Game - SUPERHOT (Xbox One)

Bold, limited colour scheme? Check. Well-worn genre with one game-defining gimmick added? Check. Minimalist art style? Retro menus? Near non-existent plot? Pretty difficult actually? Check, check, check and check. Stir in some meta-commentary on the nature of gaming, pop in the oven on a low heat, look in through the oven door ten minutes later and, yes, it looks like we've got an Indie Darling on our hands.

My favourite kind of enemy: an unarmed one. War crimes ahoy!

Still, let's brush aside the facetiousness and pour our collection of brass tacks onto the table. Developed, funnily enough, by the Superhot Team, SUPERHOT is a first-person shooter with a difference. One difference: time only moves when you move. Well, not quite. Time moves all the time, but when you're not moving, it's a barely susceptible crawl; when you're running as fast as you can, time moves at normal speed. "So what?" you say (yes, you do), "I move at normal speed in all my other shooters". Yes, you do. But one shot in SUPERHOT and you're down. There's no crouching behind a wall and waiting for all the red to fall off your screen here. In fact, there's no crouching, period. SUPERHOT, more than any other game, forces you to think about the geometry and mechanics of a gunfight, and when you're doing all that thinking you can't afford to have the bullets whizzing around at a realistic speed.

Nice! You dispatched that red dude with a single pistol shot. But there's another coming down the stairs behind you, and because you're in slow-time as well, your gun hasn't chambered the next round yet. Well, if you run at normal speed, your gun will be ready sooner. But, if you run at normal speed, so will that red dude, and the bullet he fires at you will go the speed of, well, a speeding bullet. Dodging a bullet in slow time is comical; dodging it in normal time is impossible.

As the red dudes demonstrate, it's all too easy to go to pieces in a firefight.

Truth be told, there's very little game here. Dropped into one of the game's many small, self-contained, pristine white environments, you use your control over the game speed and the available implements to shatter all the polygonal red fellows in the area. There are only four real weapons in the game - the pistol, the shotgun, the assault rifle, and the katana - and each has its own advantages and drawbacks: the pistol is a precise all-rounder but its single shot is easy to dodge or miss by a hair; the shotgun gives a wide spread but sacrifices accuracy and reload time; the assault rifle is accurate and long-ranged but its burst-fire can be hard to time; and the katana is quick and can be thrown for instant kills but, naturally, can only reach its length and is very narrow. You can kill with your fists, but it takes three hits, and you can throw bottles, bricks and other miscellanies at the red guys, but all this does is stun them momentarily and dislodge their weapons from their grip, but sometimes it's all you need to snatch a flying pistol out of the air and gun them down with the weapon that miliseconds previously was theirs. It's fun and easily remixed gameplay, and about halfway through there's an extra wrinkle added when you gain the ability to leap into the bodies of enemies, which is especially useful if you've just critically misjudged your timing and your current body is about to be just so many ruby shards on the otherwise immaculate floor, which will be all too common in the more densely-packed and frantic later stages.

Fortunately, time is moving slow enough for you to see that, no,
this one doesn't have your name on it.

The story, which is little more than a thread stringing together a long series of increasingly difficult arenas, starts innocuously enough as one of your online friends shares this great game all about killing red dudes with you, but it isn't long before things begin to get a little weird and the game starts talking to you directly and telling you not to keep going. It takes a leaf from Spec Ops: The Line's "Why are you playing this game, you bastard?" playbook, but the meta-narrative is more of a varnish on the game than an integral part of the story, and you wouldn't really be losing too much if the levels just proceeded linearly without any of the admittedly-intriguing chatroom conversations or interface screws that grow more and more common as you progress. The thing is, Spec Ops did this so well because it had you thinking you were playing precisely the kind of gruff, macho military shooter it was about to eviscerate for the first third of the game. SUPERHOT almost immediately puts up a big "WARNING: Deconstruction Area" sign at the outset and doesn't even wait for you to get comfy on the rug before it tries to pull it out from under you. It's all very well being clever but trying too hard isn't a good look. Still, it's gameplay we're here for, and SUPERHOT has it in spades.

I leave it to better minds to work out why anthropomorphic figures
of solid ruby with no organs should be susceptible to head injuries.

The game makes it tremendously easy to be stylish, because the slow-time mechanic gives you plenty of time to methodically ponder your next move. By moving carefully, you can gun down a good handful of reds before your gun runs out... but what then? Panic and throw it at the first red guy you find, of course! Whoops, you missed, and now he's readying a shot. You cast around desperately, dithering on the spot, until you see a nearby ashtray. You scoop it up and toss it at the offender, stunning him and knocking the weapon out of his hands. Snatching it from mid-air, you blow him away but turn around before you even see the shot land because you've got a funny feeling that a bunch more have spawned in behind you, and suddenly you have to dash to the side because that big spread of shotgun blast that was halfway towards you before you noticed it nearly had your number. When you're playing you can often feel like a ten-thumbed, cack-handed, ham-fisted lummox mere millimetres from disaster, but watching back the normal-speed replay you'll feel like the godlike lovechild of Neo and Max Payne, as all the while a disembodied voice catchily repeats how "Super. Hot. Super. Hot" you are. Which isn't to say you don't need to be smart or precise. Waste the precious time you've got by dithering or turning the wrong way, and you can quickly find yourself boxed in by red guys, watching their bullets crawl towards you from all sides and knowing that the instant you try and take a step anywhere it'll be a short, sharp trip back to the respawn screen. It's an immensely quick and satisfying turnaround between play, failure, respawn, retry and victory, and while it's getting increasingly tired to compare any moderately challenging game to Dark Souls, it has that same addictive quality of knowing exactly how and why each death was your fault and yours alone, and that same seductive, often-misleading certainty that you only need "one more try; I'll do it this time, I know it".

Once you've completed the main story, there are still plenty of optional extras and challenges to keep you entertained. One of the game's Endless arenas, that dump you in a map of permanently respawning enemies and lets you see how long you last? Or perhaps sir or madam would prefer to go through the campaign again, but with only a sword? There's decent amounts of added value to be found here, which is just as well because twenty of your English pounds is otherwise a bit steep (if not actually vertical) for a story mode that can be polished off in a lazy afternoon. However, it's an easy game to pick up again when you've put it down. Quick, accessible, and good for blowing off some steam, you need to think, but you don't need to commit, and for novelty alone SUPERHOT has most of the competition dead to rights. 

8/10 - It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years

Film - Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

2 Bat 2 Steel: Dawn of the Planet of the Capes: Metropolis Drift

So, here it is at last. The epic, cinematic grudge match asking a question that surely no-one would bother to ask and yet many unaccountably do: who would win in a fight? The indestructible alien who can bench press continents, see through walls, hear a pin drop on the Moon and move faster than the speed of sound, or the rich dude with a box of parlour tricks, an overdesigned Halloween costume, and a lifetime supply of throat lozenges?

This central question, paradoxically, is both the film's greatest strength and greatest weakness. You would have to turn over a great many rocks before you found someone who didn't know that Batman and Superman are allies in DC's printed canon, with the result that we know from the start that the ultimate question of who wins is irrelevant: the pair putting aside their differences and joining forces must be the third of life's greatest inevitabilities after death and taxes. And yet, refreshingly, building the film around the rivalries (and unwitting similarities) of two future friends allows BvS to breathe and expand far more than the cookie-cutter "wisecracking hero stops the villain getting the MacGuffin" formula that Marvel have cheerfully but competently recycled in all of their efforts since the truly game-changing Winter Soldier.

And expand it does, freely and extensively, in every direction at once and with precious little regard to what its bulk either absorbs or suffocates. BvS is stuffed to the gills and beyond with characters, plots and sub-plots, references to the past and forewarnings of the future. It is absolutely crammed with images and ideas, but there is precious little judgement or restraint exercised in the execution of them. This suits the saturation-bombing, throw-everything-at-the-wall style of director Zack Snyder right down to the ground, but like 2011's Sucker Punch, the result is an incoherent mess of (admittedly stylish) images, in which the core ideas - perfectly adequate to carry the film - are spread thin and squashed under an avalanche of over-egged pudding. BvS's core ideas are stronger than SP's (in that it actually has some) and more well-developed, but they are placed in a much-longer and more stuffed film, and therefore have much more to compete with. Batman V Superman is not by any stretch of the word or the imagination a masterpiece, but nor is it irredeemable tripe either (a shame, because I do enjoy the therapeutic process of reviewing irredeemable tripe). A few judicious rewrites, some careful pruning with the editor's shears, and some sort of collar that shocks Mr Snyder everytime either the camera speed or the number of particles on screen exceeds a certain number, and I daresay the film could be really rather good. Oh, and Jesse Eisenberg would need to be fired. Ideally from a cannon.

The fault, for fault there is, must surely lie with the director. Not that David S. Goyer's script is perfect, but he is the man who provided the script for Batman Begins, and the stories for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, even if the Nolans were the ones putting words in the characters' mouths. Goyer knows, or at least should know, his stuff. When allied with the Nolans, their work is dynamite. When allied with Snyder, it's a bit of a damp squib. It's a Spot-the-Difference test, where only one of the pictures actually has a film director in it.

