Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Part 1

Written by:

Lawrence Kasdan & J. J. Abrams and Michael Arndt

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Directed by:

J. J. Abrams

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Release Date:

2015

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first Star Wars movie where the film number and the episode number is the same! It's the seventh instalment either way.

It's also the first movie in the final trilogy of the Skywalker Saga. It still blows my mind that they finally made there in the end, as I still (vaguely) remember when there was only one trilogy and no sign that George Lucas was ever going to make the others he had planned. Not that these three films are anything like he'd planned.

I mean I doubt any of them were really, seeing as we're still waiting for Annikin Starkiller to show up, but this trilogy was created after Lucas had sold Star Wars to Disney and his involvement was minimal. His most recent concept for the final trilogy apparently focused on the microbiotic world and midi-chlorians, but Kathleen Kennedy's crew have gone in a different direction and to be honest I'm kind of glad.

Okay, this is going to be the same deal as with my Star Trek Into Darkness review, as I'm splitting it into three parts to save you from having to read too much in one sitting. Though you could just wait a couple of days until all three parts are out and read it that way if you want to climb that mountain of words.

There will be MASSIVE SPOILERS below for The Force Awakens and I'll also be assuming that you've seen the earlier films as well. No spoilers for The Last Jedi or The Rise of Skywalker though, and not just because that last film isn't out for a couple of days at the time I'm posting this. But these are genuine pre-Rise of Skywalker opinions.

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It's the first Star Wars movie of the Disney era, but there's no Disney logo at the start. No 20th Century Fox logo either, as they hadn't bought them yet, but it does still have the John Williams theme and the scrolling text. Most movies couldn't get away with an opening crawl, it's generally not a good idea, but Star Wars somehow can. Must be all the Flash Gordon in its DNA.

Force Awakens came to cinemas 10 years after the prequel trilogy, so it was the first live action Star Wars for a decade. But we'd been waiting 32 years to finally see what happens after Return of the Jedi and here we finally got our chance to find out. Uh, I mean 'we' as in 'the fans', not us personally; for one thing I probably saw Jedi in the 90s. Plus I already knew what happened after Jedi, because of the books and video games!

Star Wars: Dark Forces III: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (PC)

Luke Skywalker got his personality and his furniture removed and started hanging out with Jedi mercenary Kyle Katarn (the guy who stole the Death Star plans). They had a proper Jedi academy going and everything was great!

But those games, comics and novels don't count anymore. Now Leia is a general leading a RESISTANCE against the sinister FIRST ORDER, and Luke Skywalker is missing.

Star Wars films typically open by panning down from the scrolling text to reveal a big-ass spaceship somewhere near a planet. In fact sometimes they even recreate a shot from an earlier movie, except with the moon replaced by a space station.

Not all of them do this, Solo: A Star Wars Story decided to do its own thing, but the main episodes all follow this tradition and Force Awakens is no exception.

I mean I think that's a spaceship. It seems to be triangular, that's usually a dead giveaway in Star Wars, but it could just as well be the corner of a billboard or something.

I'm fairly certain that the things that fly down out of it are spaceships at least, and inside each of the spaceships there are Stormtroopers!

They don't quite look like the Stormtroopers I'm used to, but then it's been 30 years since Return of the Jedi in universe as well, so it'd be weirder if they did.

These guys are supposed to look the cruel enforcers of an evil Empire First Order, but I kind of feel sorry for them in this shot. It seems they have to spend half the trip with the lights flicking, and the whole trip standing up. They're being transported like they're robots, or commuters.

It's a pretty atypical sequence of shots for Star Wars actually, more modern in style. It'd feel out of place even in The Mandalorian, but it's hard to say it doesn't work in this film (especially when it's the first thing in it).

A little robot sees the lights coming down from the night sky, reacts with obvious concern, and races off into the village to tell someone.

BB-8 here is about the most basic droid we've seen in Star Wars since those mouse droids, and there's no C-3PO around to translate for us this time, but you can still read what he's thinking from just his movement and beeps. I've seen the Pixar lamp, I shouldn't be surprised that the filmmakers have managed to make a ball with a hat on cute and expressive, but they somehow have and I somehow am.

I'm also impressed at how they pulled the robot off mechanically. They actually built a working ball robot that can drive around with the head staying on top... but most of the time it's just a dude pushing it around on a stick who got painted out.

I guess J.J. Abrams was in the mood for silhouettes while filming this. Star Trek 2009's all lens flares, this is all darkness so far.

