Star Wars fever leaves fans a bit dazed

Critics have, however, compared it favorably to the original trilogy, praising its action sequences, special effects, musical score and drama.

The film has already broken several box office records in its opening weekend, making $248 million in US and $529 million globally, becoming the highest-grossing worldwide opening of any film, bringing in a windfall for Walt Disney who bought LucasFilms for a stunning $4 billion in 2012.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which hits the theatres almost 35 years after the Return of the Jedi, is the latest franchise film delivered by a new director, JJ Abrams.

Fans, used to the specific theme as portrayed by previous Star Wars directors found a lot of dark and grey story telling instead of the usual

Star Wars universe experience. Die-hard fans of Star Trek and Star Wars were of the opinion that the movie lacked adherence to a theme when compared to the earlier instalments, and was also emotionally disturbing.

“I am happy but not as happy as there are parts of the film that have left me depressed. The old characters have not been given the importance and the grandeur that they deserved," Shubhang S, a fan, said.

“Luke Skywalker taking responsibility of the evil rising and isolating himself from the rest of the world is very sad,” he added. Also, the death of a certain iconic character is what made the fans leave the cinema halls in shock and to express their unhappiness with the latest in the series that is to be the first part of a planned trilogy.

Another fan said: “This movie was like the first movie of the last sequel - A New Hope. It was essentially same dish in a new packaging. The story was phenomenal, the music was great, but I can't describe the comparison of this movie with the earlier ones.”

“The good parts were the bringing in of some new characters making the movie more aggressive. The old characters were brought into the movie whenever the fans needed some revival," he added.

In a nutshell, the movie was described to be the new character, Rey, around whom the plot revolves and her journey from nobody to somebody. The premiere shows on Thursday at PVR, Skywalk , saw 76 per cent seats full, with 213 seats taken for the evening show of 267 seats.

“We are hopeful of it being ‘house full’ as the shows on Friday were almost ‘full house’', with the morning special show also ‘house full’ and the afternoon and evening shows having filled about 80 per cent of the seats,” said B. Kalanithi, deputy manager, PVR Cinemas.