Whether you look at A New Hope as a Star Wars film or as a love letter to adventure stories, it still holds up well enough (for all its problems) to make this feel immediately superfluous. The toys may be faster, and the Death Star-that's-not-but-actually-is might be bigger, but it's still essentially A New Hope with modern-day editing. It's positively flabbergasting how a film like this can be hailed as a masterpiece when it feels for all the world like watching a bunch of children dressing up and re-enacting their version of A New Hope. The single biggest problem with The Force Awakens is how desperately and despairingly unoriginal it is. But as someone who looks upon the originals fondly - or at least acknowledges their deserved place in cinema history - I still count myself among those wanting this to be good, rather than hoping that it would fail outright. It's also true that I have never been the biggest fan of Abrams, branding him 'the master of hype' and 'our generation's Wizard of Oz', who is capable of making flashy, tempting trailers but less capable at telling original stories. It's true that I was initially dismissive of Disney's decision to buy Star Wars, back in the days when I regularly wrote for WhatCulture!. Sadly, that last great hope has ended up as just another version of A New Hope, leaving us dazzled by the modern visuals but otherwise disappointed. It seemed as though everyone was pinning their hopes on this film working, as though it was the last great hope that Star Wars could one day be good again.

Having already convinced themselves, like long-suffering Highlander fans, that things at least couldn't get any worse, the hype steadily grew as the old cast members returned and more and more details were affectionately teased. Abrams, gave the sci-fi community and the film-going public reason to have positive expectations about this series again. It took less than ten years after Revenge of the Sith brought the ghastly prequel saga to a sorry conclusion for the powers-to-be (in this case Disney) to decide that audiences would be ready for another instalment or three.ĭisney's acquisition of Star Wars from George Lucas, coupled with the involvement of J. The seemingly endless wave of remakes, reboots, re-imaginings and redundant sequels was bound to hit the Star Wars franchise sooner or later. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu, which has increasingly become the mantra of Hollywood executives. 'That is not dead which can eternal lie' - the immortal line from H.

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