The man on the left here is veteran actor Max von Sydow and he's playing... some guy. I was wondering if I was supposed to know him, like he was the older version of a character from one of the other movies, but apparently not! He's called Lor San Tekka and he is entirely unimportant in the greater scheme of things. He's just here to give ace pilot Poe Dameron a USB stick, or something. If he can get it to General Leia Organa it will begin to make things right, apparently. Seems like it's something to do with the Jedi, and seeing as Leia's been searching for her brother it's not hard to put two and two together.

BB-8 bursts in and does a bit of anxious beeping, and Lor San Tekka realises that it's time for Poe to make a getaway in his ship.

It's an X-Wing... kind of. They've made it a bit smaller, a bit more like the original concept art where there's two engines that split in the middle when the wings fold out, but it's clearly an update instead of a retcon and it looks great so I'm not complaining!

The Stormtroopers storm through the village and the villagers, and then take out his fighter with blaster fire. That’s not supposed to happen! Spaceships always shrug off and then escape the blaster fire in Star Wars!

Oh man, they're doing the full Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru on these people, that's not good. It's so rare to see Stormtroopers actually being effective and doing something nasty to anyone but the Rebels Resistance. Plus it's a very legit looking flamethrower; that has to be a practical effect.

Poe manages to hide out of the way for a moment while the invading Stormtroopers are busy killing everyone else, and he gives the data to BB-8 to keep safe. So they're just straight ripping off Leia giving the Death Star plans to R2-D2 as the Blockade Runner is boarded then.

He then decides to snipe a few Stormtroopers, revealing that their blaster-proof armour hasn't gotten any more blaster-proof in the last 30 years. One of the Stormtroopers stops to look after his dying buddy, and gets a stylish bloody handprint on his helmet in return. Suddenly the scene's all about him, as he freaks out over the death and mayhem surrounding him.

Then the big badguy shows up in a shuttle with ridiculously long wings. It probably doesn't even need wings at all, he's just showing off.

Lor San Tekka is brought over and they take the opportunity to chat and share a bit of exposition. So we learn that:

• The masked villain is called Kylo Ren, but that's not what he used to be called.
• Ren didn't rise from the Dark Side, something happened to him.
• The data is a map to Luke Skywalker.
• Lor San Tekka is the movie's Obi-Wan Kenobi and Owen Lars combined, as Ren strikes him down with his lightsaber in front of Poe.

Poe doesn't scream "No!" when he sees him die, but he does take a vengeful shot at Ren.

But Ren freezes the blaster bolt in the air with the Force, then he freezes Poe as well. So that's a new power we've never seen from a Force user before. Plus he caught that bolt in 3/24ths of a second, so that's some impressive reflexes.

It may seem a bit dodgy for Ren to be able to freeze a laser beam, but that's fine as nothing about this blaster shot is anything like a laser. For one thing it's jumping around like crazy and making a crackling noise. Also if it had been a laser, the beam would've travelled 23,000 miles in the time Ren took to catch it.

Now it's Poe's turn to be brought before Kylo Ren, but he decides to deflate the tension by saying "So who talks first? You talk first, I talk first?" like he's in an episode of Buffy. Ren disregards his irreverence and has him taken to his ship, while the rest of the villagers are murdered by firing squad. Freaked out bloody handprint trooper ain't keen on this at all and decides not to fire... and Ren senses him.

Then he leaves, letting the blaster bolt continue with its original momentum. Meanwhile the Stormtroopers blow up the X-Wing and BB-8 rolls off into the desert on his own, on a mission. So basically like R2-D2 in A New Hope.

And we finally get to see what the new Star Destroyer looks like!

It's alright I suppose, kind of like a Star Destroyer sandwich with a gap in the middle. It's apparently called the Finalizer by the way. Still not keen on the length of Ren's ship's wings though. The transport ships don't have any wings at all and they're doing fine!

Poe is brought onboard into the pretty digitally-augmented hangar bay set, but the camera decides to follow handprint trooper instead, who takes off his mask to reveal...

Not a genuine screencap

... he's the guy from the poster holding the lightsaber! And there's that shiny metal Stormtrooper that showed up a lot in the promotion but not so much in the movie.

They weren't both in focus in this shot by the way, so I decided to cheat it for once. This is a fake, not-real screencap that's been edited to look like it was filmed using a split diopter lens. But it wasn't.

