Early reviewers are (mostly) raving about Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Move over Darth Vader: Captain Phasma is destined to become a classic villain. Photo / Lucasfilm

We all know, of course, that a new Star Wars film is virtually critic-proof. Costumed fans will storm the ticket windows, and generations will line up in droves, and word of mouth will spread quickly and naturally, just as Lucas and The Force intended.

But there is certainly still something at stake here, as early word tumbles out, in terms of the critical verdict. For starters, it could be the difference between a big opening weekend and a record-setting one.

So now that the early critics spake, what say they?

Well, the general praise seems near-universal, with reviewers often pointing out that director J.J. Abrams - in inherting a six-film franchise from creator George Lucas - faced two particularly central challenges. One was to deftly perform a balancing act to satisfy expectations for both decades of storytelling nostaglia while also putting his imprint of innovation on The Force Awakens. And a second mission involved accepting the degree to which Star Wars, in the wake of the much-maligned prequels, needed not only telling, but saving.

Judging by those early returns, Abrams nimbly met both challenges, and perhaps even exceeded them.

Of the 37 reviews aggregated so far on MetaCritic.com, 35 are positive, and the remaining two are mixed. A whopping 10 of those critics give Abrams's film a perfect "100" score, with Calvin Wilson of the St. Louis Post Dispatch writing: "Perhaps the greatest triumph of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is that it justifies the enormous hype." No small feat, that.

The old-school-meets-new-vigor judgment is commonly shared. Wilson says the directer "brings fresh energy to the franchise while adhering to the storytelling values that made it matter in the first place."

The Boston Globe's Ty Burr emphasizes that a powerful blast of memory and nostalgia is stronger than anything nitty-gritty emitted by a Star Wars blaster gun: "Abrams understands what George Lucas never quite figured out: that we're less interested in the science fiction future than we are in revisiting the past."

The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy writes that Abrams infuses this "hallowed franchise" with a fresh energy "in a way that both resurrects old pleasures and points in promising new directions."

Associated Press reviewer Lindsey Bahr senses storyteling repetition - not that there's anything wrong with that. " Star Wars: The Force Awakens is no more and no less than the movie that made us love it in the first place," Bahr writes. "In fact, it's basically the same thing. Isn't that what we all wanted anyway?"

Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post's chief film critic, spells out the specifics of Abrams's sheer achievement, writing: "The Force Awakens strikes all the right chords, emotional and narrative, to feel both familiar and exhilaratingly new. Filled with incident, movement and speed, dusted with light layers of tarnished 'used future' grime, it captures the kinetic energy that made the first film, from 1977, such a revelation to filmgoers who marveled at Lucas's mashup of B movies, Saturday-morning serials, Japanese historical epics and mythic heft."

And Helen O'Hara of Empire offers a particularly succinct verdict:

"The prequels this ain't. We can all breathe again."