It was only a couple of weekends ago that the internet erupted in various aspects as Star Wars finally arrived out on the scene and the hate between everyone once again erupted as everyone wanted to talk about what happened, spoil it all over the place to annoy everyone and of course cash in on producing content based around Star Wars because it’s sort of still topical among people with nothing better to do.

Like we are.

The money making is strong with this one…

So what local things were occurring then to mark the arrival of Disney’s Pay Day? Well, Odeon Cinemas in Leicester square during the weekend were having a changing of the guard. Well, they changed the guys who had to get dressed up in costumes and were paid to stand outside while the music blasted out from speakers on the balcony where movie stars and others stand and wave to the little people below.

One of the actors, John Boyega who was credited with a good performance on this very blog, was wandering around a couple of cinemas round where he used to be from as well saying hello and frightening people it seems because they didn’t expect someone like him to turn up. Perhaps they were actually expecting someone to come back with that large coke they asked.

Since then, it has indeed passed the one billion mark in terms of money for Disney worldwide, and the reviews overall have been quite positive, even with the fact that it’s basically the first Star Wars film done again. The non spoiler type review thingy I posted on Ooh Sometimes just before Christmas was positive overall and I must admit, it was better than I thought it would be, having not been drawn too much into the hyperspace as most others had, given the sheer volume of product placements with Star Wars for food, makeup and mobile phones. Even the likes of Sky and Google have been pushing pre-orders of the film months before it would even arrive on your doorstep or before you downloaded from a torrent site like no one will….

However, there are a number of things which do have to be written down here on this just to get a few things off the hairy man breasts and from here on out after the big picture of a lovely animal eating some carrot, THERE WILL BE MAJOR SPOILERS. Please, if you’ve not seen the film, please close this web page and go and eat pie instead. Or go back to YouPorn and wonder how that woman could take 5 guys…..err……

Mmmm, tasty spoilers…

SPOILER CHAT!

Now as mentioned in the original review, there are a good number of things which lean massively on the old stuff and nostalgia of the old films. This leads onto one of the major complaints that perhaps they nicked too much from the previous films as it mainly was a retelling aside from a few new parts from Episode 4: A New Hope. As time goes on it actually gets worse as any fan would have started to wonder the following;

They are the “Not-Empire” so that you don’t confuse them with the Empire.

• How did anyone not notice that the bad guys made a planet sized weapon that drained suns of their solar energy to then destroy everything? Did anyone not notice the large orders probably going through Amazon or Toolstation and think, say they could be a weapon of mass destruction with all this, maybe we should have done something sooner?
• Did the new empire (but not called the empire because of marketing I bet) not even seem to ever learn from history that magically, there will be a weak point that the Rebellion can just run ships down and then shoot at to make the shit blow up.
• Actually come to think of it, why the bloody hell were they obsessed with making weapons which were giant round things with one bloody huge gun? There are plenty of other shapes you know and surely if you’ve watched Game of Thrones or House of Cards, there are many other ways to rule over the little people?
• How is the Rebellion against the not-empire called the Rebellion? They f*cking won didn’t they if I remember Return of the Jedi right? If anything, the former rebels are the people in power in the universe with the Republic and the rebels this time were the not-empire people.
• Really, you had the new pilot rebel fella put the plans for the f*cking death not a star on a USB stick just being carried round by a robot who escapes from the not-empire? Seriously, you really just did just do a copy and paste job didn’t you?

The coincidences were also quite a bit too numerous to then raise the magic eyebrow of wonder. Keira Knightley photocopy Rey does a great job of showing us a new Jedi for the new age of Star Wars, but the fact of the matter of being overly talented at absolutely everything at the right time came as a bit of deux ex machina way of just letting the film go forward. How the bloody hell did she get so good at the force so quickly in the space of a few hours?

Of course this may be explained in the later films, but it’s somewhat jarring that someone who just wandered a desert planet looking for scrap to get food to stay alive suddenly becomes one of our best hopes against Kylo Ren, the new Darth Vader bloke that’s giving Jon Snow a run for his money in the looks department.

The new asthmatic you hear coming from a mile away….

Now as we’ve casually segwayed into talking about the new bloke who played in essence the new Darth Vader character, the best way to describe the character at the moment is he is a “sit on the fence job”. What do I mean by that? In some respects, he showed much more emotion than previous sith lord types where there was even a moment of humour from Storm Troopers who thought best to walk away and leave him alone while he force raged. Most welcome indeed, but then later on, he just came across as a whiny angry teenager who was annoyed that Dad didn’t let him sniff glue past his bedtime.

Given with the relative ease that somehow Rey managed to dispatch him to run away, you wonder exactly how much more effective he will be in films to come or was he just the Star Wars equivalent of a “red shirt” security bloke from Star Trek where the real sith lord is protected by someone disposable till he can be arsed to get off the sofa to deal with the new Jedi threat. Even Twitter got in on the action, with someone creating the account Emo Kylo Ren and moaning about not connecting with his Dad among other things, all done hilariously well. So only time will tell if Ol’ Kylo will develop more or just become a waste of screentime.

Awwww bless.

Speaking of dear old Dad, of course we lost one of the main characters of the Star Wars universe in this film, at the hands of Emo Kylo, and that was Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, who during one chase sequence looked like he was able to fall over and break another few bones (the first time being during a plane accident which was no doubt the reason behind his movement beyond him being quite old at this point). While some have commented stating he just phoned in the performance, arguably he was the biggest surprise of the whole film, having a decent amount of screen time to show us he hadn’t forgotten how Han is the man. Who just happens to have a wookie friend who hasn’t aged at all.

The death scene between Han Solo and his son / emo sith, was actually quite touching where he was actually trying to turn Kylo away from the dark side, and something which be all accounts had to happen because of Harrison Ford not wanting Han Solo to still be alive, along with the fact that some of this was covered in Star Wars books or comics so everyone knew this was coming. Err….Not everyone goes to that level of detail to know what the back stories are or cares to that level, so calm the f*ck down!

It was actually one of the best parts of the film and should be applauded for going that far, even if it was sort of a repeat of Obi Wan dying in Episode 4. You could also argue, it was more designed to make fans go NOOOOOOOOO in an attempt to raise the stakes and all that. Either way, it was a good bit, so there. We’ve already mentioned how Carrie Fisher turned up in the review and there’s not much more to add here so we’ll skip ahead to the other original cast member to turn up.

Right at the end, when you see Luke Skywalker standing on Craggy Island when Rey finally finds him after WD40 and R2DOODEEDOO team up to complete the map to find the old bearded fella (all Jedis have to have beards when they are old, even the women), it was actually quite funny that for ages they just stared at each other, almost egging each other on as which one of them was going to say they were pregnant.

And finally….

Look, you can pick away at a lot of things at this film if you’re that way inclined (as most of the internet has already, us included) and the sad thing is perhaps that a lot of things were played safe in some regards. It is no doubt a solid film as the reviews came to show. It’s more of a wonder that they did in fact make such a decent film with the nerd pressure that would have been piled on by those who are fans to the point they write Jedi as their religion.

Despite what was written here, it was an entertaining film and given the low level of entertainment which didn’t come from Comic Book films, that’s actually a really big achievement. The production team should be happy with what they produced but they really cannot just copy and paste the plot to the Empire Strikes Back for the next one. Everyone will see through the treachery if they do. The next film, called Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hopes to perform a sort of heist story pertaining to the Death Star plans by all accounts so let’s see if they can pull a fresh perspective out of the hat before Episode 8.

May the fart be with you.