – the macho approach of Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) versus Leia and Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo’s more considered one – but this is just divas on the right side of being overplayed.

And besides, it has triggered further fits in those whose very sense of masculinity is so fragile that it shatters at the mere sight of a few more women in a few more roles in a few more films.

Of the cast, Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn grow further into their roles, while Mark Hamill’s acting range seems to have broadened. 

Supreme Leader Snoke gives Andy Serkis, Hollywood’s go-to performance capture expert, another chance to strut his stuff.

Adam Driver is definitely making Kylo Ren more interesting and slightly less than a spoilt brat, while Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, a Resistance maintenance worker, and Laura Dern as Holdo give solid supporting performances.

Make no mistake – this is Star Wars. And this is Leia’s film. It was a shock last year when she died and it was a surprise to realise how much it upset me personally. Seeing her on screen here is particularly moving.

This is not the greatest film ever made. But in this final performance, Fisher reminds us to leave the sentiment until after the enemy is defeated.

How very apt that feels. And it packs a powerful punch too.

Star Wars and Carrie Fisher – such a part of our lives

Star Wars was a global phenomenon. It’s such an obvious thing to say, now, 40 years on, that it’s hard to remember just what a shock to the system it was; a bolt out of the blue.

It was the first film that I ever saw without an adult relative. My sister (three years younger) and I saw it one afternoon in Ashton-under-Lyne, delivered there by my father and picked up by him later. How grown up we felt.

The cinema was packed. I remember so much – and yet so little. It’s fair to say, though, that it had a huge impact on my life, possibly to the point of changing it.

My teachers had decided I was set for a career in graphic arts, but I had already rejected that.

I thought ‘graphic arts’ meant designing adverts, and there was no way that I was doing that. I also thought, with the pretentiousness of youth, that I had ‘the soul’ of a fine artist, but, rather less characteristic of that age, considered that I had none of the talent.

I gave up art.

Yet for a while, I seriously hankered after going to work in the States, building models of spaceships for the likes of Star Wars.

However, there was nobody around to tell me that this might have been possible or to point me in the relevant direction – any more than they could point out that ‘graphic art’ could include animation or comics or so much more.

It has taken me until my fifties to work all this out. I’m a slow learner. Although in my defence, I’ll point out that, with no private income and no trust fund or similar, when I was thrown out of polytechnic after a year for having had the temerity to be injured as a direct consequence of the course, the only thing that I could hope to focus on was getting a job – any job. And this was the beginning of the ‘you’re overqualified’ era .

Yet for a few years I nurtured a dream of putting together a book about the blossoming of fantasy film. Before my polytechnic career turned very sour, I had been to the cinema on my own to see Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal, and remain in love with it to this day.

And yet …

Yet reality can batter you. As can the edict learned so well from both my father’s pulpit sermons and his dinner table ones. I have been so suckered by that stuff from 1 Corinthians 13:11.

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

I have wasted so many years believing that I should be so bloody bleeding boringly ‘grown up’!

True, I have reviewed and appreciated work by others that has included sci-fi and fantasy and that area where the two intersect. But probably until the last 12 months or so, any thoughts that I might produce any sort of work along such lines had lain dormant so long I had forgotten about it.

I have even attended events where I’ve met members of the cast of the first three films.

Yet this year it has all awoken again. And while I wouldn’t remotely suggest that that’s ONLY because of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that this is the year in which art – graphic art – has become a part of my working life, I have few doubts that it hasn't been part of a wider process. It was a reawakening of a certain kind of dream – of a certain kind of modern mythology.

For me, all those years ago, George Lucas’s vision opened a door to me – a teen still struggling in a home environment that was more of the 1930s than the 1960s and ’70s; an environment that considered any form of adults having pleasure with suspicion, that saw me carted to evangelical meetings in the hope that I would succumb to the emotion (I did).

Never mind air guitar –  my counterpoint to religion saw me wield an air light sabre and dream that The Force was real.

Since September, I have been using art – graphic art – in my work. Not something I expected. But it's been a massive leap forward.

On 1 January this year, when The Other Half and I got to see The Force Awakens, within a few moments of leaving the cinema I had declared, in a state of giddiness, that JJ Abrams had given us Star Wars back.

It was a quiet cinema when we saw it, but I wanted to cheer when Leia arrived on screen.

It’s been a shit year for the deaths of people whose talents and works have shone light on the light of others.

For me, not all of those people have meant a great deal, but even those who have not made the greatest impacts on me personally have added something to the creative mix.

Personally, I feel as though I have been most hit by the deaths of Alan Rickman and Victoria Wood.

