Rotten Tomatoes: 94% Ignore all of the hype and franchise expectations of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and what you have is an extremely solid, mostly-accessible action-adventure movie. Discounting its history and parallels to other entries from the saga, there are a fair amount of audience members worldwide who are walking into Episode VII with nary a clue as to what has come before - and they are walking away satisfied (if slightly miffed). No one can argue with the action beats involved here; from the easy-to-follow aerial dogfights (a nice change of pace from some of the inherent confusion of Revenge of the Sith's similar scenes, which arguably had too much going on to follow properly) to the down-and-dirty lightsaber duels (again, moving away from the balletic nature of the prequel trilogy's scenes of the same). JJ Abrams really pulled off a coup with this one, as he created a film that was not only pan-generational but also bridged the gap between fans and novices. The key to that was developing a breakneck pace, putting forward intriguing mysteries (with answers to at least half of them - good innings for old 'mystery box' JJ), solid acting, well-edited action sequences, fantastic production design, even better costume work, and enough humour to fill a Will Ferrell studio comedy (although of a decidedly higher quality). If you're reading this, you've blatantly already seen it.
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