Captain Phasma's here to give FN-2187 grief for taking off his helmet without permission. So either he's got his serial number printed on his ass, or she can recognise him from the back of his head (or maybe she's got a HUD in that visor). She also wants to him to get his blaster checked because she noticed he wasn't murdering people with the others. I'm not sure she's picked up on the fact that he's clearly breathing heavily and freaking out, but that's probably for the best. Anyway he sticks his dirty helmet on like he's asked, so now he's walking around with a handprint on his face again.

By the way I love that we're actually following a Stormtrooper as one of the main characters in this movie! That was a great idea, thumbs up to the writers for that one.

Then we go from one masked protagonist in a Star Destroyer to another, as we meet Rey while she's scavenging for components inside an old wreck. She's lucky her speeder bike wasn't scavenged away from her while she was in there, as she's made absolutely no effort to hide it.

There's some great dirty dusty shots here that really sell the reality of the locations in a way that the prequel movies struggled with. Those films were so clean that even the model shots and sets looked like CGI.

Oh I've just remembered a picture I made for a Doctor Who review that I can reuse...

Because it's worth mentioning that for a limited time only, three of the biggest and longest running sci-fi juggernauts, Star Wars, Star Trek and Doctor Who, all have a female lead. Plus they all have male names, which is a bit weird.

Though I'm making a bit of an assumption that Gallifreyans even have gender-specific names, and either way The Doctor hasn't used her birth name for a couple of millennia now.

Anyway, the movie follows Rey back to a trading post where she silently scrubs her scavenged treasure opposite another woman who's clearly been doing this a while. A long long while. No exposition or whining required here to show us Rey's concerns about her future.

We finally get some dialogue when she sells her scavenged scrap to a guy allegedly called Unkar Plutt, though it's all coming from his mouth. They've done a bloody good job of hiding that this is actually Simon Pegg here, using alien prosthetics and a CGI enhanced face to completely transform him. Incidentally, Pegg has been in Star Trek and Doctor Who, so he's completed the hat trick here.

Turns out that Rey's haul is worth only one quarter of a portion, and this doesn't seem particularly surprising or unusual to her. If she keeps eating like this she's not going to have to worry about reaching old age on this planet.

Then we see her finishing her daily routine by going back home to her battered old AT-AT walker, and her little Rebel pilot doll, and her wall from of dash marks indicating how long she's been imprisoned here. I thought it was a bit odd at first that she didn't cross them off in groups of five, but then I remembered she's in a galaxy far far away and maybe they don't do that there.

She sticks a dusty old Rebel Alliance helmet on and watches a spaceship fly off without her in the distance. It's a definite 'Luke stares into the binary sunset' scene, though without any whining about wanting to apply to the Academy to lead up to it. Funny how we know more about this character than Poe or FN-2187 and she hasn't even said anything yet.

But her boring routine is spoiled by the sound of BB-8 beeping for help! She grabs her stick and races into action to stop him from being scavenged. Which has to be the nicest thing anyone's done for a droid in the Star Wars movies ever since Chewbacca saved C-3PO from a junk pile in Empire Strikes Back. She even bends his antenna back into shape!

People don't generally care much about droids in the Star Wars universe. I'm not sure Luke Skywalker would've gone after R2-D2 like he did if he hadn't been worried about being shouted at by his uncle. Interesting that the droid with the secret data has met up with the protagonist on a desert world by pure chance yet again.

Rey's not all that keen on BB-8 sticking around and directs him to the nearest outpost. But he begs her to let him stay with her and does the best puppy-dog eye expression a ball with a hat on can do, and she relents. Until morning. It's interesting that she can understand him, I'm not sure that's something Luke ever learned to do (I remember him reading a translation off his X-Wing's screen).

Back on the Star Destroyer (the working one in orbit), we find that Poe's been tortured a bit, and Kylo Ren's dropped by to see him. It's always exposition time when Ren's around, as we soon learn that Poe's the best pilot in the Resistance.

He's also pretty good at keeping secrets, as he hasn't given away anything about the location of that map he got from Lor San Tekka. The guy's such a cocky smart-ass that I'm surprised he hasn't been throwing out all kinds of lies about where he put it.

I hide the map in my X-Wing you blew up.
It's in my shoe.
No, my other shoe.
I hid it under a plant pot.
I slipped it to a Stormtrooper.
I put it in a droid.
I fed it to a womp rat.
I buried it in a grave marked "Unknown".
I hid it in the front pew, in the hollow right leg.
I placed it under a shiny rock at the base of a wall near a big oak tree.

