Oh, The Force Awakens, you really thought you could show up on the scene and not be polarizing. You were so wrong. Spoiler alert for anyone who, by some magic, hasn’t seen this movie yet, because I’m about to dissect the heck out of this film and also The Phantom Menace’s plot.
Let’s jump right into the story. The evil First Order has tracked a map containing the coordinates of the location of Luke Skywalker to a planet, where the Resistance races against time to get the map first. The Resistance pilot going after the plans, Poe Dameron, is captured; his droid, however, escapes with the map. Sound familiar? Well buckle up, kids. Familiarity is about to slap us in the face. Repeatedly.
From there, the pilot is rescued by a dude in stormtrooper armor (to be fair, he is a stormtrooper), Finn. He’s a traitor to the First Order, and together they escape. The droid with the map, meanwhile, has made his way to a young adult female (why does that sound so awkwardly worded?), Rey. She meets up with Finn and together they escape the clutches of the First Order on the Millennium Falcon. They meet up with Han Solo, who escorts them to a cantina where they find Luke’s lightsaber, which Finn takes. Suddenly, the cantina is attacked and the First Order unleashes what is basically a Death Star 3.0. From here, Rey is captured by Kylo Ren, the wannabe Darth Vader who’s actually just an emo punk, and ends up rescuing herself. Meanwhile, the Resistance launches an assault on Starkiller Base (new Death Star), while Finn, Han, and Chewbacca infiltrate the base to disable its shields. Kylo Ren gets into a confrontation with Han Solo, who is apparently his father, and ultimately kills him while the protagonists watch helplessly and proceed to shoot at him. He catches Rey and Finn outside and engages them in a duel, demolishing Finn and nearly killing Rey before she apparently tunes into the Force and nearly kills him. Meanwhile, Starkiller Base is destroyed and it’s all a mostly happy ending. Rey and Chewbacca fly away to find Luke. The end. Sounds a whole lot like A New Hope, right?
Some people accuse these similarities of dragging the film down. Personally, I adore this movie, so get ready to watch me ramble on and on in its defense.
First, let’s stop pretending this is the first time a Star Wars movie has copied major plot points from another Star Wars movie. Let’s break The Phantom Menace down, shall we? Let’s see if any of this sounds familiar. A young female ruler is captured by an evil organization, and a Jedi master and his young apprentice go to rescue her. They escape in a ship, and land on Tatooine, where the Jedi master meets a young, force-sensitive kid who wears tan clothes and wants to make something of himself, and is apparently an incredibly gifted pilot. Eventually they gather their strength and launch an attack on the evil organization. While this happens, the Jedi master is killed by a Sith as his young apprentice watches helplessly. With some kind of miraculous shot, the young force-sensitive kid blows up the massive battle station above the planet, and saves the lives of everyone on the planet he’s defending. Oh, and also the force-sensitive kid falls for the young female ruler. Sound familiar? It sure as heck should. And yet, no one accuses The Phantom Menace of being a clone of A New Hope, probably because there are so many other things about it that they can readily hate.
Now, let’s compare Attack of the Clones to The Empire Strikes Back. That sentence makes me shudder. With the Republic in peril, a now adult Anakin Skywalker is ordered to protect Padme Amidala, whose life has been threatened. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan goes off and finds some stuff out and eventually ends up captured by Count Dooku, who tries to turn him to the Dark Side. While all this is going on, Padme and Anakin are falling in love, and Anakin is being tempted by the Dark Side. So with his friend captured, the young Jedi rushes in in an incredibly stupid manner to save him, and only ends up captured himself. So anyway, the young Jedi eventually ends up in a duel with a Sith lord and loses his arm, and both films end on a semi-cliffhanger, as the darkness is slowly taking over the galaxy.
So, taking plot points from other Star Wars films is absolutely nothing new. Abrams himself has even said that it was intentional, not simply because he couldn’t think of a new story, but to re-immerse people in the original trilogy and make them forget the scourge of the prequels. And for me, it works perfectly. Now that we’ve (hopefully) moved past that, let’s take a look at everything else. I’m honestly not sure what else there is to criticize this movie for. Certainly, even in my mind, in some areas it may go slightly overboard in taking plot points from A New Hope, but really this is a very rare occurrence. Additionally, every other aspect of this film is worthy of the highest praise. The characters are likable, the plot is involving, the acting is excellent, the dialogue is spot-on, the score is incredible (it’s John Williams, my dudes), and, as usual, J.J. Abrams directs the heck out of this film and gives it a living, beating heart. It brings Star Wars surging back with an energy we haven’t seen since The Empire Strikes Back.
I understand why people dislike The Force Awakens. I truly do. I also understand why people hate Abrams’ directorial style, but ultimately these things are subjective, and I truly and genuinely like both of them. You’ve probably already seen it, but if you haven’t, I highly recommend it. It’s an engaging film, and one you’ll most likely enjoy. 4.2/5 stars. Star Wars is back, baby.
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