Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Nerds take over the galaxy.
Jeffrey Jacob Abrams thought he had movies figured out until he saw Star Wars for the first time. Back in 1977, J.J. was 10 years old, a precocious geek with a Super 8 camera and an irrepressible love for moviemaking. He didn’t just love the stories of movies, he loved knowing how they worked. Star Wars, he says, was the first movie he couldn’t figure out.
“Star Wars was the first movie where I didn’t know how they did anything,” Abrams once explained to his co-writer on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Lawrence Kasdan[1]. Abrams said the visual effects, music, sound effects, costumes, characters—all of it—were so impressive, so ahead of anything he had seen before, he was sucked into the world completely. He couldn’t watch the movie with a critical eye. He could only see the movie like a 10-year-old. “The idea that we could bring that feeling back was really exciting to me,” he told Kasdan.
Resurrecting the past is one of the primary strategies of the modern film industry. In the 2010s, franchises presumed dead or concluded have been revived ad nauseam, from Jurassic Park to Jason Bourne to Independence Day to King Kong to Ghostbusters to Planet of the Apes to Halloween to Jumanji to Terminator. In a fraught time for Hollywood, in which ticket sales are down and more media options encourage people to stay home, it’s a safer business plan to make movies with built-in audiences and built-in demand, so intellectual property, or IP, is at a premium. It’s all about giving people what they want.
Few studios have done this more, or better, than Disney, and the company made one of their more significant moves in 2012 when they bought the rights to the Star Wars universe from George Lucas for just over $4 billion[2]. It wasn’t an impulsive buy. Disney had plans. They wanted to bring back Star Wars for a new generation.
The path to 2015’s The Force Awakens—Disney’s planned sequel to the original trilogy’s Return of the Jedi—was fraught with creative chess moves, though that’s somewhat expected when a major corporation spends ten figures on a property. The new president of Lucasfilm under Disney was crack producer Kathleen Kennedy, a Hollywood prodigy of sorts whose first credit was as an associate to Steven Spielberg on Raiders of the Lost Ark. Kennedy’s first outright producing credit was on E.T., and in 1982 she and Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment. Her IMDB page is a stand-in for a list of every movie you like, ever[3].
Kennedy had experience with movies of Star Wars’ caliber, but her initial plan for the property was nonetheless ambitious. Disney planned to release installments of a new trilogy every other year beginning in 2015, and between those movies, they would release standalone films sourced from the greater Star Wars universe. For Star Wars fans, this announcement was like having Christmas morning with the richest family on the block. There had only been six live-action Star Wars movies ever[4], no widely regarded good ones since George Lucas’ original trilogy, and now there would be six new movies in six years. Could there even be such a thing as too much Star Wars? It felt impossible. It felt lucky to live in a time when you had to ask such a question.
Disney began scooping talent for The Force Awakens—at the time still called “Episode VII”—right away. They tapped J.J. Abrams to direct, signed on Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford to reprise their roles as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo, and selected company veteran Michael Arndt—whose previous work on Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine netted him two Oscar nominations and one win—to pen the script. To the Mouse’s credit, they had the right approach to earning a return on their $4 billion investment: Make the movie as high-quality as possible.
But almost right away, the new Star Wars ran aground with Arndt, who after eight months of struggling to write a story that balanced the old Star Wars characters with the planned newcomers, approached Disney asking for an 18-month extension[5]. Disney didn’t just refuse Arndt; they fired him. Abrams came in to pick up re-writes and Lawrence Kasdan arrived as creative reinforcement[6].
Abrams was a sensical choice to lead The Force Awakens given his history in the Mission: Impossible and Star Trek franchises, but he nonetheless brought some surprising quirks to The Force Awakens. Brought up in the TV side of the industry—Abrams created the college drama Felicity, the spy thriller Alias, and a little show called Lost—the director’s odd resumé informed The Force Awakens with sharp wit and idealistic charm. On the page, the movie crosscuts its storylines and paces its dialogue like a brisk, confident TV show. That’s a good thing.
From his initial recruitment talks with Kathleen Kennedy, Abrams imagined a Star Wars movie starring a Felicity Porter or Sydney Bristow type, a spunky and competent young woman characterized by a sense of longing. This woman would grow up in the shadow of the original Star Wars story until, inevitably, the new adventure swept her up and confirmed the rumors about the Jedi and the Force were true. Abrams didn’t want to just make a sequel to Return of the Jedi. He wanted to make a Star Wars movie that reckoned with being a Star Wars movie. He wanted to capture that feeling he had as a 10-year-old in the original movie: This is real. Kennedy loved the idea. Production took off.
Things moved quickly on The Force Awakens after Arndt’s departure. Abrams and Kasdan cracked the story[7], a slate of knockout new leads were cast alongside Hamill, Ford, and Fisher, and after about six months of principal photography[8] and a year of post-production, Abrams screened his final cut of the film to Disney executives.
