Star Wars: The Force Awakens named one of AFI's top 10…

Star Wars: The Force Awakens named one of AFI's top 10 films of the year

People dressed in character pose outside the Grand Rex movie theater for photographers prior to a screening of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”in Paris, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) — From Paris with lightsabers ... Star Wars fans celebrate the opening of The Force Awakens in France. Photograph: Michel Euler/AP

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has made the American Film Institute’s (AFI) top 10 movies of the year list in another sign of the space opera reboot’s Oscar potential.

JJ Abrams’ film, which boasts 95% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, was named alongside another rare genre inclusion, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. Other films to make the prestigious list included Todd Haynes’ acclaimed lesbian romance Carol, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, the Thomas McCarthy Roman Catholic abuse drama Spotlight, which has been hoovering up early awards season garlands, and the Pixar animation Inside Out, considered one of the Disney-owned studio’s best films in years.

The AFI list is considered one of the most reliable bellwethers for Oscars success in the best picture category. Last year six out of the eight Oscar nominees also made the AFI list.

The other films to make this year’s list, which is in no particular order, were Ridley Scott space drama The Martian, Steven Spielberg cold war espionage thriller Bridge of Spies, F Gary Gray’s blockbuster hip-hop biopic Straight Outta Compton, Lenny Abrahamson’s abuse drama Room and Adam McKay’s financial crisis comedy-drama The Big Short.

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“Since AFI’s founding in the White House Rose Garden 50 years ago, its mandate has been to celebrate our nation’s storytellers,” said AFI president and CEO Bob Gazzale. “This is the goal of AFI Awards – to bring together our community as colleagues, not competitors, and to shine a proper light on their collective efforts to entertain and enlighten the world.”

Hollywood’s top awards season expert has already predicted that The Force Awakens will be garlanded with a best picture Oscar nomination next month, making it the first film in the long-running space saga to achieve the feat since 1977’s Star Wars. Mad Max: Fury Road is also expected to do well this awards season, as one of the highest rated films of 2015 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with 97%, and the recipient of a number of early awards season garlands.

The Force Awakens opened in UK cinemas at 12.01 this morning and has already had a full 24 hours in French multiplexes, where it is predicted to smash opening records. Trade bible Variety predicts the film will top 1m in ticket sales to take around 7.5 million Euros in receipts in its first 24 hours.

In other Star Wars news, one of the The Force Awakens’ main shooting locations, Abu Dhabi, is reportedly set to transform sets used for Abrams’ film into tourist attractions. Several of the desert locations which doubled for the junkyard planet of Jakku in The Force Awakens will be utilised, and organisers also plan to build an installation based on the film’s giant First Order headquarters, Starkiller Base.