And now, by the loss of Carrie Fisher.

Carrie … you were a crucial, feisty, fabulous part of all this: one of the few real and meaningful awakenings my teenage spirit felt – and that has been renewed in the last 12 months.

Wherever you are – go well: may the force be with you.

And thank you.

Rogue One arrives in the Star Wars orbit

Given the classic Hammer films that he appeared in, there is something quite apt about seeing Peter Cushing reanimated for another cinematic fling, 22 years after his death.

The distinctive British actor appearance as Grand Moff Tarkin is one of the major talking points of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first in a series of stand-alone films now being made as Disney successfully reboots the franchise that its own creator had seemingly done so much to damage.

Having declared that only the initial trilogy is cannonic, Disney has set about delighting those fans who felt desperately let down by George Lucas’s subsequent trilogy (supposedly a prequel) and his insistence on remastering the first three films to take account, amongst other things, of the actors playing the same roles in the prequels.

Indeed, if Disney had taken this approach on board, they’d have had to remaster Star Wars: A New Hope all over again – with whoever else they had cast as Tarkin for Rogue One then the relevant bits to be inserted into A New Hope.

Given that rather mind-bending thought – and the simple observation that being able to bring dead actors back to life digitally has been discussed for a good decade plus, the squeamishness that has surfaced seems a tad odd.

Still, this hasn’t stopped the film getting good reviews and already proving a hit with fans.

And it’s little wonder.

Finally, we’ve got the prequel we wanted – the one that shows how, as the iconic opening crawl of the 1977 original pointed out, the rebels have got hold of the plans to the Death Star.

That crawl said: “It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

“During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

“Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy ...”

So the story that Rogue One gives us is just how they got the plans.

The central protagonist is Jyn Erso, a young women whose father is an Imperial scientist. Her own past is murky, and she’s rescued from an Imperial prison by the Rebel Alliance, which wants her to test the veracity of claims by a defecting pilot that the Empire is building a massive new weapon.

With the offer of freedom if she undertakes the mission, Erso sets off with Rebel officer Cassian Andor and his de-programmed Imperial droid, K-2SO.

And as their quest picks up steam, so they pick up more allies.

Far grittier and darker than the previous films, Gareth Edwards’s direction and Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy’s screenplay still ensures that it has the feel of a proper Star Wars film.

The battle scenes on land and in the sky are stunning, while there’s just enough character development to have you caring about our central group.

In Felicity Jones, Erso is a feisty young woman; beset with her own demons and doubts, and not unafraid, but with the guts to take a lead when others fail.

Diego Luna gives good support as Andor, as do Donnie Yen as a blind martial arts warrior who believes in the Force, Jiang Wen as his close associate, Forest Whitaker as a fanatical veteran rebel and Ben Mendelsohn as director of weapons research for the Empire.

James Earl Jones brings his resonant tones back for Darth Vader – whose initial appearance is fabulously shot and whose final scene in this film is simply spine tingling.

And there has to be a special mention for K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk), who is the best Star Wars droid bar none.

This, George, is how you add a bit of humour to one of the films – sadly, Jar Jar Bloody Binks cannot be unremembered.

And as for Peter Cushing? Well, Tarkin is actually played here by Guy Henry, with Cushing’s likeness then applied digitally.

It’s not gratuitous, but helps cement the film exactly where it should be in the canon. And if it has an air of creepiness – then it’s a perfect fit for the sinister nature of the character.

I like to think that Cushing himself would have been wryly amused.

So, some serious Star Wars cinematic enjoyment, which will keep us going before next December’s scheduled release for Episode VIII.

Star Wars – the excitement reawakens

It was the summer of 1977 and I was 14. With my sister – three years younger – we had persuaded my parents that we should be able to make our first visit to the cinema on our own, and thus we joined the crowds in Ashton-under-Lyne to see that year’s massive hit, Star Wars.

It’s been pointed out since – more than once – that George Lucas’s iconic films don’t bear too much scrutiny; certainly not for the scripts.

But then again, that was never what they were about.

The response all those years ago was all about – well, the excitement of the piece. The action, the adventure, the effects, the humour, the characters, the classic goodies v baddies nature of the thing ...

This was Saturday matinee stuff done with all the pizzazz that Hollywood could muster in 1977 – indeed Lucas had had to set up a new company, Industrial Light and Magic, simply in order to realise his vision.

The old and the new

And that company set the standard for special effects for years after.

But back to Star Wars. Aimed fairly and squarely at youngsters – not at their parents – this was no ‘family film’ in the sense that that had meaning in those days.