Just saved his girlfriend from certain death and he's still brooding. That
doesn't look like the face of a man who dresses in primary colours to me.

Snyder knows his images, yes, absolutely. 300 and Watchmen were full of visually striking images, because these are things that Snyder can work with, and because the visual source materials let him essentially recreate the comic frames in live-action. And Batman V Superman is full of images: Superman surrounded by Day of the Dead festival-goers, or rejuvenating in space in the light of the yellow sun; Wonder Woman's crossed bracers glowing red-hot after deflecting Doomsday's beam; Batman waiting at the Bat-signal with gritted teeth in his power armour. Perhaps the best is Superman floating in the sky, sun behind him in a manner reminiscent of Grant Morrison's classic All-Star Superman, about to save a flooded-out family from the roof of their home. But the things that go around these images are just as important, if not more so: for these images to truly resonate, they must be prepared, and built up to. Snyder relies far too heavily on the awe he wishes his visuals to produce. Superman inspires that awe, but it's not because there's a man floating in the sky with his underwear on the outside that he does. It's because he means something. Superman is a symbol for the potential good and enlightenment of the human race. He is an ideal to aspire to, an embodiment of our highest aspirations. Superman is hope, and, despite his godlike powers, Superman is human. More human than perhaps any of us could ever hope to be. Zack Snyder wants us to feel that awe, but he cannot deliver the hope that goes with it, because he is only interested in the image and not the structure of resonance that lies behind it and holds it up. His Superman, by and large, is as distant and inscrutable as a Greek God. He rescues people, but rarely seems to smile at them, and talks to them even less. Superman saves planets and smashes giant robots and prevents volcanic eruptions, and for this we admire him, but we love him because he talks suicidal teens off of rooftops and tells them they're important, and because he returns lost balloons to crying children and, yes, gets cats down from trees. He cares, and he helps, because he can, and being able to help is all the reason he needs. Snyder captures the trappings of Superman, and his world, with ease, but he leaves the heart behind, because all that Snyder thinks is needed for awe is the 'look'.

Snyder loves comic books, that much is clear. I think he truly does love Superman and Batman comics, for their bold imagery, and their striking colours, and their dynamic action and dramatic poses and earth-shattering battles. But, I'm not entirely sure he does a lot more than look at the pictures.

Moments like this are prime Superman material that cut right to the
core of the character's mythological appeal... it's just a pity that Snyder
likes to blow his imagery wad without having to lay the groundwork first.

Casting, casting, casting. Who hasn't read a comic book and thought "Ooh, that guy I like from that thing would be perfect in this part!" or "Yes! I was hoping they'd cast her, she looks just right!". Snyder and the screenwriters are loath to show us any of the big-hearted humour and simple humanity of Superman and his alter-ego Clark Kent that Christopher Reeve so perfectly embodied, but Cavill is so perfect a visual fit for Superman he may well have been drawn instead of born. The angsty, self-doubting Superman that we see here and in Man of Steel is at odds with the comic version's simple purity and desire to help, but it fits the darker, more cynical universe that the idealistic character has been placed into - I'd just much rather see Superman's idealism used as a counterpoint to the universe's darkness, rather than subsumed in it. As he did in MoS, Cavill inhabits the part wonderfully, equally at home as the lantern law of justice, or the simple Kansas farmboy raised to do good. So at home in the role is he, that when Superman strolls calmly into the Senate hearing designed to get him to explain himself and agree to some kind of government oversight, far from looking ridiculous he actually appears the most dignified person in the room, perhaps not least because the presiding Senator Finch has a jar of piss on her desk (don't ask). But, despite the fact that cinemas in the last decade have had enough Batman to fill twenty Comic-Cons, the Dark Knight's presence still looms large throughout the majority of the film, and the world's most powerful man feels overshadowed and underused even in a film that purports to take as its central theme his relationship with humanity at large.

It's a nice nod to the pupil-less eyes of the animated Batman, but surely
this sort of setup would completely destroy your nightvision, no?

The casting of Ben Affleck as Batman raised an understandable furore. Not only did it come far too soon after the titanic Bale/Nolan partnership that created the most consistently brilliant superhero film series ever, but Affleck had form in the genre: the simply execrable Daredevil movie. He wasn't the worst of its problems, by a long shot, but simple association with such a shambolic car crash of a film was enough to have comic fans popping aneurysms at the mere mention of his name. So how does he do as Batman? Pretty well, actually. I think. It's hard to say really. This is an older, more bitter, jaded and ruthless Batman than most of us are used to, as we expected, but it's also the case that Batman is simply out of character for most of the film. His increased brutality and even his branding of criminals are surprising but not wholly out of left field for such a dark interpretation of an already pretty dark character. But Batman goes further than that.

No guns, no killing... unless it's hilarious. Hey, has anyone
actually seen Batman and the Joker at the same time?

I don't truly, deeply mind Batman killing in the films, when there's no requirement for the villains come back next week. Surely, after the Joker's latest killing spree following his twentieth escape from Arkham, Batman might start to wonder whether continually punching him a bit and dragging him back through Arkham's revolving door is actually doing any good. He killed infrequently in the Burton films, only when forced to by an overwhelming enemy or dire circumstances - or, once or twice, if it was darkly funny. But he didn't make a habit of it, and avoided it where possible. Perhaps it's a sign of how jaded his long career and the arrival of Superman has made him, but this Batman just doesn't seem to even care anymore. Some of his kills here are on a level with the Burton films, and some are just refusing to save an enemy who is in danger, and even Nolan's Batman wasn't above that little loophole. But sometimes, he doesn't appear simply jaded and uncaring, but positively bloodthirsty, and that does not sit well with me. Not one bit. It is exemplified in his attitude to Superman: before he has even met him, he has decided to kill him. His growling eagerness to overthrow the godlike alien visitor in order to reassert humanity's self-determination is at total odds with the logical, pragmatic Bruce of the comics and previous films, waving aside Alfred's protests that Superman is not humankind's enemy with his own beliefs that though Superman may not be hostile now, one day he will reveal his true colours and he must be destroyed before he can be allowed to do so. And, quite honestly, this isn't Batman talking. This is no version of Batman talking. This is Lex Luthor talking: this has always been the philosophy for the character, and the source of his antagonism with Superman. Although his recognition of Superman's humanity after their battle seems to set him on the road back to being the Batman we know, it comes late in the film, and Affleck's Batman really does come off as the villain in his debut, and barely a Batman at all. What's really sad here, is that the effect of this is that BvS's Batman is a better Lex Luthor than its Lex Luthor is.

Starring Jesse Eisenberg as... himself, in everything else. Hope
you like it, because there's gonna be a lot of it.

Because now we come to the one part of Batman V Superman that really is irredeemable tripe. Now, I don't know if it's the actor, or the director, or the screenwriter that must bear the blame, but the end product we get that is Jesse Eisenberg's take on Lex Luthor is the most horrific mutilation of a beloved comic book character I think I've ever seen. This is on par with what Rise of the Silver Surfer did to Galactus, or what Batman & Robin did to Bane, or what X-Men Origins: Wolverine did to absolutely everything in it. Luthor calls for cool assurance, calculation, smooth-talking, visible genius, a love of wielding power but also the sense to maintain a pleasing facade. Lex Luthor must be equally convincing as a ruthless captain of industry, a mad scientist, a generous philanthropist, a xenophobic humanist, and a skilful politician. Now, he says in the film that his father founded the company, so perhaps this 'Lex' is intended to be more like the comics' Alexander Luthor, Jr, but either way we've been cheated of a superior villain.

Eisenberg's Luthor is a bratty, obnoxious iTwerp who motor-mouths and tics and twitches and spouts bizarre noises through his every disjointed, rambling metaphor and half-finished sentence like some cheap rent-a-Riddler without any of that character's amusing pettiness or endearing tendency to undermine himself in his attempts to be taken seriously. He spouts grandiose one-liners that could not have been more transparently written for trailers if 'And Starring... Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor' had flashed up on screen every time he delivered one with all the subtlety and craft of a lazy butcher slapping half a dead cow down on your kitchen table. His particular beef with Superman has none of the clarity or logic of the comics' portrayal, doubtless because the writers realised they'd accidentally given it to Batman, so instead he mumbles about Gods and Men and Power like an edgy nineteen year-old who's started quoting barely-understood passages of Nietzche under the mistaken impression that it will induce that girl in the tight sweater who sits near him in philosophy lectures to sleep with him. The character's final scene in prison, taunting Batman that "He is coming" is exceedingly annoying, and the end of it consists of him imitating a bell and saying "ding" far too many times as the camera slowly zooms out, in a moment that goes on so long I would have gladly shot myself in both kneecaps if the projectionist would just have replaced it with Man of Steel's General Zod bellowing "I will find him!" on an infinite loop. Now, perhaps Luthor has somehow communed with otherworldly beings in order to learn of Darkseid and the forces of Apokolips (worry not if these terms mean nothing to you, because the film neither uses them nor explains its references to them), and perhaps this has left him somewhat touched in the head, and perhaps that explains why he seems so odd in this film. But after being forced to witness this prancing berk for two and a half hours, even the most reasonable explanation of his antics would be as cold comfort as a friendly pat on the back to a woodwork student who's had an unwillingly intimate and prolonged session with the classroom bandfacer.

