Star Wars: The Force Awakens won the most awards at the Empire Awards, being honoured as the Best Sci-Fi, for its visual effects, for director JJ Abrams and for its lead actors John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, who took the best male and female newcomer awards.

But regarded as the top awards of the night, The Revenant was named the Best Film of the past year, with SPECTRE being picked as the Best British film. The latest Bond film also won in the Best Thriller category, while The Hallow took the Best Horror prize and the Best Comedy went to Spy. Amy was named the Best Documentary and Inside Out took the honours for the best animated feature.

Matt Damon was named the Best Actor by the magazine’s readers, for The Martian, and The Danish Girl‘s Alicia Vikander won the Best Actress award.

The Big Short won the Best Screenplay prize, but most of the craft awards went to Mad Max: Fury Road, which was honoured for its production design, costumes, make-up & hair and soundtrack.

For the first time in the twenty one year history of its awards, Britain’s biggest-selling film magazine handed out an prize for the best TV Series, giving it to Shane Meadows for This Is England ’90. As well as accepting his own award, Meadows was also at the ceremony, at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Mayfair, to present his frequent collaborator Paddy Considine with Empire’s Inspiration award.

The magazine also named Stanley Tucci as the Empire Hero and gave a posthumous Empire Legend award to Alan Rickman. Empire’s News Editor Chris Hewitt said “This is a heartfelt tribute from the Empire staff to an actor who touched us all with his extraordinary career.”

With winners being selected by members of the public, the Empire Awards don’t carry the same kudos as most of the prizes handed out between the Golden Globes and the Oscars, but with the biggest awards going to box office hits such as Star Wars, Mad Max, Spectre and The Martian, it’s an indication of how remote the Oscars and the BAFTAs can seem to the audiences whose ticket purchases keep the studios in business.