Anyway, Ren's here to try a different approach. He raises his hand up in front of Poe's face and uses his painful Force torture technique to get him to get him to scream...

...and then hopefully talk afterwards? Or maybe he's trying to use that mind reading technique Darth Vader used on Luke in Return of the Jedi to learn about his sister, and he's just really bad at it.

Either way the film cuts to Ren leaving an unconscious Poe to tell the Imperial First Order officer outside that the map's hidden in a droid. Poe's been making a valiant attempt to undercut Ren's menace, but it hasn't really been working great for him so far.

Though I feel like Ren's maybe forgotten to find out the location of the secret Resistance base.

Back on planet Jakku, at the trading post, we learn that BB-8's told Rey that he's waiting for Poe. She reveals that she's also waiting, for her family.

The parts she's got today aren't worth what she hoped, but Unkar Plutt spots the droid and offers her 60 portions for him! She runs up to grab it, but stops when her conscience kicks in. We already know how important this stuff is for her (it's food, which she uses to not starve to death), and this is like 200 scavenging trips worth, but she gives it up just so BB-8 can keep waiting for his friend. Rey's got a good heart and a posh accent, and it's not clear how she found either of them on this piece of crap planet.

Anyway Plutt gets on the radio to his accomplices to tell them to follow her and get the droid. Have the First Order been in touch with him or something? Why does he care so much?

Up on the Star Destroyer (still the one in space), FN-2187 manages to get Poe out of his cell. It's a bit of a 'I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you' situation, only this time he's exactly tall enough to be a Stormtrooper.

He explains that he's helping him because it's the right thing to do... and also admits that he needs a pilot. You can't just climb into a spaceship and take off in it without any training, that'd be ridiculous.

FN-2187 marches him into the surprisingly busy hangar bay and the two of them head for a nearby TIE Fighter. Apparently they've got two-seater ones now with a rear-gunner. And bracelets on the wings.

Sadly neither of them thought to disconnect the fuel hose, so when they try sneaking off they find they're stuck in place like a cartoon bulldog leashed to his dog house.

This makes them an easy target for the other Stormtroopers, but fortunately the TIE Fighter seems more resistant to blaster fire than Poe's X-Wing was. I've played enough Star Wars games to know that should be the other way around!

FN-2187 returns fire with the rear guns, which do a lot more damage to them than they're doing to the TIE Fighter. I like how his turn to good is signified by the gleeful murder of all his friends. Well okay that's not fair, he's not exactly gleeful as he guns down all the people he's lived and worked with all these years, he's mostly trying not to freak out. But it's not as fun to see someone gun down Stormtroopers now that we know that any one of those people could've turned to good next week given a chance!

Anyway the two of them escape and now they're flying around in a TIE Fighter! Only took seven films for one of the heroes to get a turn in one of these things. And despite this being such an ancient movie, it turns out that the effects still hold up!

There's something really familiar about all this somehow. A daring prison break using a Stormtrooper outfit, a thrilling shoot-out with the heroes sitting back to back behind their gun turrets... I was waiting for Poe to say something like "Great, kid! Don't get cocky," after FN-2187 managed to blow something up, but instead they both cheer.

Poe decides he's not going to refer to his new friend by his serial number, so he names him 'Finn'. I kinda want to keep calling him FN-2187 though, I've gotten used to it. Also everyone in this movie has such a tiny name!

Like this guy on the right is called General Hux.

There's also Rey, Ren, Poe, Luke, Han and Maz. Leia's only four letters long as well, but it's at least got a couple of syllables, which is what really counts when you're watching a movie. BB-8 and Chewbacca are doing well with three syllables, but it's R2-D2 and C-3PO in the lead with four each.

Anyway Ren's figured out that the guy who helped Poe escaped was the Stormtrooper he saw in the village, not that it matters much now as their TIE Fighter's about to be blown up.

Poe and Finn do a good job shooting down some of the missiles but they're eventually hit and go crashing down to Jakku. Which is handy, as Poe needed to go back there anyway to pick up his droid. And he's apparently such a great pilot that he's able to crash right nearby where he left him... which doesn't escape the notice of the folks in the Star Destroyer.

Here's an surprising fact: TIE Fighters have ejector seats! Who knew that the First Order cared so much about their pilots' lives?