Even with super-hearing, Clark can't quite believe his ears when
Lois suggests he do some actual reporting for once in the movie.

Making up the auxiliaries are Amy Adams and Laurence Fishburne returning as Lois Lane and Perry White, and very nice it is to see both of them too, especially Fishburne's grumpy, headline-chasing newshound, who seems to have reverted a little closer to his comics portrayal since Man of Steel, and as a result drops quite a few comical lines: "Crimewave in Gotham! In other news, Water: wet".

Amy Adams is a predictably feisty and actively nosey Lois Lane, although I do miss the lightness of comic touch that Margot Kidder - and everyone involved in the first two Reeve movies, really - brought to the older films. I do not complain about Superman always being there to rescue Lois: Batman V Superman doesn't indulge in lengthy, bewildering CGI-effects scenes to show us Superman's sensory overload of super-hearing and x-ray vision, but surely we have not all forgotten that he has them? But her managing to be there to save him sticks in the craw a little bit: Lois' only role in the final battle seems to be to speak for Superman, as the writers have apparently decided to never allow the character to just explain himself to anyone properly lest his sheer goodness become so apparent that they just can't convincingly oppose him anymore - no, really, Superman gets an astoundingly pathetic number of lines in this film: mostly he broods, or grunts. No, wait, Lois does do something else in the finale: she continually gets into peril or does something foolish to force Superman away from the battle to come and help her, the crowning idiocy of which is throwing Batman's Kryptonite spear into a flooded passage, then realising they need it to kill Doomsday and swimming to get it back, then becoming trapped and needing to be rescued, then not trying again and letting Superman go and get it, then naturally having to rescue him when, surprise surprise, the Kryptonite weakens him sufficiently that he can't easily return to the surface with it. Her investigative skills early on are far more satisfying, but sadly whenever the character is introduced to any kind of action situation she becomes a damel-shaped lead weight around Superman's neck, and it's doubly annoying because there's no reason for her to be there other than to make like a butcher's forklift and raise the stakes.

I've never understood why movie characters seem to inhabit some
bizarre parallel universe where no-one ever looks at the person
they're speaking to.

Newly introduced we have Jeremy Irons as a crustier, more jaded Alfred than we're used to and Gal Gadot as Diana Prince, whose reveal as Wonder Woman is so long-delayed you start to wonder if the filmmakers actually believed we wouldn't instantly know who she was. Both of them are a delight. Irons rumbles with quiet, dryly barbed asides about Bruce's advancing age, declining personal habits and nonexistent social life, and could easily snatch the Alfred crown from Michael Caine given sufficient screentime in future outings. And Gadot is a revelation, sparking off Affleck in several scenes not with the tired and predictable badinage of sexual tension, but the electricity of uncertainty between two powerful people with tremendous secrets who don't yet know how far they can trust. She roars and yells triumphantly in battle, and grins when her foe seems worthy. I've no doubt that all involved had a whale of a time making the film, but Gadot is having one visibly, on screen, while everyone else scowls or grunts or looks earnest and very very scared, and her joy is infectious: I cannot wait to see her leading, at long last, a Wonder Woman solo movie next year. And her "war drums and electric guitar" theme is just cool.

For all Zack Snyder's total and utter cack-handedness when it comes to drawing narrative threads and scenes together in a comfortably-sized and cohesive whole, and, indeed, directing a scene where two characters talk to each other that isn't staid and lifeless, the man knows how to do his action scenes. We have all seen, repeated ad nauseum, the Waynes being gunned down outside the Monarch Theatre over the years, and the scene's use here as the credits sequence doesn't exempt it from a challenge on the grounds of repetition. There are some nice shots in it, certainly - Martha's eye view of Joe Chill's pistol caught in her pearls is wonderfully striking, and almost intimate in its cold ruthlessness - and I can't describe how nice it is to finally see a version of the murder that actually gives a crap about Martha Wayne and doesn't treat her like unfortunate collateral damage to Thomas Wayne's death. But Zack Snyder had to get his own grubby slow-motion paws all over it, and a scene that should be shocking in its sudden brutality - life *BANG* death - comes off much too overdone. The Waynes' deaths shouldn't be dramatic, because that's not the point. It's cruel, and instant, and prosaic and meaningless, and I don't think Batman would appreciate anyone trying to make high art out of it. But Snyder handles some later scenes far better. A Batmobile chase as Bruce tries to hijack Luthor's shipment of Kryptonite is fast-paced, brutal, pulse-pounding and exciting. It's not The Dark Knight's SWAT truck chase through Gotham, but it does its job in showing the power and ruthless efficiency of the new Batmobile, making it all the more potent when Superman appears in Wayne's path and deflects the car like a Dinky toy hitting a table leg.

This is what happens when you employ exactly one member of
staff to attend to your entire mansion, Bruce.

The titular throwdown is, despite its foregone conclusion, done wonderfully. It starts slow, with Batman and Superman testing each other: Batman breaks out the sonic weaponry and the turret emplacements, Superman knocks Batman back about twenty feet and puts him through a building with a light tap on the chest. It quickly becomes faster and more brutal, with Superman having the upper hand until Batman uses one of his precious few Kryptonite grenades and evens the odds. The battle tips and tilts, from breakneck speed to characterful lulls, and despite the speed and chaos Snyder expertly choreographs the scene such that there isn't a single impact or detail lost. There is a simply beautiful moment halfway through when Batman's first dose of Kryptonite begins to wear off, and we visibly see Superman's head jerking back less with every punch, until Batman's armoured gauntlet is denting and clanging uselessly against an immobile jaw, before the Big Blue picks him up like a ragdoll and throws him through the floor. Of course, Superman loses, because he must. Man of Steel was pretty on the nose with the Christ imagery, but you'll be staggering out of the theatre with concussion after this one. Superman is the martyr, and Batman is the one in the wrong, calling for his destruction. We all know that the faster, stronger, actually superpowered Superman should trash Batman all over Park Row, but that wouldn't teach Batman the error of his ways as much as seeing the defeated Superman begging, not for his life, but for his imminent killer to take up where left off and save his adopted mother Martha Kent from Luthor's thugs. This entire scene is played as though it hinges on the somewhat tenuous coincidence of Batman and Superman's mothers sharing a Christian name, and frankly doing so was an egregious misstep, but it isn't simply that which stays Bruce's hand. For the first time, he sees his foe not as an alien, or an invader, but a man. A son. Someone who will shortly be orphaned, unless Batman can stop it. The execution of the scene is heavy-handed and, frankly, pants (Zack Snyder may have the attention span of a hyperkinetic rabbit, but we don't, and we don't need to be bopped on the bonce with a flashback after every single line that calls back to earlier in the film), but the sentiment of it is undeniable, and is strong enough to mostly save it.

This is almost immediately followed by Batman's rescue operation: a cramped, brutal and lightning-fast brawl with a warehouse of Lex's mercenaries, and this too is executed flawlessly. Mixing punches, kicks, throws, grapples and gadgets, it feels like a live-action adaptation of Rocksteady's Arkham games' battles, with each section of the battle flowing into the next with incredible speed yet allowing us to take in every thud and crunch with teeth-gritting power.

As bloated and overlong a fight as it is to add to a bloated and overlong
film, this is exactly what Doomsday should be: a powerful juggernaut
who kills Superman and then has the decency to sod off and die with
his storytelling purpose fulfilled.

Unfortunately, the ball had to be dropped somewhere. The final, three-and-a-bit-way (Batman is, understandably, about as useful as Anne Frank's drum kit) showdown between Supes, Wonder Woman and Cave Troll, er, Doomsday, is an overlong, overstuffed, frenetic action splurge that bounds happily all over the place like an excitable dog, licking anything in reach, rubbing its arse all over everything and occasionally pissing itself in its sadly not-very-endearing enthusiasm, yet in all its length and breadth it only infrequently finds something properly interesting to look at. Most of them are the quieter moments - a nuked and lifeless Superman in space being revived by the yellow sun; Wonder Woman's infectious glee at being the only character in the film to enjoy combat rather than treating it like a grim punching exercise; Batman's gloomy "oh shit" as he realises he's still strapped into the Batwing and Doomsday's charging his laser - although it's nice to see the old comic standby of the eye beam tug of war between Doomsday and Superman. Battles in which great clods of earth are thrown up with each leap, in which buildings are levelled with every second sneeze, and in which each blow landed sends its receiver pinwheeling off into the middle distance may work terribly well in DC's consistently superlative animated movies, but there's a reason why they aren't done terribly often in live action, especially when a colour palette like Snyder's means the camera has to rocket around to find the bluish-and-reddish grey blob being punched backwards through a cloud of blackish-and-brownish grey blobs. The fight drags tremendously, and coupled with Doomsday's periodic tendency to unleash all the energy he's stored up in city block-clearing blasts, it's just an avalanche of largely meaningless noise and particle effects, and an unwelcome return to the spasmodic and jittery, drawn-out slugfests of Man of Steel, where we have little to no sense that any blow exchanged has any noticeable effect on any of the participants. And it's doubly disappointing after the two brilliantly-done battles before it, that had such minute attention to detail and command of focus even amongst the frantic melee, that I'm starting to wonder if Zack Snyder wasn't off sick when they were done. But there's a nice nod to Arthurian legend - and John Boorman's Excalibur - when an impaled Superman pulls himself down the length of Doomsday's spike to ensure he's close enough to ram the Kryptonite spear home and ensure he takes his mortal foe with him, although Superman's death is so monumentally unlikely to stick that they don't even bother to sustain the pretence all the way to the end, making all those slow-motion shots of dual funerals and public grief and teary hand-wringing that came before just so much pissing in the wind.

