They're still out there, you know. People who think Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens -- which released on Blu-Ray and DVD last week -- was a stone-cold "remake" of the 1977 original Star Wars, later dubbed Episode IV: A New Hope.
Now, undoubtedly there are echoes and homages in The Force Awakens. Given how J.J. Abrams grew up, it shouldn't be surprising that the first Star Wars fanboy to direct a Star Wars movie would want to pay his respects.
This is not accidental, nor is it unusual. Callbacks were baked into Star Wars' DNA from the beginning. George Lucas echoed his own work through all six of his episodes -- making his sequel and prequel trilogy "rhyme" in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
And yet the remake talk persists. Are casual fans taking surface-level callbacks -- Jakku looks like Tatooine, Starkiller Base is a giant Death Star, there's an interrogator droid off to the side in the scene where Poe Dameron gets tortured -- and blowing them out of proportion?
On the other hand: It's true that you could write a single plot summary that would serve for both movies. A valuable droid ends up in the hands of a desert-planet orphan, who then teams up with a smuggler and a Wookiee, and they all help blow up a dangerous space station just before it destroys our heroes.
Well, when you put it like that ...
It's time to settle this question once and for all. Now that both movies are out on home video, it's possible to sit down and do an exhaustive side-by-side analysis. So that's exactly what I did. I watched each movie, 10 minutes at a time -- roughly the length of an old-school movie reel.
If the similarities were structural, I figured, they would become as clear as day watching them in this way. If not, they'd feel like very different movies indeed.
(A quick word on formats -- I used the original 1977 version of Star Wars, rather than the 1997-and-beyond Special Editions. Because nobody is trying to claim that J.J. Abrams replicated a scene where Greedo shoots first or Han meets Jabba the Hutt.)
Here's what I discovered.
Minutes 1-10
Star Wars: I'm even more ridiculously familiar with the first ten minutes of Star Wars than I am with the rest of the film. One chapter of my book, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, breaks down every reference and influence in this essential part of the movie -- and highlights its success in introducing what was, in the context of 1977, a very unusual story.
Suffice to say the first reel is a wild ride that packs a hell of a lot of detail. We open on that iconic 13-second shot of an Imperial Star Destroyer attacking the tiny Tantive IV, before switching to C-3PO and R2-D2. We follow our droid heroes, modeled on the peasant soldiers in Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, through the battle that follows.
We meet Princess Leia in three guises (mysterious message-giver, gun-toting rebel, "senator on a diplomatic mission") and Darth Vader three times. As it ends, our droids have crash-landed in the daytime heat of a desert planet.
Notably absent from the first 10 minutes: the movie's two leading men (Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill) and its two elder statesmen (Peter Cushing and Alec Guinness).
The Force Awakens: The first thing you notice, watching them back to back, is that Episode VII feels a lot slower during its opening minutes than Episode IV did. There's no space battle at the outset, just menacing shots of a Star Destroyer eclipsing a planet and stormtroopers in landing craft.
On Jakku, BB-8 alerts his master, Poe Dameron, to their arrival. Poe, having received a clue to the whereabouts of Luke, deposits it in the droid -- perhaps the only point in the first ten minutes that overtly references a plot point in the original.
One opening is bright and loud; the other is all dark, subdued palates.
Sure, there are some connections, but they're kind of a stretch. Kylo Ren and Darth Vader look similar at this point -- they're bad guys in black cloaks and masks! Except Vader casually kills a man during an interrogation; Kylo can't even stop Poe from cracking wise.
Stormtroopers are making war in both movies! Except one is a bright corridor battle between two military forces, played very much not seriously. The other is a horrific night attack on a village, complete with cold-blooded civilian killing and flamethrowers. It's like the difference between The Matrix and the My Lai massacre.
It's like the difference between 'The Matrix' and the My Lai massacre.
During the massacre, our notice is drawn to one Stormtrooper in particular, Finn. And there you have it -- we've been introduced to both of the movie's leading men (Jon Boyega and Oscar Isaac) and one of its elder statesmen (Max Von Sydow).
Minutes 11-20
Star Wars: The slowest part of the film sees Threepio and Artoo wander Tatooine, get captured by Jawas and lined up outside Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's for a galactic garage sale. The dramatic high point: R5-D4's exploding motivator. And my goodness, will that whiny Luke kid ever get to Tosche Station to pick up those power converters?
The Force Awakens: Poe is taken to the nearby Star Destroyer. Finn has a panic attack. And a beautiful smash cut takes us from Finn's bloodied helmet to Rey's swaddled scavenger face.
Her silent, safe life on Jakku certainly echoes the droids' silent, hectic wanderings on Tatooine. And sure, she and Luke are both orphans who encounter droids on desert planets, even though one is a matter-of-fact sale while the other is a dramatic rescue and reluctant adoption.
But if you're looking for any other comparison between Rey and Luke and you don't want to talk about sand, you're out of luck.
Rey is a medieval serf who has to scrub machine parts for food. Luke is fed and clothed. Rey is plucky, obedient, old before her time; Luke is morose, willful, a typical teenager.
Rey is offered more than a hundred times her normal food ration for BB-8. Luke will never know this kind of temptation.
The Force Awakens is moving along at a far faster clip than the original here, as Rey's spartan scenes are intercut with events back on the Star Destroyer. Kylo submits Poe to Force-based mental interrogation, something that never happened in Star Wars. Ditto with Poe being quickly busted out by Finn, an actual Stormtrooper. I suppose you could say that echoes Leia being ham-fistedly rescued by a couple of guys playing dress-up later on.
