PARIS: Worth the wait. That was the overriding sentiment on Wednesday as "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", one of the most hyped films of all time, finally opened, with some lovers of the franchise flying thousands of kilometres to be present.
After months of teaser trailers that raised more questions than answers -- and a Hollywood premiere on Monday from which the celebrity audience emerged smiling but sworn to secrecy -- some of the franchise’s millions of fans finally got to see it for themselves.
The first reactions were overwhelmingly positive.
"The Force Awakens re-awoke my love of the first movie and turned my inner fanboy into my outer fanboy," wrote The Guardian’s critic Peter Bradshaw.
"There are very few films which leave me facially exhausted after grinning for 135 minutes, but this is one."
Another British critic, Christopher Hooton of The Independent, was equally effusive.
"This is the film fans were hoping for, and it’s an indisputable improvement on the abhorred prequels...
"’The Force Awakens’ oozes the style and composition of the first trilogy, and will not look awkward stood next to your well-worn ‘Return of the Jedi’ DVD."
Expectations had been paramount as the seventh episode in the space saga opened in France, Germany, Sweden, South Africa and several other countries, a day before it hits screens in the US.
Trey Delap, 37, spent "several thousand dollars" on a flight from Las Vegas to see the film in a high-tech EuropaCorp theatre near Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
"Either you think we’re crazy or you think it’s brilliant. I’m not sure myself," he told AFP.
"When I saw the price I thought ‘No way!’ But then I realised I would be the first in North America to see it and we would also be seeing it on screens and with technology that we don’t have at home yet."
Delap was accompanied by a friend Tim Mersch, 44, who said he had never left the US before. "We’ve got everything in Las Vegas, even (a replica of) the Eiffel Tower... but it’ll be good to see the real thing," he joked.
French fans were also out in force.
"I woke at 4 am this morning and I have tickets to see it twice today," said Antoine Gerber, who made a five-hour trip from his home in Alsace to Paris to see the film.
More than half a million people have pre-booked tickets in France for director J.J. Abrams’ two-and-a-quarter-hour epic.
Box office records are also expected to tumble across Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Thailand, where the film is also opening ahead of its US launch.
"The Force Awakens" picks up the intergalactic story of good versus evil 30 years on from "The Return of the Jedi", the finale of the original trilogy.
Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi master, has disappeared and Princess Leia, now a general, sends fighter pilot Poe Dameron to save him from the evil First Order.
Dameron fails to find Luke but gives his robot BB-8 a map showing how to reach him. The film turns on the robot’s adventures as he tries to get back to Leia, helped by Finn, a Stormtrooper who has turned his back on the Dark Side, and young scavenger Rey.
The trio of heroes who appeared in the first of the blockbusters in 1977 -- smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), leader of the rebel alliance, and her twin brother Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) -- are all back and played by the actors that Star Wars first made famous.
For many fans, seeing Ford, Fisher and Hamill back in action was like being reunited with old friends.
"We hadn’t seen anything of Luke Skywalker for a long time, so it was great to see him again!," said Pontus Bergqvist, 21, who was kitted out in full Jedi Knight regalia for a screening in central Stockholm.
"Even better than the last Star Wars movie" was his conclusion.
"The Force Awakens" also includes a host of fresh talent, among them British actors John Boyega as Finn and Daisy Ridley as Rey.
Disney, which bought the Star Wars franchise from its creator George Lucas for $4 billion in 2012, went to extraordinary lengths to keep the plot shrouded in mystery.
The secrecy prompted some criticism of the film’s fearsome publicity machine.
Anthony Daniels, the British actor who plays the much-loved droid C-3PO, termed the precautions "ludicrous".
Greg Grunberg, who plays an X-Wing pilot, told Entertainment Weekly such was the security on set that actors only got their lines the morning their scenes were being filmed.