The music is Hans Zimmer's superhero score swansong, so naturally it's excellent, with every major character getting their own recognisable themes (Luthor's is almost good enough to make me forgive the hideous character. Almost.) and several stirring and blood-pumping heroic moments during the final battle that make you want to stand up and punch the air. As in Man of Steel, Zimmer leans just a little heavily on the percussion for my taste, but it isn't remotely enough to sink the soundtrack. Though entirely unnecessary, comparing DC's cinematic outings with Marvel's is so obvious a thing to do that it can't be avoided, and I will say that, wherever they might be weaker, the music in DC's films always seems to me so much more distinctive and representative of individual characters. Even as I write this, I'm trying to bring a distinctive leitmotif or bombastic battle score to mind from one of Marvel's movies and coming up blank. Zimmer ends on a high, and I hope to God that whoever replaces him is at least halfway up to it. Anyone got Henry Jackman's phone number?

I have a sneaking suspicion Wonder Woman's ensemble will look
considerably less brown without Snyder in the director's chair

The tone of the film, as with Man of Steel, is a touch self-important and dour for my tastes. Well, in fact, it's extremely both of these things, with only a few moments of levity sprinkled throughout, usually courtesy of a weary and possibly soused Alfred and grumpy headline-chaser Perry White. Superman could do with a little of the gentle big-heartedness of his print incarnation, but he is at least merely earnest rather than cruel and grim like Batman, of whom this kind of moody broodiness is to be expected. But then, tone is a difficult beast in superhero films. The bright colours, crazy powers and spandex bodysuits all carry more than a whiff of the absurd about them, and Marvel plays these aspects to the wisecracking hilt very well, but their villains Malekith, Yellowjacket and Ultron were all robbed of any dignity and effectiveness by their films' inability to take them seriously. On DC's side, we see that when gods and monsters clash, and worlds and realities are at stake, there are costs and consequences. Marvel's Earth has suffered public attacks by alien cyborgs and massed assaults by robot drones, yet the films would have us believe that there's always someone at hand to run the evacuation, and no casualties more severe than cars and masonry. Batman V Superman tackles the collateral damage of superhero conflicts head on, and the deaths and debate this causes give the film a sense of size and reality that Ultron's antics-in-a-vacuum sorely lacked. I don't criticise the darkness of DC's films: why should they do what Marvel are doing, when Marvel are already doing it? But Nolan understood that darkness and grittiness are not the same as storytelling maturity, and sadly Snyder does not, even if the script might occasionally suggest that he should try to.

When I saw the savaging Dawn of Justice was receiving at the hands of the press, I was (although sad to see the film adaptations of my preferred comic properties turn out so poorly) rubbing my hands in anticipation at being able to tear into a film I had prophesied disaster for ever since the deluge of announcements revealing the director, cast, and just how many unnecessary side characters were going to be stuffed in until the waistcoat buttons popped off. I was disappointed: what I found was merely a well-acted film with some strong ideas and competently-directed action bogged down by a lack of judgement and restraint. It's a hot mess to be sure, but it's a hot mess through which can be seen the skeleton of a good story, rather than mess all the way down. And that's one of the most annoying things about it. Batman V Superman dies the death of a thousand cuts: there is no one mortal wound that cripples it, just niggles at almost every level that could easily have been remedied with an extra line of dialogue here, or a judiciously-snipped scene there. 

The film's biggest mystery is how Lois Lane and Clark Kent are
still employed. We never see them type so much as a syllable.

The lack of explanation for why anyone thinks insurgent bodies full of bullets are the work of Superman. The Wayne Enterprises executive who waits so long to evacuate the Metropolis office that you wonder if he needs to ask Bruce permission to use the bathroom, and then stays behind to die anyway. The mineralogist who just somehow knows that an ugly grey rock will break apart to reveal pure Kryptonite if he hits it just once with a hammer. The mysterious polaroids of Batman victims sent to Clark Kent, and the angry scrawled-over cheques that Scoot McNairy's disabled Wayne Enterprises employee is supposedly returning (hint: he isn't, Luthor is behind both of these, but the film never really tries to make that clear). The lengthy dream sequence that hints at the future involvement of Darkseid and the forces of Apokolips so obliquely that only the most dedicated comic readers will have any clue what the blind blithering hell is happening for about four consecutive minutes. None of these things, and the several more irritations to be found, are capable of sinking the film, but they're unhelpful and annoying because they would have been so easy to avoid.

Perhaps the 30-extra-minutes Ultimate Cut puts a lot of this right, or perhaps it just piles on more over-egging. Personally, I rather suspect that it will do both: the new film will be just as divisive as the vanilla edition, with equal moments of power and brilliance, and frustration and stupidity; there will just be more of it.

I enjoyed the enjoyable parts of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice just enough, I would say, to give it a comparatively generous score, but I cannot avoid mentioning that this 'decent' film frequently made me angrier than some I would call merely 'bad'. Fortunately, all of the pre-release bumf we were being force-fed for over a year before release only served to make me more sceptical, rather than more hyped. It's not worse than Sucker Punch - I'd like to see a film that is, if only out of morbid curiosity - but if I'd actually gone into the cinema expecting it to be good, the sheer level of disappointment might well have resulted in a negative score. After how well-written and executed The Dark Knight Trilogy was, it pains me to have to say that the best way to enjoy Batman's latest big screen outing is to switch your brain resolutely to the 'Off' position (and throw the key away just in case), but that I fear is what you will have to do, because if BvS is just one thing, then it is a film that does not come off well when thought too much about. Too much genuine love, though sometimes misdirected, has been poured into this film by its stars and its crew and its technicians and designers and, yes, its oft-misguided director, for the end product to be bad. But it is much less than it could have been, and in some ways that kind of disappointment is worse than disaster.

And I still think the title is stupid.

6/10 - Worse than the film we needed, better than the film Snyder deserved.

Game - Dark Souls (Xbox 360)

Praise the sun!

From the mind of Hidetaka Miyazaki comes Dark Souls: the spiritual successor to FromSoftware's punishing PlayStation 3 exclusive, the awkwardly-named Demon's Souls, which due to not owning said console I have never played. Much like the earlier game you take on the role of a fairly standard RPG archetype - squishy wizard, sneaky rogue, shooty archer, slashy warrior, tanky knight - plopped with little or no memory of who they are or what they're doing there into an enormous and largely empty dark fantasy world haunted by the undead or insane shadows of its former denizens, or the even more horrific beasts that killed them. And usually you will die a lot because you didn't pick the slashy warrior or the tanky knight, you blithering cretin.

These guys in the sewers with torches aren't so bad. It's the blobs
of goo that cling to the ceiling and drop on you that you've got
to look out for.

Because the thing that everyone knows about Dark Souls is that it is hard. Really, really hard. So a strong melee character that can soak up damage and dish it out is probably your best bet for a first playthrough, because the most worthwhile ranged weapons and magic items aren't found until quite a bit later and you'll need to get there somehow, and kneecapping yourself out of the gate by picking the wrong class will make things a lot harder. But not impossible: the key point of Dark Souls' difficulty isn't to unfairly club you about the head until you're broken and weeping in a corner. In most of the expensive triple A games and franchises these days, you're dragged through the game at breakneck speed, normally with some amount of hand-holding with tutorial messages, on-screen prompts and AI partners, before being safely deposited at the end credits for a pat on the head before shuffling off to the multiplayer, or the next game. Try this in Dark Souls, and you'll be sick of the 'YOU DIED' screen before the end of the tutorial. 

The game isn't being unfair: your deaths will often be frustrating, badly-timed, and in very awkward places, but it will be your fault. It may be because you zig when you should have zagged. It may be that you step on the wrong pressure plate and get a crossbow bolt in the cranium. It may be that you went in for a cheeky stab at exactly the wrong part of the boss' wind-up animation. It may simply be that you barrel into a room too fast and get overwhelmed by the basic minions that any other game would see you desultorily farming for gold by the hundreds. Dark Souls rewards patience, and encourages mastery, and your many deaths - and there will be many - are there to ensure that you pay attention: that you learn the reach and speed of your own weapons and those of your enemies; that you learn to spot which treasure chests are actually Mimics that will eat you; that you recognise which of the boss' attacks give you time to run in and get a few hits in before backing off; that you know which attacks can be blocked, which must be dodged, and which must simply be tanked with gritted teeth. You will have to learn which damage types are best against which enemies, which types of shield work best with swords and which with spears. You will have to decide if the enormous swinging arcs of that greatsword are really what you need in that narrow passageway. You will have to manage your light attacks, and strong attacks, and blocks, and evades so that you don't run out of stamina at a bad time and leave yourself wide open (hint: there is no good time to run out of stamina). In short, you will have to 'git gud'. All those pretty art assets and settings you breeze through in other games and forget five minutes later? You won't do that in Dark Souls. It won't let you. You'll have to learn 'em, and learn 'em good, because otherwise you'll be watching the same bit of level kill you over and over for eternity.

