Lupita Nyong’o didn’t realise she auditioned for Star Wars: The Force Awakens

It is fair to say Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is the most anticipated movie of 2015 and it lives up to the hype that has been surrounding it.

I, and what I assume every other entertainment and media reporter in NY, saw the Disney film on Tuesday night. Empire Strikes Back was the Star Wars version of Sergeant Pepper – more intense, moodier, never to be surpassed.

At a recent gathering in Manchester thousands of people paid homage to the series which began in 1977.

J Abrams is as big a STAR WARS fan boy of any of us.

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Donning Stormtrooper and Darth Vader masks, dressed in capes and holding lightsabers, fans young and old turned out for screenings of “The Force Awakens”, some queuing for hours to watch the first “Star Wars” film in 10 years.

The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin, who admitted to crying three times, said director JJ Abrams and his team had “taken a slightly tattered franchise and restored its sense of magic and myth”.

Along the way he’s collected memorabilia and even Star Wars comic strips from the New Zealand’s Women’s Weekly magazines in the early 80s. Kiwi actor Jay Laga’aia was one of the only people at the premiere who had actually been in a Star Wars movie, playing Captain Typho in episode II – Attack of the Clones and episode III – Revenge of the Sith. Harrison Ford’s first appearance sends a real charge through the film of a sort that only a revered older star can deliver.

So opens “The Force Awakens”, with the now-iconic scrolling text to inform audiences that Skywalker (played by Mark Hamill) has disappeared after training Jedi soldiers. “It was also really important for me that we cast the movie the way the world looks and that we didn’t write the parts to look any particular way”.

Lupita Nyong’o plays the goggle-eyed Maz Kanata, a dispenser of Yoda-like wisdom who runs a souped-up version of the famous Wild West galactic bar in the first “Star Wars”.