Star Wars: The Force Awakens successfully kicked the sequel trilogy off, grossing $2.07 million worldwide, and it contains some of the best moments of Star Wars – and some of the worst decisions. When Star Wars returned to the big screen in 2015, the pressure was intense. Disney had paid $4 billion to acquire Lucasfilm, which meant Star Wars needed to return in a big way. The Force Awakens certainly achieved this, and the first trailer said everything: “Chewie, we’re home.”
The Force Awakens is generally seen as a solid start to the trilogy, and it’s not as controversial as the other chapters. The acting and writing are really entertaining, and the effects are as gorgeous as anyone can ask for in a modern Star Wars movie. But the choices made here would affect the entire sequel trilogy; here are five reasons why The Force Awakens is the best of the franchise, and five why it is the worst.
The Star Wars prequel trilogy had left the fandom divided. Some really disliked the prequels for their tone, and criticized them for their lack of charisma; others adored the scale of the story and the new ideas woven into the franchise by George Lucas. This division caused the direction of The Force Awakens to be more in-line with the original trilogy in lots of great ways.
The Force Awakens maintains the energy that the original trilogy had when first introducing us to the Star Wars galaxy. Many accused the prequels of being emotionless, and The Force Awakens brought emotion to its forefront, using it to motivate the journey of characters like Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren. It just feels more in-line with the original trilogy, and feels like one of the most heart-stopping and incredibly memorable adventures in Star Wars.
But with the goal of recapturing the magic of the original trilogy, which it does well, The Force Awakens also unfortunately forgets a lot of what the prequel trilogy did well. The prequels excelled at crafting a realistic and complicated political galaxy. The politics made sense and complicated the story, and this complexity and sophistication simply cannot be found in The Force Awakens.
Because of a desire to stay away from politics, one of the biggest opportunities for storytelling in The Force Awakens is completely lost. The New Republic is destroyed, and we never get to see how the good guys govern the galaxy. Politics can be very, very interesting and add a lot of depth to things like the Resistance and New Republic that would make the story mean a little more. This lack of politics has opened the door for The Mandalorian and Ahsoka to build the New Republic up separately.
One of the strongest aspects of the sequel trilogy, and especially The Force Awakens, is Rey. Later known as Rey Skywalker, Rey in The Force Awakens is a very charismatic protagonist, and leads the film’s story very well. Her dialogue-less character introduction is wonderful, and lets us know everything we need to know about who she is and what she wants and needs.
But one of Rey’s biggest strengths as a character is how she really wants to find her place in the galaxy. It’s core to her character more than it ever was with Luke or even Anakin. Rey exists in a pre-established Star Wars galaxy where the events of the original trilogy have already happened. Heroes exist, and she knows about them just like we do; we get to follow her as she discovers this new story, making her an incredibly effective protagonist.
While earnestly attempting to recapture the magic of the original trilogy, The Force Awakens may have gone a bit too far. The Force Awakens‘ plot is really just a beat-by-beat re-shuffling of the events of the original Star Wars movie, later retitled A New Hope. The droid containing essential information, the Rebels vs. Empire conflict, the desert planet protagonist, it’s all there.
Again, this rehashing of A New Hope‘s plot has serious issues on the Star Wars timeline as a whole because of what it does to the New Republic. In trying to recapture the Rebellion’s conflict against the Empire, the New Republic is rendered a bit useless in the context of the Star Wars movies. The Force Awakens resets the galaxy to a familiar status quo, preventing it from entering into unknown territory.
Opening with a bang with the First Order village raid on Jakku, The Force Awakens has some really wonderful action sequences. They have a distinctly modern sense of speed and dynamism with modern VFX at their disposal. And most of all, they’re all very emotionally grounded, with characters we care about in these raw, intense conflicts, whether they be in starfighters or with lightsabers.
What’s not debatable about The Force Awakens is that its action scenes have a lot of energy. The camera is moving, practical effects are often used, and there’s a lot of shooting on-location. This lends them a certain sense of realism in that energy that was missing from a lot of Star Wars action, particularly in the prequels.
Again, while attempting to recapture the aesthetics of the original trilogy, The Force Awakens ends up making another huge mistake. Something so awesome about Star Wars is its huge variety of ship designs, yet for the first time, The Force Awakens barely introduces any new ships. Every Resistance or First Order ship it introduces is a revamp of one from the original trilogy, and it’s quite a shame.
During the battles of Takodana and Starkiller Base, the Resistance simply employs new X-Wings, which are cool, but are just modernized T-70 versions of the T-65s we first see in A New Hope. The same can be said for First Order TIE Fighters, which are simply upgraded Imperial TIEs from A New Hope. All of this is very unfortunate when compared to each of the 6 previous Star Wars films, all of which introduced a whole host of new starfighters.
One of the most anticipated aspects of the sequel trilogy upon its announcement was the return of beloved original trilogy characters. This came with a thunderous applause as Han and Leia were brought back in The Force Awakens, with both Harrisson Ford and Carrie Fisher giving incredible performances. Though they didn’t share many scenes, their chemistry was perfect, and both play very important roles in the film.
In The Force Awakens, Han and Leia’s marriage has been strained by Ben’s fall to the dark side, which is very sad to see on screen. Despite this, both Fisher and Ford communicate uniquely their roles as general and smuggler, but also that they have a love for each other that won’t go away. Han Solo’s artistically-done death in the film makes this even more sad, and Leia’s reaction to it is acted so well. Career-best performances all around as mentors to the newer generation of heroes.
One of the most unfortunate things about The Force Awakens, though, is that it cuts off the possibility that Han Solo and Luke Skywalker could share the screen one more time in live-action. Han dies at the hands of his son before Luke is found once more, making this so, so tragic. There was so much to celebrate with the return of all three classic heroes in the movie, and viewers never even get to see them all together on screen.
While the story clearly just could not have functioned with Luke and Han meeting at any point, it’s still very sad that The Force Awakens couldn’t bring the trio back together again. It would’ve been so triumphant to see them on screen at the same time, but the Star Wars sequel trilogy’s somewhat painful story prevented this. What hurts most is that now, with Carrie Fisher having passed away, it can truly never happen.
A common criticism of The Force Awakens is that it follows A New Hope‘s plot too closely, so therefore, the parts where it doesn’t must be really great. And that’s what the epilogue to the film is, as Rey follows the finally completed map to Luke Skywalker on Ahch-To. This sequence is a distinct change for Star Wars as the film is wrapped up nicely – but ends in a cliffhanger, with Rey offering the Skywalker lightsaber to Luke.
This ending sequence is notable for several reasons. It is not only an ending, but also a beginning. It’s scored like one, too, as the music ascends into the credits. The performances from Mark Hamill and Daisy Ridley are also amazing, and being shot on location adds a lot to this too. Overall, this is quite possibly the most memorable and well crafted ending to any Star Wars film.