"Hello and welcome to Dark Souls, I will be your tutorial boss.
Exits are located AT THE END OF MY HAMMER, PUNY MORTAL"

Gameplay manages to be both sprawling and linear. After leaving the tutorial clifftop asylum, you're dumped at Firelink Shrine, a safe hub area with a persistent and reassuring soundtrack where many of the NPCs you meet on your quest will turn up at some point. You can head down some steps to a cemetery and the catacombs beyond, or take a lift down to the dark, flooded, haunted and supremely creepy city of New Londo, or use a nearby viaduct to get into the Undead Burg. A nearby NPC will tell you that you have to ring two Bells of Awakening, and suggests you take this last route - for most of the game you don't even get this much help - but it's really up to you. Except it isn't: it's an illusion of choice. The other routes will lead you to enemies that are too high level to be killed yet, and the ghosts of New Londo cannot even be harmed until you have a cursed weapon or are cursed yourself - a status effect you probably want to avoid. Sure, you could fight them now, and beat them if you're good enough. But you probably won't be yet. 

The best indicator that you're going the right way in Dark Souls is usually that the enemies aren't killing you in one hit. As you kill enemies, you gain souls, which can be used to level you up, or used in conjunction with crafting materials to upgrade your weapons or armour at certain blacksmiths. Higher levels and better upgrades cost incrementally more souls, but more powerful enemies drop more souls. If you're killed, you instantly go Hollow - a zombified state in which you cannot summon other players or NPCs to help you with bosses, and look hideously ugly to boot - and lose your accumulated souls, which you drop at the point where you died. If you can make it back there from the bonfire you respawned at, you can collect them again. Die en route, and they're gone for good. Bonfires act as checkpoints and - later - fast travel spots, refilling your healing flask and health, but also respawning all the enemies you've killed, except for some unique monsters and the bosses. You will often find yourself on low health and running out of precious health flasks, weighing up the choice of forging on to the next bonfire through unknown dangers or safely returning to the last one in the hope that your newfound knowledge will allow you to make it back through the gauntlet you just ran without being so badly hurt next time. A hard-earned bonfire brings a palpable feeling of relief, and the game quickly and insidiously instils in you the "just a bit further; just one more attempt" mentality that sees you emerging blinking from your den much later than expected to discover you've been declared dead. And the greatest high of all is to be found when you finally beat that horrible boss you've been smashing your head against for the past few hours/days/weeks. And once you've finally finished the game, you can do it all again on New Game Plus where the enemies have more health and deal much more damage. And then again about six more times, if you wish. If you can.

This headless Iron Golem looks imposing, but the unstoppable badass of
an NPC summon nearby can actually beat the whole boss for you.

Story in the Souls games is usually multi-layered. You play a lone wanderer, normally with some ailment or other, who has journeyed to the distant, sealed-off kingdom in which the game is set in order to get answers, cure yourself, or save the world. This, as far as your vulnerable little avatar is concerned, is the story. But there's a much larger story at play: the story of the land you find yourself in, and just how it ended up in the sorry state in which you find it. This story is uncovered organically - like an archaeologist fussing away in a dig site with their tiny brushes - as you talk to NPCs, read the descriptions of items, and sometimes make educated guesses based on the names and placement of areas, bosses, and so forth. Sometimes NPCs lie to you. Sometimes you might find two pieces of lore that contradict each other. The great effect of all this is that, with very little actual visible storytelling, FromSoftware create a palpable sense of a real and lived-in world: a world with a history as long and rich and intricate as our own, in which you are just a tiny and insignificant post-script. Walking through the beautiful but eerily empty mid-game city of Anor Londo - all stained glass and spires - increases your sense of wonder, as you shimmy along buttresses and stride through enormous courtyards. There's a tangible hostility to the kingdom of Lordran, but not in the standard way of jump scares and every third door concealing a festering monstrosity waiting to leap out at you with an almighty "Abloogy-woogy-woo", but simply the passive certainty that this now-deserted place was built to be inhabited by beings much larger and more powerful than you. The horror of Dark Souls is that of being the last man left alive at the end of a dying world: a world of barren fields and cinders shortly to be inherited by the few shambling, slavering creatures that have been unfortunate enough to survive to see its final days.

Anor Londo, city of the gods, conceals many secrets: a hidden world,
a hidden covenant, and a hidden boss. Can you pierce the illusion?

And what a world to be trapped in. By turns oppressive and expansive, serene and terrifying, sun-dappled and drowned in shadow, Lordran is an awe-inspiring setting. Medieval-style villages and hamlets and sewers we all know well enough, but there are some real doozies of level design in here. The gothic spires and cathedrals of Anor Londo are beautiful and hauntingly still; the snowy peaks and bridges of the Painted World of Ariamis are eerie but picturesque; the rolling boulders and swinging axe-blades of Sen's Fortress are treacherous and lethal; the underground, lava-flooded city of Lost Izalith is sweltering, rocky and imposing, with the roots of enormous trees snaking and grasping through the rocky ceiling above you. And, fittingly, the game uses darkness unbelievably well. There's none of that "things look exactly the same in the dark, just tinted blue" nonsense here: among the treacherous caverns and chasms of the Tomb of the Giants, the darkness swallows everything further than a few feet and you'll need a torch to safely navigate, but that means you won't have a shield to protect yourself from the giant, hard-hitting skeleton monsters lurking just inches away in the dark. Take a careless step in the gloomy, water-slicked ruins of flooded New Londo and you'll plummet into the black, featureless void that spawned such horrors that the world above decided to seal off the city and drown it rather than face them. Such eldritch locations are almost as bad for your nerves - and health bar - as the enemies that wander them, and they seem to be working against you just as much. Every time you make it to the next bonfire, you haven't just defeated the last lot of enemies: you've defeated that part of the world as well. But the truly impressive thing about Dark Souls' world design, is how interconnected it all is. Firelink Shrine is an impressive hub through which it is possible to quickly reach just about everywhere, and each area connects to several others, often through well-hidden paths or even entirely new zones that some players probably never find. Some of the great joys of Dark Souls are opening up shortcuts that let you bypass large chunks of area that you've already fought through, if you need a quick route from that precious bonfire to the next boss on your hit-list, or being able to look at a distant feature in the skybox and realise that just an hour or so earlier you were climbing up it, or discovering that these vast and terrifying undead catacombs were sitting just under your cosy home base hub the entire game.

The terrifying bosses of New Londo, so named because of the amount
of times you'll cry out that you're in "Four King hell!"

But what would these sterling settings be without decent denizens? Well, the enemy design in Dark Souls is top notch too. There are the usual armoured knights and zombified peasants to be found, of course, and your run-of-the-mill dragons and giant rats and bullheaded demons. But there are also golems made of sparkling blue crystal; building-sized luminous butterflies; huge malformed centipedes that bleed magma; and hilarious-looking mushroom men that punch unwary wanderers with the force of a steam hammer. There are ghosts that can glide through walls to grab you, and mutated frog monsters that can turn you to stone with a single puff of gas. There are horribly annoying skeletons stuck inside wagon wheels that like to roll at you. There are weird, human shaped jelly blobs that ooze around holding spears. There are enormous dog-like skeletons that lurk in the pitch-black Tomb of the Giants, and there are the bouncing back legs and tails of zombie dragons whose top halfs rotted off long ago. There are strange, bubbling mutant jellyfish women, and muscular warriors with the heads of snakes. There are these really annoying little gits with poison blowpipes in the rickety deathtrap shanty of Blighttown, which is so difficult to navigate that the FPS invariably drops to about 10 on entering the area for a good minute because the game needs to devote the resources to making sure the AI monsters that live there don't plummet to their own deaths from the many ladders and platforms.

The bosses, especially, are spectacular, and each is complimented by a suitably epic/disturbing/tense/weirdly-serene/delete-as-appropriate musical score. My personal favourite boss, although probably the hardest I fought, was the double-team of Ornstein and Smough, an enormous armoured fat man with a hammer and a shorter thin man with a spear (although both considerably dwarf your character), who wiped every available surface of their cathedral arena with my arse probably about twenty times before I emerged swearing and victorious. Second prize goes to the Four Kings, the nightmarish bosses that are your reward for making it through the gloomy and treacherous New Londo: you drop off a staircase into a deeply creepy, featureless black void called the Abyss - hope you've got the right item equipped or you'll just die instantly. With no scenery or light sources to judge distance by, it's disorientating enough, when suddenly a large frayed spectre materialises somewhere in the arena (better get that camera on a swivel), at which point you have to sprint over to him, dodging his deadly magic attacks and his painful sword swings, and wail on him as hard as possible in the hope of killing him before the next one spawns in about thirty seconds - God help you if you're too slow and end up fighting all four at once. Boss fights in Dark Souls are fun, without a doubt, but sometimes you'll be too busy in the moment gritting your teeth, popping veins in your temple, and wearing the dodge button away to a frayed nubbin. But when that sweet relief of hard-fought victory pours over you, you'll realise that you were enjoying it.

