It’s here — the real Episode Four! From the first few minutes, or even the first few frames, JJ Abrams’s exciting, spectacular and seductively innocent Star Wars: The Force Awakens shows itself a movie in the spirit of the original trilogy, which ended with Return of the Jedi in 1983. (This one takes up the story 30 years later.) 
 
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 Technically, of course, that was reconfigured as Episode Six, but The Force Awakens makes you forget about the redundancy and pedantry of the prequel-trilogy that came 15 years later. It restores the comedy that Phantom Menace abandoned. The Force Awakens is in touch with the force of action-adventure and fun. My only tiny reservation, which I will get out of the way now, is with a tiny new droid who has a bit of a Scrappy-Doo vibe about him. 
 
 The Force Awakens re-awoke my love of the first movie and turned my inner fanboy into my outer fanboy. There are very few films which leave me facially exhausted after grinning for 135 minutes, but this is one. And when Han Solo and Chewie come on, I had a feeling in the cinema I haven’t had since I was 16: not knowing whether to burst into tears or into applause. 
 
 JJ Abrams and veteran co-writer Lawrence Kasdan have created a film which is both a narrative progression from the earlier three films and a shrewdly affectionate next-gen reboot of the original 1977 Star Wars — rather in the style of his tremendous re-imagining of the Kirk/Spock Star Trek. Familiar personae, situations and weapons will appear like covers or remixes, and meshed in with new storylines. This notice will be a safe space, incidentally, with a trigger warning only for basic plot points and material already in the public domain. 
 
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 The original movies were always based on the most extraordinary nexus of personal and family dysfunction: a motor of guilt, shame and conflict. Luke was driven by an increasingly complex Freudian animus against Darth Vader; Han Solo referred to the Millennium Falcon as “she”; male audiences were encouraged both to identify with Luke and to lech over Princess Leia in her outrageous gold slave bikini – and then, with exquisite narrative sadism, we were told they were brother and sister. All this agony is reborn in The Force Awakens: new contortions of fear and black-comic absurdity amidst the romance and excitement. 
 
 Luke has been famously absent from the poster for this film, which led me to fear at first that over the past 30 years, like Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman, he had gone over to the dark side. Suffice it to say that Luke, played by a now grizzled Mark Hamill, is a potent but unwontedly enigmatic presence. 
 
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 Princess Leia is now a General and still the warrior queen of the resistance - a tougher and more grandmotherly figure. The dark force is resurgent in the form of the First Order, intent on re-establishing a more candidly fascist control, with quasi-Nuremberg rallies. Ranged against them are new fighters for good. There is Rey, a resourceful survivor on the remote planet of Jakku, who feels destiny within her: she is played by newcomer Daisy Ridley with the brittle determination of a young Keira Knightley. British actor John Boyega plays Finn, a former storm trooper who seeks redemption through betraying his evil masters. 
 
 This brings me to the terrific performance from Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, the new Dark Lord with a terrible secret. He is gorgeously cruel, spiteful and capricious – and unlike the Vader of old, he is given to petulant temper tantrums, with his lightsaber drawn, when uniformed subordinates have the unwelcome task of telling him of some new, temporary victory for the Resistance. Driver’s almost unreadably droll facial expression is very suited to Kylo Ren’s fastidious and amused contempt for his enemies’ weakness and compassion. There is a brilliant moment when he uses the telekinetic power of the Force against a laser shot. 
 
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 The lightsaber contests themselves are of course more athletic than in the 70s and 80s but also somehow more humanly interesting: Rey herself needs no condescending advice from men either on unarmed combat or flying the Millennium Falcon. 
 
 JJ Abrams has an instinctive sympathy for the classic Star Wars landscapes and lays them out with élan: the switch from galaxies to shadowy forests and of course vast rippling deserts. In almost her first appearance, Rey is seen tobogganing down a huge dune on a sled made of rope. For me it’s a reminder that though the first Star Wars was avowedly inspired by Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, I think it originally derived its look from David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia or even the dreamscapes of Dalí. 
 
