Star Wars: No spoilers

Last night I went to a midnight screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I hadn't expected to be able to buy tickets last minute but this is Turkey and not the USA etc. The cinema wasn't sold out but it was healthily packed in the middle and as I sat in my seat waiting for that first stirring blast of  theme music I felt like a kid again. And yes, I did let out a little yay when it started ( Turkish audiences tend to be mute) and I did wiggle in my seat and clap my hands/clutch at my heart as the story unravelled around me. I was totally absorbed and after the last few months I have had, it was wonderful to escape to a galaxy far far away at least for a few hours.

I have loved Star Wars ever since I saw the first original movie on our old black and white television set at home. I loved it so much that when it came on again the following year I tape-recorded the dialogue since we did not have a video player. I used to play the tape recording over and over again while marching my mini-figures through cardboard box space stations which I had lovingly created. And let me be honest, Luke Skywalker was my first ever crush and he even obligingly responded to my love letter to him with a signed card that said 'Dear Joanna -Forcefully Yours.'

I am not going to write anything about the movie plot here for fear of accidental revelation (no greater crime in the galaxy) but I am delighted to say that the film had that same old, beat-up feeling the first three originals did. Glorious scenery, epic space station shots, beautiful lightsaber duels and that strong sense of mythology I so love about Star Wars. George Lucas did some unforgivable things with his later installments but I will always be grateful to him for creating this wonderful world in the first place.

I liked the new characters too. I thought I would feel like they were usurpers, stealing from Luke and Leia and Han but they were strong and watchable and uninhibited. And even better, Star Wars finally has a hot villain with anger management issues and a magnificent snout. Hooray. He is a true villain too, flawed and tragic but with a capacity to act with such calculated evil it breaks your heart.

I remember the first time I felt drawn to a cinema villain. That uncomfortable moment when I felt oddly allured by Amon Goeth in Schindler's List. Of course I quickly realised it was just Mr Fiennes and his magnificent snout that had enticed me me rather than a Nazi war criminal so there was a bit of relief there. I think I might  have a thing for flawed fictional  men. Even Sergeant Brody, who was a mixed fun-bag of bad,  in Homeland got me a little hot under the collar. Actually, perhaps it is not only fictional men. I can think of a couple of relationships with troubled souls I have had. Perhaps it is why I am so single now.

Maybe it is time I return to my childhood self who loved Luke Skywalker ( a good man) so very much. Perhaps then balance will return to my own little galaxy.