The forbidding, blasted wasteland of the Kiln of the First Flame. It
is here that you must decide the fate of the world. It may not
be as simple a choice as some characters will tell you.

It's probably worth mentioning that, as a singleplayer nut, I played the almost the entirety of my six or so playthroughs in offline mode, so I was neither inconvenienced by other players invading me for fun at awkward moments, nor did I get to enjoy the jolly cooperation of summoning other players to help me with tricky bosses. I also missed out on the ingenious feature that allows you to view other players' bloodstains to see a ghostly apparition showing you how they died, and the method whereby players can leave messages for each other, although as far as I can tell most of these seem to be hilarious suggestions to "try jumping" in front of bottomless pits, or "amazing chest ahead" in front of a well-endowed female NPC. It is still possible, however, when struggling with a difficult boss, to summon an AI partner to assist you, if you can find their summon sign, and if you've gathered enough Humanity to get back into Human form. Usually, these allies are only really good for diverting aggro away from you, but sometimes that's all you need. My dedication to doing it alone also meant that I didn't make the most out of the game's covenants - various factions NPCs can induct you into that add little extra modifiers and rewards for using the coop or PVP functions.

Firelink Shrine: gateway to everywhere else.

I lied a bit earlier. You're not the last man in the world. Dark Souls is populated - although thinly - with an array of NPC characters, some of whom will sell you things, some of whom will give you advice, some of whom who have little stories of their own that you'll interject into if you keep meeting them, and some of whom will stab you in the back (bloody Lautrec). You'll bump into them only in particular spots, as none of them are ever actually seen to move around or do any fighting, so how they're managing to get through these places but leave the monsters and bosses that get in your way still standing is a mystery for the ages. All the NPCs have the standard fantasy accent - various shades of British - and a lot of their voices, although performed by professional actors and voice actors, sound so ordinary that they hardly seem to belong in a fantasy environment. I suspect this is probably deliberate though, because most of them speak in fatigued, world-weary tones, or the eerie calm of someone who isn't quite all there anymore, ending every sentence with a nervous "heh heh heh". Even the nice ones are pretty unnerving, except for the irrepressibly cheerful, grossly incandescent Solaire of Astora, a chummy knight who introduces you to the whole summoning concept.

While we're on the topic of sound design, I absolutely cannot go without mentioning the music. The score for Dark Souls, by Motoi Sakuraba, is simply one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard, in any medium. The majority of the game lacks any music whatsoever, so the few locations that do use it - your base at Firelink Shrine, your meeting with Princess Gwynevere, the boss battles - are doubly impactful, and perfectly tailored to their locations. Firelink Shrine is soft, slow and homely, if a little mournful; the battle with Ornstein and Smough is soaring and bombastic, making use of orchestra, choir and church organ; the tense, disorientating fight with the Four Kings uses gradually louder chants, accelerating strings and pounding percussion. The battle with the final boss is an unexpectedly poignant piano piece, that only makes sense once you understand who he is, and how he finds himself in the state in which you finally meet him.

If this review has done its job, then you won't even be reading this bit: you'll have dashed off to buy it, sat down, locked all the doors, taken the phone off the hook and gotten sucked right in. I'm sure there will be those who find everything I've written above in praise of the game to be their idea of hell. To them I say: don't touch me you filthy casual. Dark Souls is one of the best games (and game series) I have ever played, and if the long and rambling love letter disguised as a review above can't convince you, then I don't think anything will. Yes, it is difficult, and it is deep, and confusing, and sometimes seems to be deliberately unhelpful. With any game, you get out of it in enjoyment what you are willing to put in in effort. Dark Souls is one of few games that forces you to put in enormous effort, but it does this because it knows that if you're willing to meet its challenge, there's nothing else quite like it.

10/10 - Dark Souls is so good, I won't even insist that the developer who implemented weapon degradation is shot.

Film - Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

You were the chosen one! (Warning - Jumbo Review; possible mild spoilers)

It's about thirty years since the deaths of Palpatine and Vader and the defeat of the Empire at Endor. In the intervening time, the First Order has risen from the Empire's ashes under Supreme Leader Snoke and, with the New Republic unwilling to plunge the galaxy into war again, Leia Organa breaks away to form a small, plucky Resistance to fight back. Their best pilot, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac, Ex Machina), is on desert world Jakku, searching for a star map that will lead the Resistance to the almost-mythical Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who has gone into seclusion after his attempts to rebuild the Jedi Order ended in tragedy. When Poe is captured by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, Girls) and the First Order, his droid BB-8 escapes with the map, encountering young scavenger and mechanic Rey (Daisy Ridley), while Poe himself is rescued by defecting Stormtrooper FN-2187 (John Boyega, Attack the Block, which is very good by the way), renamed Finn. After escaping the agents of the First Order with the help of Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and first-mate Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), Finn and Rey find themselves enlisted on a secret and desperate mission to return BB-8 and his map to the Resistance, allowing Skywalker to be found and hope to be restored to the galaxy.

There was nothing truly wrong with the conception or journey of any of the characters in the prequels, but they frequently and reliably fell down in the execution, with very few of the actors - Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid being the wonderful exceptions - able to rise above the stilted and awkward material they were given by Lucas in both his dialogue and his direction, often forced by the inadequate screenwriting to describe or explain their feelings rather than demonstrate them. Furthermore, with every named character being a senior politician, a warrior monk or an evil sorcerer, the trilogy had no relatable everyman for the audience to latch on to. With the combined forces of writer Lawrence Kasdan (The Empire Strikes Back) and director J.J. Abrams (Super 8, Star Trek), the characters finally feel like real people, able to act and speak and develop in a way that feels natural to them, rather than simply being railroaded into whatever destiny they need to meet for A New Hope to happen. Just about every character gets something interesting and, often, amusing to say - the cast being allowed to deliver their lines like normal humans rather than emotionless robots means The Force Awakens' comedy elicits grins rather than cringes. Although some characters are given little time in which to shine, the film handles them all deftly enough that we can be sure that those who do feel underdeveloped have much more still to reveal as the trilogy progresses.

Given the tall order of essentially carrying the film, little-known Brits Daisy Ridley and John Boyega excel wonderfully, giving more lively and nuanced performances than even the original trio of Luke, Leia and Han managed (perhaps a somewhat unfair comparison, given that Lucas was still writing the dialogue back then). Abrams and Kasdan use the old guard sparingly, re-introducing them one at a time, cleverly beginning with Ford's aged but still dashing rogue Solo - the most relatable of the original three by some distance. Leia (Carrie Fisher) returns some time later, bringing out a more tender, wounded but welcome side to the curmudgeonly Han. Luke is the least-seen of the original cast, appropriately: as the last of the Jedi and one of the most powerful characters in the now non-canon Expanded Universe, too much Luke might have crushed The Force Awakens under the myth that has accumulated about the character. Used exceptionally sparingly here while the film patiently sets up its new characters and conflicts, the real reintroduction of the Skywalker legacy is deferred to the next film, where it can be given the room it needs without burying the incipient trilogy under the weight of its own backstory.

"There are stories about what happened."
"It's non-canon. All of it."

The central character for the new trilogy would appear to be Rey, a young scavenger on the planet Jakku. Like Luke and Anakin before her, she grew up on a desert world, is an ace pilot even of vehicles she's never flown before, and likes to tinker with droids, ships and whatever valuable parts she can salvage by day from the wrecked Imperial and Rebel ships strewn throughout the sand dunes. By night, she sits outside her cosy abode (a toppled AT-AT), looking at the ships taking off from the distant spaceport and wearing a salvaged Rebel pilot's helmet: without a single word of dialogue, we know that she dreams of leaving Jakku and travelling the stars, but is settled in for the long haul. Her early lines to BB-8 after rescuing him from a junker establish that she's waiting for her family to come back for her, and although she jokingly tells him that her background is "[classified] too. Big secret", a part-vision part-flashback she receives later in the film suggests that she was left on Jakku for a reason and may be more connected to the Jedi and the Skywalkers than she knows, but more than this the film declines to tell us. What we do know is that Rey is brave, intelligent, quiet, and more than capable, with an idealistic view of the Resistance and the Rebellion, and a determination to stand against evil even if it terrifies her. Beyond these qualities, we know little, and certainly she does not appear as flawed and undergo as much of an arc as Finn (which has led to accusations that the character is a Mary Sue - accusations that were never levelled at Luke and Anakin, and so make me wonder exactly what it is that some find so unrealistic about a brave, wholesome, idealistic and skilled girl). It's clear that the film is playing Rey up as something of a mystery, and no doubt the series will uncover some dark and hidden depths beneath the enigmatic past as it continues. Daisy Ridley gives an absolutely winning performance, charming precisely because of its wide-eyed wonder and purity, and its infectious enthusiasm for adventure, as well as its steely determination in the face of the soulless onslaught of the First Order and the dark side scare tactics of Kylo Ren, and her burgeoning realisation of her own strength and purpose after previously believing herself to be "no-one" is a joy to behold.

The pairing that launched a thousand fanfics.