This would normally be the point in production when corporate meddling slowed things down, but The Force Awakens sailed past the Disney bigwigs during its final test screening. Abrams couldn’t believe it; he says he took more notes during the movie than anyone else. He said eventually that the movie’s final approval was “the biggest relief of my life.”
The Force Awakens hit theaters in December 2015 with all the spirit of an Abrams script and all the style of a reverent, contemporary Star Wars movie. It was breathless, beaming, starry-eyed, winking, and affirming. It was a celebration—to a fault, some said—of everything people had loved about Star Wars. The toy-like ships, the exotic planets, the goofy aliens, the mad-cool lightsabers, the mysteries of the Force—it was all back, and it all existed to reflect, honor, and comment upon the movies that came before it.
The Force Awakens’ self-reflectiveness reads as meta, but in the movie it manifests as an effective years-later continuation of Star Wars the story and franchise. Reboots often revive old characters and tread down familiar paths, but they rarely ask why they’re back in the first place. The Force Awakens, in contrast, asks in explicit terms what it means to be continuing Star Wars decades after the original trilogy ended. Savvier still, it places this theme on the shoulders of its new heroes and villains, making them the dramatic center of the movie rather than the familiar faces of the past. The signal to audiences: The Force Awakens is as much for Star Wars newcomers as it is longtime fans.
Inside the movie, the rookie cast proved perfect for bridging the old and new. The Force Awakens’ central heroine, Rey (played by Daisy Ridley), saw the old Star Wars stories as a chance to build her own identity. John Boyega’s reluctant stormtrooper Finn[9] saw them as a template for redemption. Adam Driver’s villainous Kylo Ren saw them as a permission slip to erase his past[10]. These arcs were simple, but clear, and the universally strong performances from Ridley, Boyega, and Driver made it easy to reinvest yourself in the universe.
The movie’s deployment of the old characters rounded off its themes. There’s a hypothetical version of The Force Awakens that panders hard to the legendary figures of the classic Star Wars movies, but this wasn’t it. First off, Luke Skywalker was barely in the movie, his presence little more than a MacGuffin until the final minute. Leia, meanwhile, was relegated to playing commander behind the scenes; she gave orders and dropped pearls of wisdom, but she was a supporting player through and through. Ford, however, had a central role to play as Han, but the then-72-year-old didn’t phone it in[11]. On the contrary, in some of The Force Awakens’ most dramatic scenes, Ford offered up some of his best work in years.
Even today, The Force Awakens feels light-footed, quick-witted, and stirring, but when it comes to its plot, critics accuse it of walking the same path as the original Star Wars: A New Hope. The beats are indeed similar, but the filmmakers intended to cover the classic from the beginning. Abrams has said: “One thing that was important for us was purposefully going backwards to go forwards. Starting with a character in the desert, ending with a trench run. It was about clarity.”
It’s a trade-off you have to accept. The Force Awakens’ interactions with its predecessors make its thematic interactions more interesting even if they make its plot feel a bit reheated. For most people, it’s fair. The movie’s main objective was to win people over to its new names and faces, and it scored 10s in that department across the board[12]. The story details were secondary, and even if they weren’t entirely original, they still worked. Abrams, again, has a reasonable defense: “The structure of Star Wars is as classic as it gets: Nobodies becoming somebodies to defeat a baddie is not new. The simple [plot] tenants are the least important aspects of this movie. What was important was embracing history we know to tell a story that was new.”
Abrams knew his mission and accomplished it. The Force Awakens was, and is, a success.
Of course, it was a major financial success, too. The Force Awakens made $936 million in the United States alone, making it the only movie ever to cross the $900 million mark domestically. In fact, as of this writing, The Force Awakens is more than $75 million ahead of the number-two movie on the list, Avengers: Endgame. In terms of adjusted gross, The Force Awakens is 11th on the all-time list, the highest-ranking movie made this century and one of only three movies from the 2000s in the top 20. Worldwide, it’s the fourth-highest total ever. Finally, The Force Awakens spent four straight weekends as the number-one movie at the box office, a rarity this decade and nearly impossible amid the crowded holiday-release window.
The numbers prove The Force Awakens was a crowd-pleaser, but while Abrams’ “go backward to go forward” approach paid off, trouble arose for the franchise when it became time to actually start going forward after Episode VII. Turns out, the same people who didn’t like The Force Awakens’ homage to the past didn’t like when Star Wars offered something original, either.