There's no sign of where Poe ended up though. All we know is that he didn't take his jacket. Finn goes back to save him but all he gets for his heroism is a new coat and an explosion. Which is handy actually, as with the white bits of his armour removed and his jacket on you'd never know he was a Stormtrooper.

This was originally supposed to be Poe's exit from the movie, which would explain why he's been such a heroic flawless character so far. He's the right man for the job; the charming hero who knows what to do and can get things done. Now he's gone and it's up to a Stormtrooper, a scavenger, and a droid to save the day instead. And two thirds of them don't even care!

I like that they didn't mess around too much with the design of the Star Destroyer bridge. It's a different ship from 30 years later, they could've done what they wanted, but they went with a familiar look, and it looks great.

Seems like there's a bit of discord on the bridge though, as Ren and Hux apparently both work for a guy called Supreme Leader Snoke, but have different agendas. Hux is happy enough to let the droid get destroyed, but Ren is very keen to get that map to Luke Skywalker. Also we get confirmation that these Stormtroopers are definitely not clones, as Ren suggests they should perhaps be replaced with them. Really weird line reading on "Perhaps Leader Snoke should consider using a clone army," though.

Finn's finally made his way to where Rey and BB-8 are at this point, but he's barely able to get a drink of water before having to run off to save them from Unkar's thugs. Well, that's what he intended to do anyway, but Rey sorts out her attackers on her own. The film doesn't explain why Rey can handle herself in a fight, but it does show why she'd have to, and that's good enough for me.

But then BB-8 spots Finn, and the coat he's wearing, and lets Rey know that he stole it from his boss.

So now Finn's the one being hit with a stick.

I guess this means that Rey's playing the role of the Tusken Raiders that attacked Luke with a stick in the first film, and BB-8's playing the role of, uh... okay I can't actually figure out what part of Star Wars this is ripping off now. This could actually be an original plot development!

To be honest I actually love how this movie's been constructed. I'm not just talking about the sets, which are great, I mean the script, the way events flow together and how not a minute is wasted. Some people aren't keen on J.J. Abrams as a director, but I can't help being a fan.

Anyway, Finn tells Rey and BB-8 the truth: that Poe was captured by the First Order, that he helped him escape, and that their ship crashed when they came back for his droid. Also he's obviously with the Resistance too!

They get spotted by Stormtroopers and Finn grabs her hand to encourage her to run away, but she detaches from him as soon as she's able. It's easy to empathise with Rey here, because who the hell wants to someone to drag them around by the hand like they're a child? Aside from Doctor Who companions I mean. But I can also see where Finn's coming from. He's coming from a massacre where he couldn't save anyone, and now it's about to happen again.
 
And to be fair he didn't have time to say "They will start shooting at you too because you were seen with the droid, we are both in very real danger." And when he grabs her hand a second time it's because he wanted to communicate that they needed to leave their tent in a hurry because the First Order had called in an airstrike. Kind of overkill really, seeing as they're supposed to not kill them (or the droid at least), but hey, Hux is a dick.

Then there's the bit where they go running for a ship, but it blows up, so they go running for the Millennium Falcon instead! It's like the scene in Star Wars, where they go to buy the wrong R2 droid, and then it blows up so they get R2-D2 instead. The handy thing about the Force is that it's an energy field that binds stories together, allowing for massive coincidences like the droid with the map to Luke Skywalker running into Rey, and Rey running into the Millennium Falcon. It's not a massive plot contrivance, it's the Force. And sometimes the Force gets you where you need to be by annihilating all other alternatives.

By the way, the filmmakers actually built a full size Falcon prop for the movie... but this isn't it, it's just CGI here.

Rey feels that the Falcon is garbage and it seems that the TIE Fighters do too as none of them are even shooting it. Our heroes have plenty of time to jog inside the open hatch and get the thing started up. Somehow Rey already knows her way around and can even fly it... assuming it even can fly. The thing hasn't moved from this spot in years it seems.

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

The people who built these YT-1300 Corellian freighters clearly knew what they were doing, as the Falcon looked like an old piece of junk in A New Hope and 30 years later it still looks like an old piece of junk. It's also the one bit of archaic wreckage on this planet that can start up and fly away like it's brand new.

Plus it's the one spaceship we've seen so far that's 100% faithful to the old movies. J.J. Abrams had no trouble changing the Enterprise for Star Trek, but he hasn't touched the Falcon. Well, except to put a different dish on to replace the one that fell off in Jedi. Sorry, I kind of picked the wrong shot to show off what the old dish looked like.