Finn is much more of a secondary protagonist than a supporting character, and the film gives him plenty of things to do without it seeming that he's just there as a helper for Rey. His own history as a Stormtrooper, though left mostly-offscreen, informs his every thought and deed, and he undergoes a similar arc to Han Solo in the original: mainly concerned with his own well-being, he rejects any kind of cause whatsoever, abandoning the First Order and then only going along with Rey on BB-8's mission to return the map to the Resistance only as far as it gives him a direct line away from his former masters. Unlike Solo, Finn's primary motivation isn't callous self-interest, but fear. He has seen firsthand the ruthlessness and military might of the First Order, and although he refuses to go along with their conquest and slaughter of innocents, he believes they are too powerful to be fought and simply wants to run away. When he first meets Rey, he leaps upon her false conclusion that he's with the Resistance - Boyega's confident but clueless bluffing and comic delivery here are superlative - and she becomes the only person to ever treat Finn as a person and not a number. Through his friendship with her and growing investment in her mission, Finn comes to understand - though the film happily never feels the need to have him say so - the worth in fighting and possibly dying for a cause greater than himself. Boyega shines in the part as a likable coward, bluffing and occasionally bumbling his way to safety whenever he can, but also has the determination and bravery to capture Finn's moments of action and heroism, and the acting chops to imbue his most honest scenes with sensitivity and vulnerability, and the character is so well-constructed that Finn's disparate qualities satisfyingly harmonise with each other rather than jarring.

Captain Solo's days of gundark ear-tearing are long past.

Surprisingly, I was a little less convinced by the return of everyone's favourite scruffy-looking nerf herder. Don't get me wrong: it warms the cockles of my heart to see Harrison Ford back on the Millennium Falcon, swinging his DL-44 around like a Western gunslinger back-to-back with Chewbacca and playing the new Obi-Wan, dispensing nuggets of sour wisdom to the idealistic youngsters who just don't know what the galaxy is really like. But there are a few spots in Ford's performance where it's clear the distance of time since Return of the Jedi has taken its toll, and it suddenly feels like I'm watching him in Crystal Skull rather than Empire Strikes Back, reprising the character because he feels like he has to, rather than wants to. However, these rust spots are outweighed by many more wonderful moments, mainly with Finn and Chewie, where the old Han shines through the crusty carbonite shell as though he'd never been away at all, including laugh-out-loud moments where he instructs Finn, in typically blunt fashion, about how the Force works (or doesn't), and when he insists to Chewie that, yes, he does always talk his way out of tight spots - every time. His long-deferred reunion with Leia is played perfectly by both actors, sharing the knowing familiarity and unspoken connection of the best and oldest of friends, but with a wounded edge of reserve and regret that the happy ending promised by Return of the Jedi couldn't be forever. By the end, he still feels like the same rogue flying by the seat of his pants as always, but there's an edge of weariness that lets us know that Han has lived a life, and suffered emotionally in a way that he would never have dreamed of by the end of the last trilogy.

Han Solo comforts Leia during one of her 'gold bikini' flashbacks.

Carrie Fisher, returning as Leia, is probably the least well-served of the original cast. Hamill's role is much smaller and he has far fewer lines, but there is a palpable sense that the film has been building up to him, and the mythical nature of the Skywalker name invests Hamill's appearance with a weighty and epic quality despite its brevity. Leia, on the other hand, doesn't really get to do anything that a new character or anyone else couldn't have done (aside from the references to her relationship with Han), and has become a bit of a Mon Mothma. However, there are some nice scenes that hint, although the Jedi life apparently wasn't for her, her connection to the Force is still strong and keenly felt, and it is wonderful to see her portrayed as a caring and maternal figure without the usual screenwriter's pitfall of it making it feminise or undermine her qualities as a successful leader and diplomat, and the presence of both her and Rey probably serve to make this the most progressive Star Wars film so far. It says a lot for the quality of the writing and the performing of these characters that an actor only just failing to 100% recapture a role they last played thirty years ago is the worst I can say about them, and a simple moment where Solo restates his old boast about the twelve-parsec Kessel Run while wistfully looking over the Falcon cockpit he hasn't seen for years gave me my second-biggest smile of the entire film. Although he has no (intelligible) lines, Peter Mayhew steps effortlessly back into the role as trusted first-mate Chewbacca, and it's worth repeated viewings just to notice his subtle, deprecating body language in the background of scenes, as he half-apologetically undermines his long-term partner's bluster and boasting. Although Chewie's wordless nature makes it difficult for him to rise above simply being Han Solo's tagalong, The Force Awakens finds much more for him to do than previous films, and he takes a leading role in many of the battle scenes, as we finally get to see the power of his Wookiee bowcaster in action.

Light years from Hoth, Poe is perplexed to find a
perfectly intact snowman.

The last of the 'good guys' is the Resistance's ace pilot Poe Dameron, who disappears for a long portion of the movie when he and Finn crash on Jakku in their liberated TIE fighter. Before this, he had appeared wisecracking and brave in the face of interrogation and Kylo Ren's intimidating mask, as all heroes should be, but also compassionate in his worry for the safety of the Jakku villagers trying to buy him time to flee in his X-Wing with the map to Luke. Unlike virtually all of the other characters I've seen Oscar Isaac play, there's virtually no darkness to Poe Dameron. He both looks and acts ruggedly, traditionally heroic, and though he's clearly an experienced combat veteran, he isn't cynical or jaded whatsoever, and when he demonstrates his piloting skills in coming to the rescue of Rey and friends later in the film, he whoops and hollers with exhilaration. It can't be said that - with his limited time here - there's a tremendous amount of personality to Poe Dameron, but having suffered years of anti-heroes and flawed heroes and the apparent belief that a protagonist can't be interesting unless they have some crippling personal neuroses, the steadfast, levelheaded, earnest goodness of Poe - and Finn and Rey as well, to be honest - is a breath of very welcome fresh air, and I look forward to seeing what Isaac will be able to do with the character with some expanded screentime in the following films. This also seems a good time to mention that Poe's droid, BB-8, is every bit a worthy successor to R2-D2 and C-3PO as the team's droid/multi-functional tech expert, as well as comic relief - especially a guffaw-inducing bit of physical comedy as Finn (who, unlike Rey, does not understand any alien or droid languages) tries to persuade BB-8 to give up the location of the Resistance base so he can convince the nearby Rey that he already knows it. As good as it is to see R2-D2 and C-3PO again when they turn up later - R2's entrance is dramatic, 3PO's is hilarious in taking the wind out of an emotional moment - with BB-8 on hand throughout I can't say I felt their absence too keenly.

Yup, it's an Abrams all right.

Kylo Ren, with his black faceless mask and dark cloak, appears at first to be a Darth Vader wannabe, although his impressive Force powers and rage-fuelled swings of his crossguard-equipped lightsaber (apparently required due to a flaw in its construction) mark him out as a dangerous and intimidating opponent, especially during his Force-assisted interrogation of Poe, in which he tries to drag the answers straight from Poe's mind. The deep voice modulation of the mask combined with Driver's intense-but-restrained delivery transforms a prosaic question like "Where is it?" into a moment of pants-wetting terror. For the most part, his power seems absolute and the rest of the First Order walk on eggshells when dealing with him - especially when reporting failure. During Ren's interrogation of Rey, he removes his mask in the timeless villain tradition of trying to appear more human in the hope this will somehow endear them to the hero, and we the viewers are greeted with the bouffant hair, crooked nose and red watery eyes of Adam Driver. The removal of Ren's mask is a considerable reduction of his menace, but unlike Anakin's petulant whining it feels entirely deliberate. Ren is still conflicted about his choice of the dark path; still feeling the pull of the light - he invokes the charred and melted helmet of Darth Vader for forgiveness and guidance. Indeed, it is revealed that - in a nice touch that works both within the film and on a meta level about it - Ren fears that he is not a worthy successor to the mythical status and achievements of Darth Vader, and is consciously emulating him. But where Anakin's immaturity damaged his credibility as a great hero turned terrifying instrument of evil (and sadly undermined the portrayal of the character in the original trilogy), Kylo Ren's conflict is handled far more intelligently, and he too undergoes a character arc throughout the film as he struggles to fully commit to the dark side. Having not yet completed his training, he is a weapon of raw power but little discipline or focus. As a consequence, he lacks the quietly imposing confidence of Vader, taking out his frustrations on computer banks and furniture in loud, destructive tantrums when things go wrong, and ultimately picking a fight he is too weak to win and having to slink off with his tail between his legs. We still know very little about him: he was a young apprentice of Luke's, but turned on the new Jedi Order thanks to Snoke's manipulation and destroyed it, sending Luke into exile, but what it was that drove Ren to the dark side - what desire or dissatisfaction he had that could not be remedied by the light - is left unexplained, doubtless to be explored in future instalments.

