“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”
If, like me, you were under
the impression that what George Lucas has by now compelled dozens of obliging
actors into calling “the Force” was something of a Spinozian God, what a
pantheist might call “Nature” or “the Universe,” you will no doubt be somewhat
puzzled by the title of the new Star Wars
film. Why would an impersonal deity ever have been asleep? However, if you’ve
come to consider the Force of the title as a metaphor for the saga itself, or
the thrust that drives the movie-making monolith, the title makes total sense,
and couldn’t be further from an untruth. The series has lain dormant for at
least 10 years, since the release of Episode III, The Revenge of the Sith, though many of the fans (who, as you know,
comprise virtually all Anglophone populations around the globe) may contend
that the last sparks of the immanent divinity were seen as far back as in 1983,
when The Return of the Jedi rounded
off the first trilogy in the franchise.
Star Wars is – and, since its initial arrival in 1977, always has
been – a cartoon on a vast scale, in a live action format, infused with the odd
coupling of a mystical underpinning and a post-60s humanist and revolutionary
atmosphere. What George Lucas has furnished us with has never been anything
like great cinema, or even rather good cinema, but a thin escapist fantasy that
mass popularity and fanboy frenzy have sustained over three and a half decades.
Admittedly it’s altogether successful in this regard, even for someone as
resistant as I to the whole rigmarole – I never quite forgot I was watching a
vast Wagnerian puppet show, though my surroundings and my home planet faded
quickly enough from my consciousness, which was just as well considering all
the noisy philistines the franchise seems to attract into the theatre.
NOTE WELL: While the single spoiler that follows is well marked, if you’d like to retain the surprise of watching the film for the first time, read no further until you’ve seen the film.