I'm not sure they ever explain how Rey can pilot the Falcon, maybe because she kind of can't. Fortunately the thing can take a lot more punishment than I would've expected; it really slams into the ground here. Turns out that the current owner is Unkar Plutt by the way, and he's sure pissed off to see it flying away.

She manages to get the thing airborne, but Finn tempts fate by telling her to bring it down close to the ground again, as it'll confuse the TIE Fighters' tracking. He's very knowledgeable about fighters for a Stormtrooper.

Trailer shot!

I remember loving this sequence when I first saw it, with the camera starting upside down and swooping around behind the Falcon as it dives towards the sand and pulls up at the last moment... and my opinion hasn't changed. The filmmakers clearly didn't feel the need to restrict themselves to camera moves that could've been achieved with models in the 70s, but that's fine, it's working.

The important thing is that they've managed to give the ship some weight, which is impressive considering the camera's floating all over the place. And it definitely feels like something we haven't seen already, even in the prequels.

They've got TIEs on their tail, but Finn's struggling to hit anything with the turret. Worse, Rey's struggling to get the shields up without a co-pilot (so Chewbacca's role in the movies has been retroactively justified).

It's a good thing Unkar Plutt is stuck on the planet now (since they swiped his ship), as there are scavengers running to grab parts from the downed TIE Fighters before they explode and they'll need someone to sell them to. Or maybe they're trying to rescue the pilots, I don't want to misjudge them!

I will say that Finn's kind of an idiot though, as when his turret's disabled he doesn't think to go over and use the other one instead. To be fair Rey doesn't think of it either, and decides that the smart thing to do is take the Falcon inside her favourite wrecked Star Destroyer! Actually I think the one she chooses is a Super Star Destroyer, which explains why it's big enough for a short chase scene.

All that daredevil flying just to get the broken gun facing the last TIE Fighter so they could shoot it.

Well now that they've gotten their beat-up ancient spaceship shot up even more, they decide it's time to take it into space! They're way ahead of schedule here as it took Han and Luke until nearly an hour into the movie to get off of Tatooine in Star Wars. Rey and Finn have managed it in about 35 minutes!

Which means I can get back to talking about how happy I am that they didn't screw with the look of the Falcon.

I'm 100% on board with this meticulous reconstruction of a design from the 70s, inside and out, and not just because of nostalgia. Not even because it still looks great, though it helps. What I really love is that they've put the effort in to make this fictional make-believe universe feel consistent and real instead of trying to reimagine it for new audiences.

You could make all the same arguments for updating the Falcon as you could for updating the Enterprise in Star Trek: Discovery, but I'm glad that's not the direction they went in here.

I'm also glad that these two are actually getting along now after their daring escape; Rey even reveals her name for the first time in the movie (it's Rey). I liked Han Solo and Princess Leia being snarky, but the filmmakers didn't need to copy everything about Star Wars.

The original plan was to have the two of them a bit more antagonistic to each other, but J.J. Abrams noticed that the actors were more interesting to watch when they were hanging out between takes than when they were doing professional fake arguing, so they changed the characters' relationship a little to lean into that.

Finn's still lying to her about being in the Resistance though, which is a bit of a problem seeing as they need to get the droid to them and he doesn't have a clue where they are.

Meanwhile on the Star Destroyer, Kylo Ren finally loses his composure when he learns that the droid got away with Finn. Actually he has a full-on temper tantrum and slices up a computer panel with his lightsaber. Interesting choice to make everyone in the First Order a bit rubbish, even their version of Darth Vader, but I'm down with that.

I figured that the bearer of bad news was about to die here, but they subverted those expectations. He should really stop giving him bad news though, as when Ren hears that a girl was helping Finn he drags the guy across the room, neck first. It's interesting though that he reacts so strongly to the word 'girl', like he knows something about Rey.

The weirdest part about all this though, is that the Falcon hasn't gotten away, or it shouldn't have at least. They haven't made the jump to lightspeed, so the ship's still somewhere close to Jakku, and Star Destroyers had no trouble finding and catching up to it when they escaped from Tatooine in A New Hope, or Hoth in Empire Strikes Back. No wonder Ren's so pissed off with that scanning console, it's apparently not doing its job!

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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TOMORROW

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, more The Force Awakens! And you don't have to wait long for it as part two is going up tomorrow.

You could leave a comment right now though if you want. No need to wait until the movie's over.