Star Wars: The Force Awakens * * 1/2

As I’ve never been much of a fan of The Star Wars franchise, it would be reasonable to ask me, “So what did ya go and see it for?”

Don’t know to be honest, and about forty minutes in I wish I hadn’t.

The thing that bugs me about Star Wars is that it’s not much about Stars. It’s all legends, myth and monsters, princesses and evil beings with magical powers.  I can’t imagine anyone who is genuinely into Sci Fi being into Star Was, because basically it's not Science Fiction.

In fact, other than the comical gooby looking people from other planets, most characters look like earthlings and every planet they go to looks just like Planet Earth, even the Death Star. So much for another time in a galaxy far, far away.  

Next to no imagination is given over to the way another world might look.  They just give us forests, snow, deserts, oceans, old temples and huge modern buildings with very shiny floors.(Yeah, big deal, we got all that stuff back on earth).

For the first hour I was bored.  I found the new characters Fin and Rei as lackluster as their environment.  

But after an an ageing Han Solo and his sidekick Chewy, whatever it’s name is, came on board, things picked up for a short while. The years have been kinder to Chewy than Han incidentally; Han looks seventy, the big hairy thing looks just the same.  

But then it went dull again.

Then another old favourite came on board - Princess Leia.  After that the whole thing got a lot better and I quite enjoyed the last forty five minutes.  Not because of her. She didn’t do much, it was simply the timing. She appeared just before all the characters were given a mission of some sorts and the Dark Side fell apart pretty quickly for a group with a kick-arse new spaceship and millions of soldiers. But the majority of the single battle (as opposed to "wars") is taken up with us watching the good guys taking it in turns to cross swords with the new leader of the bad guys.

One thing that became clear in the final scenes of the film is that there is plenty more where this came from. In fact there is a sequel planned for 2017 which is good for the poor old guy who played the original Luke Skywalker in 1977. I don’t think he’s had a gig for forty years.  Those dolls of him have probably earned more than he has. Especially if they are still in the original box: which is probably where all this hoo-hah belongs.