The Blunt Force of Star Wars Nostalgia Awakens (Part IV)

Note: This is a multi-part revision of a previous essay of the same title. Each part is linked below
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

Spoiler Warning: This post contains spoilers for the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens (but only spoilers about spoilers)


          The absence of a political context for the film and the repetition of narrative elements from previous films deprives audiences of the emotional immersion climactic scenes deserve. The most dramatic moment of the film, or what could have been the most dramatic, is the confrontation between Kylo Ren and Han Solo on Starkiller Base during the Resistance attack. Because this scene is so brutally identical to the confrontation between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan on the Death Star in A New Hope, and instantly recognizable as such, it plays out as utterly predictable and therefore emotionally empty. The similarities between The Force Awakens and A New Hope were distracting because rather than following the plot of the film I was being reminded of the plot of its predecessor. This dynamic became increasingly distracting over the course of the film as what began in fond nostalgia descended into formulaic absurdity as the repetition became more blatant and gratuitous. Moments when characters reflect on the mythic history or discover with the lost relics creates a continuity in the timeline between The Force Awakens and the original films without compromising the integrity of either. But when characters repeat the narrative arcs of previous Star Wars films in The Force Awakens without any context to make sense of such repetition, the audience is left wondering how they could be so ignorant of events which changed the entire galaxy. After the failure of two Death Stars how could the First Order think it was a good idea to build another one with the same design flaw? After witnessing the Death of Obi-Wan at the hands of Darth Vader, how could Han Solo think that he could redeem his genocidal son who idolizes Darth Vader? If the audience cannot be invested in the film, then they will be forced out of it, and this is precisely what the combination of repetition and absence of explanation resulted in for me.

            The science-fiction epic of Star Wars captured my youthful imagination because the film-makers were so obviously imaginative themselves. There were always new aliens, planets, droids and ships across the horizon of the previous film to explore in the newest one. If nothing else, the prequels excelled at this unrestrained indulgence in the imagination. In contrast, the imagination, or lack thereof, In Abram’s The Force Awakens feels restricted to redesigns of iconic Star Wars elements. As an homage to one of the most imaginative series in our cultural mythology, this film feels largely uninspired in its narrative and world-building exploration of that series’ universe. How did the infinite possibilities of science fantasy, the imaginative intersection of both the science fiction and fantasy genres, become so retarded and recycled? The Force Awakens has sacrificed artistic imagination for fan recognition. Star Wars fans will instantly recognize iconic items from their favorite universe such as a lightsaber, Stormtrooper armor, Darth Vader’s helmet, the Millennium Falcon, etc. But Star Wars is not reducible to these items as each film within the series provided something new, something both magical and alien, for audiences to enjoy. Abrams’ film appears to have capitalized on the most memorable items within the Star Wars fan community and done nothing original outside of that community’s imagination beyond creating a cross-bar lightsaber and a spherical R2 unit. The planet Jakku is Tatooine in all but name, its only distinguishing difference is the salvage yards of crashed Empire starships. If Jakku is so similar to Tatooine, why not just make it Tatooine? Audiences would return to an iconic planet but see a new side of it in the post-Empire world. The most compelling instance of creativity in The Force Awakens was not found in its world-building but its casting of a woman and black actor as the young protagonists of the franchise going forward. It is about time that Star Wars gave minorities the recognition they deserve in the genre of science-fantasy. But for all the good that does for representation, the film offers nearly no commentary on their status as minorities. This can’t be considered a criticism per se, since one can always make the argument that the Star Wars is a post-sexist and post-racist universe, but it does reflect a limitation of that world to critique the ideologies of our own world.

            The Force Awakens is hardly the worst Star Wars movie, but in all honestly it is among the least interesting or imaginative in the series. This preserves it against the threat of the sequels but at the same time its insecurities betray the experimental genre-bending of the first film series. Abrams’ film is instantly familiar to fans, but also leaves the audiences appetite starving for something more substantially imaginative. Abrams is an avowed Star Wars fan and while his film is a clear homage to the series, it is also apparent that he misunderstands the creativity dynamic of the original films. Star Wars was an eclectic combination of fantasy tale, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon space operas, military and Wild West adventure stories, and New Age mysticism with the underlying structure of Joseph Campbell’s compelling monomyth philosophy. Since then, the film franchise has become a myth of its own in modern pop-culture. The Force Awakens pays homage to that fact by framing the events in the original film trilogy as galactic myths themselves, the film fails to find inspiration in anything outside that trilogy’s narrative. The appeal of A New Hope and the rest of the original trilogy, and to a lesser extent the sequel trilogy, was its experimental eccelticticsm of elements from multiple genres popular at the time. The original films left so an impact because they were in conversation with so much of the wider culture popular at the time. In contrast, The Force Awakens only borrows elements from Star Wars itself and only with the most familiar and exhausted examples. At first the familiarity of nostalgia is satisfying but as time goes on in the film it becomes suffocating as it becomes apparent this is a film devoid of the sense of discovery that made the previous films so seductive. Star Wars has always been about exploring the infinite possibilities of worlds a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Abrams’ film doesn’t feel nearly far, far away enough from the influence of previous films. The Force Awakens is a fun film, but it is also a forgettable one. Disney's new interpretation of the famed franchise is composed primarily of recycled parts; for some fans this is a huge source of the appeal of the film, for others it merely reflects the cynicism of the film industry and easy commercial success formulas. For myself, it felt like a betrayal of the mythic meta-narrative of Star Wars itself.

          While The Force Awakens is better than Abram's previous two remake films with the Star Trek universe, it is arguably less respectful towards its source than those films were. Those films were at the least marketed as remakes, as opposed to sequels, but cleverly used Spock's time-traveling adventures as a narrative device to explain the divergent timeline of his new series and thereby retained the in-universe canonical status of the original series. Rather than redoing Star Trek history, Abrams split it. In the case of The Force Awakens, Abrams' narrative technique is to make it so that the next generation of heroes has forgotten or lost their history and is therefore doomed to repeat it, just as the audience is doomed to (re)watch it unfold. By destroying the Republic essentially off-screen and providing no commentary to create continuity between Lucas’ original films and Abrams’ own film, Abrams resets the narrative dynamic of his film back to that of the originals. Once again it is a small force of rebels resisting an evil empire even though the Resistance is (was) aligned with the ruling Republic and the Empire has collapsed. Were it not for the presence and reference of characters from the previous films in this The Force Awakens, it would be a reboot of A New Hope in all but name. The most ambitious aspect of the film is its consummate nostalgia, and arguably aspires towards nothing else. The Force Awakens is not a return to the past so much as a return of the past itself. This is not a pastiche of contemporary influences as the original film was, nor is it an homage to the original film. It is a remake of the original film masquerading as a sequel to it.