Irrespective of the literary merits of the script, it was a film that had a huge impact on the lives of many who saw it.

I probably wasn’t as obsessed as many, and while I managed to get my hands on model kits of both C-3PO and R2-D2, plus the novelisation and the first two sets of trading cards – and my father somehow got a cinema poster for me – I didn’t have the wherewithal to ‘invest’ in much else.

But in the meantime, I played air lightsabre and fantasised about being a Jedi Knight.

The robots died years ago, victims of the many moves my earlier life involved, while the trading cards and poster went much the same way, although in more recent years, I’ve got quite a few autographs from original cast members.

I nursed a brief, rather fantasy-like ambition of going to work for Industrial Light and Magic (imagine getting paid to build models?), but that didn’t survive any more than my teachers’ belief that I should go and study graphic art.

So good to see old friends again

But I still have that ‘novelisation’ on the shelf – battered though it is – and I’ll admit to a lightsabre app on my phone.

And now – in recovery from the ‘you’re over 13 and can’t have toys’ (that passage of Corinthians about ‘giving up childish ways’ has haunted me for most of my life) – I have a Funko Pop New Order stormtrooper, which arrived in my Christmas stocking.

I saw The Phantom Menace at the cinema twice. First, because the Other Half and I wanted to see it – and then because taking her was the only way that my niece was going to see it.

It was awful. I didn’t even bother going to the cinema for the next two of Lucas’s prequels.

Leia muses – the fans enthuse

I’ve seen them since on TV and they’re as slick as hell, but they are not Star Wars. Okay – they’re not my Star Wars. Or, given the general attitude toward them, pretty much anyone else.

Just because I’m fascinated by the history of a trading body such as the Hanseatic League doesn’t mean that I want trade disputes in the Star Wars universe!

Of course, probably worse than that (yes – worse even than the creation of the execrable Jar Jar Binks) was Lucas’s attempt to wipe all original copies of the first trilogy from existence and replace them with his seriously remastered versions.

Now this posits an interesting philosophical question.

At what point does a work of art belong to the public/fans and not the artist/creator?

And make new friends – Rey, BB-8 and Finn

In essence, Lucas’s core ‘crime’ was finding that new technologies made his mental visions more and more possible.

However, where many might simply have released a ‘director’s cut’ he tried to change history.

Bad move. As you might have gathered from the top of this post, the original films were important for youngsters of their day – my love of them is far from being unique.

Now I’m not into a heavy bad-mouthing of Lucas – I like to think that I have a clue as to why he did what he did (I can ask the philosophical question, after all) – but I approached the latest installment with, at first, complete disinterest, then trepidation and, only quite late on, excitement.

Maz Kanata

And so to Star Wars: The Force Awakens – is it any good?

Well, if you’re looking for spoilers, you won’t find them here.

For me, it was the start of the new year: The Other Half and I saw it on New Year’s Day at the BFI IMAX – thus ensuring it was an ‘event’, since we’d never been to the UK’s biggest screen before and since we’d never had the ‘immersive’ cinematic experience before.

I came out feeling like a wrung-out dish rag and then, within around half an hour, found myself bubbling like an excited teenager again.

The plot may not be staggeringly original – but there are no bloody trade wars!

Kylo Ren

The two new leads, Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn, are good: it’s joyous seeing Han Solo, Chewie, Leia (and even Luke) again.

The wonderful Max von Sydow gives it all some classical actor authority, à la Alex Guinness.

I like Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong’o); the first appearance of an x-wing had my eyes pricking, C-3PO is as irritating as ever, while new robot, BB-8, manages to be both cute and funny, while Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) establishes himself as a bad enough baddy – with a tad more complexity and a few more obvious issues than old Darth.

John Williams’s iconic score is back – hearing the themes again sets the spins a tingle, as does the opening moments, when the words head off into deepest space above us.

Action – and ships – to make the heart thump and eyes prick

The action sequences are exciting and the whole film is imbued with the humour and good spirits that drew us in back in ’77.

In a nutshell then, JJ Abrams has given us back Star Wars.

It may win no awards for originality, but as the box office take and the response have shown, that is not what was wanted.

Lucas does not, apparently, like the “retro” feel, but that illustrates once more the tension that has existed for some years between the creator and the fans of his creation.

What will be interesting is to see if he now takes this opportunity of his child having finally left home to spread his creative wings once more and produce something new and, if he is so inclined, entirely different.

In the meantime, I’ll look forward to the Blu-Ray release – and wonder what will happen in the next instalment.