The Force Awakens’ sequel, 2017’s The Last Jedi, was the boldest Star Wars movie ever. Writer and director Rian Johnson packed Jedi with weirdness (an intergalactic casino! flying Princess Leia! aliens with udders!), Japanese visual flair, holy-shit narrative twists, and an electric sense of gonzo storytelling that took major risks with established Star Wars ideas. Johnson used the time jump between the old saga and the new to reexamine beloved figures like Luke Skywalker and Yoda, question the idea of the Jedi Order, and expand the concept of the Force. While these changes have plenty of textual support in the movie and plenty of creative support from fans, critics, and (most important of all) Disney, a vocal minority decried the movie as an irreverent and misinformed addition to the Star Wars canon. The more supporters heralded The Last Jedi as possibly the greatest Star Wars ever, the more haters called it inexecrable.
The galaxy went to war.
The battle over The Last Jedi spread its infectious tendrils across the internet. Reddit organized their armies. Critics rushed to the movie’s defense. Comment sections lashed back. Rotten Tomatoes’ “audience score” feature was sieged by trolls, and anyone who spoke out in support of Luke’s arc, Kylo’s turn, Snoke’s fate, or Rey’s development was disemboweled in the streets of Comic-Con. It was a horrible time to be a Star Wars fan, but worse still, the polarization of Johnson’s movie seemed to touch a nerve that connected many controversial aspects of Star Wars in general: who’s allowed to be a Jedi, what it means to have knowledge of the Force, which Expanded Universe properties are canonical, and on and on. Today, whenever a new Star Wars movie lands, the skirmishes erupt all over again. You can’t even bring up an older Star Wars movie now without entering a minefield of deeply felt nerdy opinions. Your perspective on The Last Jedi became your opinion on all of Star Wars, including The Force Awakens.
It’s significant to note how the internet drew these lines of conflict in spite of the truth of how these movies were conceived. Modern Star Wars discourse pits the loyalism of Abrams against the “rebellion” of Johnson, but it’s clear Disney always knew these guys would offer different takes on Star Wars movies.
In fact, Lawrence Kasdan, the representative of all that can go right in Star Wars, said before The Force Awakens released that fans should expect different styles to appear between his movie, Johnson’s movie, and the eventual end of the trilogy. “If you’ve seen Rian’s work, you know [The Last Jedi] is not going to be like anything you’ve seen in Star Wars. He’s going to make some weird thing,” he said in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview. They knew this was coming! Abrams knew! Kennedy knew! Remember: The Last Jedi sailed through production without a creative hitch, and The Force Awakens did the same in the full knowledge of how it would differ from its sequel. Disney wanted these things to exist side-by-side. This was not a case of Johnson bucking against his masters, or Abrams playing it too safe.
Comedian Hasan Minhaj once said the internet has heralded “the death of nuance.” While he applies the concept to political discourse more than anything, the phrase rings true at the intersection of popular entertainment and the web.
It might be difficult to see amid the series’ fervent popularity, but Star Wars has a complicated critical legacy. The original trilogy contains two good films and one great one, and the prequel trilogy contains three bad movies that nonetheless have moments of technical excellence and wow-worthy action spectacle[13]. The Force Awakens finds moments of rapturous feeling amid a paint-by-numbers plot, Rogue One follows up a nonsensical first hour with a jaw-dropping second, The Last Jedi holds the franchise’s artistic peaks in the same hand as its strangest emotional beats, and Solo blends undeniable charisma with numbskull contrivances. Star Wars has always been great and bad, epic and dorky, slick and plodding, badass and stupid. It’s not universally acclaimed. It’s not infallible. It’s nuanced. Before the series entered the internet age with The Force Awakens, people could accept that. Today, the conflicts and contradictions of the saga can’t survive.
Maybe that’s hard for Star Wars fans. Maybe it’s difficult to reconcile that the long-awaited return of Star Wars wasn’t the prodigal revival geeks across the galaxy hoped it would be. If that is the challenge, it’s a result of the internet, the negative consequence of a digital environment that overhypes everything, breaks down every trailer for parts, and dissects every completed work to nitpick all its “problematic” elements, all its “cinema sins,” and all its Easter eggs.
The internet’s toxic relationship with Star Wars hasn’t just made discussing the franchise intellectually simpler, it’s made it worse. The loudest Star Wars fans have deemed it correct to hate Star Wars. It’s not just baffling; it’s sad. Remember 10-year-old J.J. Abrams in the theater, mind blown to pieces by a movie so transportive, so imaginative, so fantastic he couldn’t help but stop criticizing it and be swept up in the beauty of it? Modern fans can’t seem to let go like that anymore. 1977 was a long time ago. The classic movie theater, dark and quiet and escapist and cell phone-free, is a faraway place.