 But of course this film is part of an entertainment world so huge it need refer only to itself. The Force Awakens does not, in the way of other franchises, feel the need to be “dark” – having of course repudiated the dark side. It basically powers along on a great surging riptide of idealism and optimism, that family-movie ethic which some have derided for killing off the dystopian tradition of sci-fi. In fact, Star Wars has now gone beyond the sci-fi genre to its own kind of intergalactic quasi-Arthurian romance: that and a return to the world of Saturday morning pictures. The Force Awakens is ridiculous and melodramatic and sentimental of course, but exciting and brimming with energy and its own kind of generosity. What a Christmas present. 
 
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 • Star Wars: The Force Awakens is released in the UK and Australia on 17 December and in the US on 18 December ||||| SALT LAKE CITY — Who is the most hated Star Wars character of all time? 
 
 If you think it’s Jar Jar Binks, youssa wrong. 
 
 A new poll from Morning Consult just offered a clue as to which characters Star Wars fans favor and dislike the most. 
 
 The poll, which surveyed 2,200 people, asked respondents to pick their favorite Star Wars character. Leia led the list with a 73 percent favorability rating. 
 
 Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, Yoda and R2-D2 were close behind, all within 2 percent of Leia. 
 
 Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) escape from the Death Star in “Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope.” 
 
 Here’s where it gets interesting: Anakin Skywalker received a 55 percent rating, while Darth Vader (who is Anakin Skywalker) received a 49 percent rating. 
 
 “That appears to be the first evidence we've ever found that slaughtering Jedi children, torturing your daughter and cutting off your son's hand will only cost you a 6 percent dip in the polls,” according to Mashable. 
 
 A look at another part of the poll reveals the most hated character. None of the original trilogy characters made that list, all of them receiving at least 40 percent in favorability. 
 
 And it wasn’t Jar Jar Binks, who had a 37 percent approval rating (only one spot behind "Force Awakens" heroine Rey). As writer Chris Taylor for Mashable pointed out, according to the poll's statistics, Republican men seemed to really appreciate Jar Jar Binks. Draw your own conclusions from that. 
 
 Jar Jar Binks finished ahead of Mace Windu, Kylo Ren, Emperor Palpatine, Jyn Erso and Wedge Antilles, too. (Though we wonder if this would change if people knew Jar Jar is secretly a Sith Lord). 
 
 But it was Supreme Leader Snoke who bottomed out on the list with 26 percent. 
 
 Snoke, who first appeared in “The Force Awakens," finished lower than Count Dooku (the villain from “Attack of the Clones”) and Donald Trump, who’s favorability sits at 32 percent. 
 
 The Morning Consult poll, which asked 2,200 people about their opinions on the Star Wars movies, also broke down the results by demographics and political preferences, providing a wealth of data that can be scavenged for weeks after the upcoming "Last Jedi" film drops. 
 
 Examining how politics mix with Star Wars, statistics from the poll revealed that 53 percent of respondents don't consider Star Wars to be political, and that of the 17 percent who do, 41 percent are bothered by the series’ political tone, according to Morning Consult. 
 
 “While the poll found a small minority of respondents who find the politics of Star Wars bothersome, among a number of enthusiasts, fanatics — and well, geeks — the movies’ perceived political undercurrents have long been a source of fascination and fierce debate,” according to a press release on the poll.
– Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens in wide release on Friday, meaning social media feeds are already jammed with movie reviews, theories, and reminiscences about previous films in the franchise. What is bound to pop up: heated arguments about who's the most beloved (or hated) Star Wars character ever, and it's a debate 24/7 Wall St. decided to preemptively solve. The site looked at various popularity-suggesting metrics—including screen time, how much exposure they've had online, and page views on dedicated Wikipedia pages—for dozens of the famous faces. Here, the 10 most popular characters: Darth Vader Han Solo Luke Skywalker Princess Leia Anakin Skywalker Obi-Wan Kenobi R2-D2 Chewbacca Yoda C-3PO Now onto the 10 least popular characters (the Force is with you if you know all of these names):