Kylo Ren is assisted in his mission to reclaim the map to Skywalker by the sinister forces of the First Order, including General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson, Ex Machina) and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie, Game of Thrones) and presided over by their master, Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis, The Lord of the Rings). Phasma's chrome armour and sheer size is impressive, but like Boba Fett before her she mainly stands in the back of shot looking intimidating. Her weapon is never seen to be fired and, although I'm sure there was plenty of her left on the cutting room floor, her role never seems to be as large, important, or cool as it should have been giving the amount of pre-release attention given to her - we shall have to see what the coming films make of her, as unfortunately she does not come out of this one smelling of roses. Snoke, too, appears infrequently but, like the Emperor's hologram in Empire, it heightens his effectiveness rather than diminishing it. At first he appears to be an enormous humanoid figure enthroned at the First Order's Starkiller base, but this is revealed to be an enlarged, realistic hologram transmitted from an unknown location. A wonderful CGI and motion-capture creation, (so really, who other than the eternally-excellent Serkis could have played him?) Snoke is tall, bony and hairless, with sunken cheeks and what looks like a terrible wound down the centre of his forehead - reminiscent of Palpatine's crinkled features, though to say whether this is coincidence, deliberate misdirection or some kind of hint would be baseless conjecture at this point. Speaking in a low, raspy voice, Snoke effortlessly intimidates and controls his underlings, and it will be interesting to see the full range of his power and influence in the coming sequels.

Why do the good guys never get the cool gear?

This leaves General Hux, probably the most interesting character of the First Order leadership aside from Ren. Hux's cut-glass English accent sets him in the ranks of just about all of the Imperial leadership and other high-ranking characters (Apparently this accent is 'High Coruscanti', in-universe), but he appears younger and possibly less experienced than most of his peers and immediate underlings, as well as a little timid - in some of his conflicts with Ren's against-the-book methods, he looks almost on the verge of tears (or perhaps I just have this association since seeing Gleeson blinking away at his painful-looking contacts in Dredd) - and he gives the first impression of a character promoted above their ability due to having the right connections or being very good at the theory side of things. However, Hux is clearly a zealot through and through, giving a blistering and bile-filled speech in front of his massed legions about the imminent downfall of the Republic, which is more than a little reminiscent of The Triumph of the Will, and ultimately he emerges as a competent, intelligent officer like Piett or Veers before him. An interesting little game the viewer can play is seeing how many British "Oh! It's them, from that thing!" actors crop up as Hux's junior officers throughout. The First Order ranks are filled out with the classic array of armoured Stormtroopers and TIE pilots - both groups having undergone serious upgrades in competence - and, in one striking instance, anti-lightsaber combat - since we last saw them, although that supposed 'armour' still seems totally incapable of protecting its wearer from even the most glancing of blows.

"They came from behind!"
"Pull out Wedge, you're not doing any good back there!"

J.J. Abrams' direction is tremendously stylish here, and very-well suited to the Star Wars universe. There are the traditional wide, still shots of sandy vistas that form our introduction to Rey and her home environment of Jakku, and the slow pans as we touch down to our first sight of a new world. But there's a liveliness and a creativity to his composition as well, as the camera is unafraid of darting in and out of scenery and characters, or whipping about so fast we can hardly tell where we are before bringing us up short with a sudden realisation - scenes such as Han Solo's entrance to old ally Maz Kanata's castle, or Rey's pursuit of Finn through a Jakku marketplace are excellent examples of Abrams' ability to move the camera far and fast while never allowing the audience to lose track of where everything is. Especially in action scenes, our viewpoint is constantly on the move, composing shots that are dynamic, colourful and angled (witness the Millennium Falcon's upside-down loop in the TIE Fighter chase above Jakku, or the camera darting in and out between the trees in Rey and Finn's duel with Kylo Ren in a snowy forest) without ever feeling overly 'arty'. Battles both in the air and on land are quick and chaotic, but Abrams knows the virtue - as many films nowadays do not - of maintaining a degree of distance and steadiness so that the entire scene isn't lost in spasmodic jittering while also keeping a degree of kineticism in the camera's movement, and there is an especially wonderful 'oner' as Finn watches Poe Dameron tearing through the skies in his X-Wing, demonstrating his ace pilot skills by alternating between taking down TIEs and the First Order's ground troops that just makes you want to punch the air and whoop. Granted, camera techniques and filming technology have improved greatly since the originals and probably quite a bit since even the prequels, but Abrams' direction feels so much more human and immediate than the more workmanlike efforts of Lucas, which always seemed far more interested in the cities and vistas of Star Wars than the people living in them.

One area in which the prequels can be said to have improved over the originals is in the music (not that the music in the originals was anything less than brilliant - except for 'Jedi Rocks'), and despite the awkward angstiness of the character's journey to that point, I will fight absolutely anyone who says that John Williams' 'Battle of the Heroes' isn't the perfect accompaniment to the tragic conflict between friends, with the fate of the galaxy hanging in the background, that is Obi-Wan and Anakin's duel on Mustafar. Having brought us an embarrassment of incredible compositions, powerful and so distinctive that you can vividly recall the scene they were used in just by hearing them, I must admit I was a little disappointed by John Williams' contributions to The Force Awakens. The music isn't bad, of course not - that would be impossible. But if you play the 'Imperial March', just about everyone will recognise it instantly, and much the same with 'Duel of the Fates', and many of his other tracks for both original and prequel trilogies. The quieter, subtler pieces like Rey's theme and its variations make great listening, especially the sections used at the beginning and end of the film (Funnily enough, Rey begins the film sliding downhill after taking something valuable from where it belongs, and ends the film trudging uphill to return something valuable to its owner), but there's nothing here to match the kind of instantly-placeable orchestral bombast as in Williams' previous 'Battle of Yavin', 'Battle of Hoth' or all three parts of the 'Battle of Endor'. There are some powerful and emotional cues in the soundtrack, but most of them are variations upon the already well-established 'Force Theme' first used when Luke gazed upon Tatooine's binary sunset, and they often lend an appropriate weight of history to quieter moments discussing the Jedi or links to the original films. However, It would be remiss of me, after nitpicking on the music so much, not to mention that one particular arrangement of this theme - the one used when Luke discovers his smouldering home and family in A New Hope - is redeployed here in a small, quiet but unquestionably epic moment, when Rey finally takes hold of the destiny she previously rejected, and undoubtedly contributes at least half the work in making this my single favourite scene in the whole film.

Clearly keen to return to the dynamic of the Original Trilogy, the filmmakers' use of a small band of plucky, rag-tag rebels battling clandestinely against an overwhelming fascistic power does the film a power of good in escaping from under the weight of the political tedium that suffocated the prequels, but we're never really told why the Republic is so unwilling to show their hand in the fight against the First Order. Consequently, a moment partway through the film when the First Order demonstrate their power and make Republic reinforcements almost impossible is robbed of some of the stakes-raising impact it should have had. I have no doubt that the information telling us how the galaxy got like this is out there somewhere, but really there should have been at least some of it in here, and an opening crawl that tells us more-or-less exclusively about the missing Luke Skywalker probably could have been more gainfully employed with this kind of spadework.

But it's not just the dynamic of the Original Trilogy that is resurrected: The Force Awakens shares many (perhaps far too many) story beats with the original films, especially A New Hope. A droid, carrying some data that the forces of evil seek to reacquire, becomes marooned on a desert planet. It meets up with a young and idealistic scavenger, who then joins up with a more worldly, unprincipled wild card out to have his own neck, and a crusty mentor who imparts some forgotten wisdom from a happier, more enlightened age. Together, they seek to return the data to Leia and her brave but ragtag band of misfits, and ultimately must exploit the weak point and destroy the enormous planet-killing superweapon used by the First Order. En route, they encounter a tiny and wizened alien who tries to instruct the main character about the nature of the force, a dark masked and cloaked lightsaber-wielding Force-user who receives instructions from a shadowy hologram of his master, and their journey takes them predominantly to a desert planet, a forest planet, and an ice planet. Obviously, when you phrase it like this you make it sound identical, but the similarities are there and they are undeniable. However, there's nothing new under the twin suns: the key is in the presentation, and on this count The Force Awakens feels so fresh and exciting - and so gloriously Star Wars - that it's entirely forgivable. 

It's broken all the records, won all the plaudits, and revived the Star Wars franchise like all the windows have been thrown open at once in a dusty old house. In that respect, The Force Awakens is the film we wanted, recapturing the simplicity and the sense of adventure in a realistically lived-in space opera setting, set out on the frontier with seedy spaceports, roguish smugglers, wholesome heroes and frightening villains. Gone are the overblown CGI-extravaganzas of the prequels, where technical tricks were used to obscure or distract from the failings of the story and the characters, or paint in every background and every other character. Location work and practical effects are back in and the CGI, though it still has a very large part to play, is used as a varnish to improve an already-solid film, rather than a crutch to hold up an inferior one. The flashy and acrobatic lightsaber combat of the prequels is out, and the functional, dangerous clashes of the originals are back in, with duels finally feeling again like fights between opponents intending to harm each other rather than choreographed dance-offs - battles with emotional significance to them that serve the story rather than stopping it dead. As we all seem to have been saying would be the case since the prequels were released, Star Wars has succeeded by stepping backwards and returning to its roots, but the most valid complaint to make against The Force Awakens is that while this approach with the tone and style was the right direction, taking the same tack with the plot stunts some of the fresh growth the series could have made. The onus will definitely be placed all the more heavily on the next films in the series to break new ground, but Episode VII had to resurrect a franchise that, cinematically at least, hadn't done anything for ten years (and anything really good for 32), and in that respects it comes across as a celebration of everything it was about Star Wars that captivated us all a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

9/10 - Great shot kid, that was one in a million.