You can recognize something isn’t perfect and love it anyway. You can see the logical gaps of the Holdo Maneuver but still find it breath-taking. You can note the corniness in Mark Hamill’s acting but still admire Luke Skywalker’s heart for his friends. You can roll your eyes at Felicity Jones but fall in love with Donnie Yen. You can see Starkiller Base as a Death Star ripoff and think its sun-sucking light beam made for some terrific dramatic lighting. Star Wars sucks. Star Wars is incredible. Everything has a light side and a dark side. These days, it’s harder than ever to find the balance.
[1] Kasdan is probably the most respected behind-the-scenes person in the Star Wars universe. He was the pivotal creative presence on The Empire Strikes Back, and the primary reason that chapter is so much more mature, so much smarter, and so much less indulgent than the others, which saw more fiddling by Star Wars creator George Lucas.
[2] It’s a jaw-dropping number, but it’s not surprising this is what it took to pry Star Wars from Lucas’ soft, clammy hands. Lucas is a jealous god over the Star Wars universe. Since selling his world, he hasn’t been kind toward Disney’s treatment of the franchise (more on that later), but even when he was in control of things and making the original trilogy and the prequels, it’s obvious his nerd-dom and his filmmaking talent intersected in specific and limited ways. He was a boundlessly creative worldbuilder, but a micro-level meddler. He was a technical savant, but a dorky storyteller. He was bold, but he tangled up his own mythology to the point of making it incoherent. His legacy is extremely complicated. Most people recognize him as one of the most important creative minds of the 20th century, but everyone’s happy he’s no longer making movies or involved with Star Wars.
[3] Kennedy has produced every Indiana Jones movie, every Back to the Future movie, every Jurassic Park movie, Poltergeist, Goonies, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Land Before Time (!), The Sixth Sense, Hook, Schindler’s List, and all the new Star Wars flicks. Her weirdest credits: Gremlins and Gremlins II.
[4] One animated Star Wars movie, The Clone Wars, came out in 2008 to tepid reviews. The movie was an expansion of the Clone Wars TV show covering the period between episodes II and III. For what it’s worth, each of the major animated Star Wars shows, Clone Wars and Rebels, are held in high regard by fans, who consider the shows the best parts of the EU, the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
[5] Not a typo. Imagine asking your boss for an extra year and a half to do something.
[6] Arndt’s ousting is understandable, but it sets a troubling precedent for Kathleen Kennedy’s handling of personnel within the new era of Star Wars. In just about every Star Wars movie under her guidance at Lucasfilm, there have been major upheavals, leadership changes, or creative clashes. The Force Awakens booted its writer, 2016’s Rogue One saw an intensive re-edit after director Gareth Evans’ first cut was seen as too dark, 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story had to be 70-percent reshot after screwball directors Lord and Miller were fired in favor of Ron Howard’s staid eye, and 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker weathered the removal of director Colin Trevorrow before resuming under the leadership of none other than J.J. Abrams. Notably, the only Star Wars movie in the Disney era not to see production drama is 2017’s The Last Jedi, the most heralded among critics but the most divisive among fans.
[7] They worked on the script by recording themselves talking on hours-long walks together. If anything Star Wars-related was ever meant to be a podcast, it’s those tapes.
[8] Photography was delayed when a blast door on the Millennium Falcon shut on Harrison Ford’s leg and fractured it. When Abrams tried to lift the door off his star, he himself fractured multiple discs in his back. He kept the injury a secret until the movie was finished so there wouldn’t be more delays.
[9] John Boyega was a terrific find for the franchise. He had some experience with spunk in movies like Attack the Block!, but his charisma is on full display as Finn. He’s funny, cool, sincere, rogue-ish, and handsome as hell.
[10] Kylo Ren has the most complex, riveting arc in the new trilogy, and Driver puts the best performance of the series, if not the entire franchise, behind it. As Ren, Driver is impetuous, hungry, volatile, and manipulative. He brings an element of physicality to the role, too, which you hardly ever see in Star Wars. In The Force Awakens’ climactic battle, Ren is dogged by a gunshot in his side, and every so often Driver punches the wound to fire his adrenaline and stoke his rage. It’s incredible. The dude was on one.
[11] It’s pretty obvious from all his press related to these movies, but Harrison Ford seems to find most of Star Wars to be a complete joke. That might be a bummer to huge Han Solo fans, but it’s also probably what makes him so good in the role in the first place.
[12] Well, except for a small corner of the internet who couldn’t accept Rey, a woman, could be a master of the Force, and Finn, a black man, could be the new trilogy’s main male hero, but that corner of the internet is sexist and racist and should go back to their hole.
[13] Look no further than The Phantom Menace to see how just one Star Wars movie can maintain this duality. It has some of the franchise’s worst characters (Jar-Jar) and absurd concepts (midichlorians), but it also boasts a pretty crackerjack podracing sequence and one of the best lightsaber battles in the entire series (Darth Maul alone makes this movie worth watching).