Minutes 21-30
Star Wars: Luke moons over a hologram of a woman who is definitely not his sister, argues with his aunt and uncle, stares at setting suns, is attacked by Tusken Raiders and rescued by a crazy old wizard.
The Force Awakens: Finn and Poe escape the Star Destroyer in a stolen TIE fighter. They crash-land on Jakku, which swallows up the TIE. Finn takes Poe's jacket and stumbles across the desert, eventually finding the marketplace where Rey attacks him for wearing what BB-8 says is his master's jacket. The marketplace is attacked by more TIEs.
I draw connections between things for a living, I see all sorts of Star Wars connections everywhere, and at this point I've got nothing. Um, all our heroes are attacked in some way?
Minutes 31-40
Star Wars: Time for Obi-Wan's lecture on the Force and the Way Things Used to Be. Then it's our first cut to the Death Star for the best board room meeting ever to include Vader Force-choking an officer. Back on Tatooine, Obi-Wan and Luke encounter a pile of dead Jawas, which would have led the Imperials ... home. Oh no, Owen and Beru!
The Force Awakens: Rey and Finn jump in the Millennium Falcon and lead the TIE fighters in a merry dance through the wreckage of Jakku. They celebrate, introduce themselves, then fix the Falcon. Finn and BB-8 bond over their shared ability to give the thumbs up.
In between the celebration and the fixing, however, comes the scene where Kylo Ren takes his anger out on a computer console aboard a Star Destroyer -- and Force-chokes an officer! By hilariously dragging his body across a room rather than creepily doing it at a distance Vader-style, but still. Score one point for "obvious remake!"
Minutes 41-50
Star Wars: The pace picks up after Luke agrees to go to Alderaan. We're off to Mos Eisley, where troops don't need to see your identification, and to its cantina, where droids aren't allowed and our friends don't like you either. The hive of scum and villainy yields a brief lightsaber demonstration, a friendly Wookiee, and Han Solo, who drops Greedo in a single shot before the green guy knows what hit him, am I right?
The Force Awakens: Han and Chewie enter the action a few minutes earlier than they did in the original. There's no denying the mirroring of the scenes in the two movies -- and the reference to the Kessel Run -- but it's a dark mirror. Han was young and cocky; now he's old and haunted. He was eager to transport Luke and Obi-Wan; now he suggests throwing Finn and Rey off at the next planet. He didn't give a damn about Luke; now he looks haunted at the mention of Skywalker's name.
Instead of Greedo simply telling us that Han tends to get into trouble when smuggling cargo, this time, this time the movie shows it. The Rathtar scene -- perhaps better known as the "tell that to Kanjiklub" scene -- is more deeply involved, more revealing of Han's character, and crackling with Lawrence Kasdan dialogue.
This is most definitely something new in the galaxy.
Minutes 51-60
Star Wars: The Falcon is introduced and described as a "piece of junk," which Rey's "garbage" line is clearly echoing. Han, in driving gloves, takes off under fire and hits hyperspace. The Wookiee wins at holographic chess. Meanwhile on the Death Star, Governor Tarkin casually murders a couple billion people on Alderaan while Leia watches. Obi-Wan feels the long-distance grief, but not too much to help Luke with his lightsaber training while Han sneers.
The Force Awakens: After our first glimpse of the obviously Death Star-like Starkiller Base, Supreme Leader Snoke puts in his first appearance, his haggard face not dissimilar to that of Peter Cushing's Tarkin. The destruction of the Republic's home system is plotted. Snoke and Kylo have felt the awakening, whatever that is, just like Obi-Wan felt the end of Alderaan.
The Falcon is in hyperspace. The chess game (or Dejarik, if you're a nerd) is shown again. And instead of lightsaber training, Finn and Rey get a download on the Jedi, during which Han references his former doubt. Instead of leaving a cantina, the Falcon's motley crew arrive at one. (Well, a castle with booze. Same difference.)
In short, I'm starting to doubt myself. These ten minutes are more referential than any in the film prior, and Maz Kanata is the only thing in them that feels completely fresh.
Minutes 61-70
Star Wars: Millennium Falcon, meet Death Star. Luke and Han, meet your new Stormtrooper disguises. Han, meet your reason to go free the Princess: She's rich.
Force Awakens: Maz Kanata looks into Finn's soul. Finn starts his escape to the Outer Rim and confesses to Rey his First Order origin. Rey hears the voice of her younger self calling from the cellar of Kanata's castle, finds Luke's lightsaber, and has her spectacular vision of past and future -- unlike anything seen in the rest of the franchise. Back on Starkiller base, General Hux gives his crazy fascist speech to neat ranks of troopers -- again, unlike anything in the franchise so far.
I relish these moments of differentiation, because I fear we're about to plunge into the moments of greatest similarity.
Minutes 71-80
Star Wars: Han, Luke and a manacled Chewie go on their Leia rescue mission, despite Luke being too short for a Stormtrooper and Han being unable to hold down a conversation on the comlink. Leia blasts them out of trouble, and into a worse situation: the trash compactor. (Which to my mind has always been the worst part of the movie; one in which the frustration of the young actors, stuck in a wet, soupy set for days, is apparent.)
The Force Awakens: Starkiller Base fires and the Hosnian system bites the dust -- though the more I watch it, the less like the destruction of Alderaan it seems. We see the reactions on the ground, even though the film does a poor job of explaining who's caught on the planet in question (Leia's envoy).
Kanata's castle comes under attack. Rey flees into the woods. Finn takes on the trooper who calls him a traitor. The Resistance arrives like the proverbial cavalry, except the kind of cavalry that can skim across lakes. Kylo Ren captures Rey, her frozen form reminding us of the earlier capture of Poe.
At this point, then, the film is starting to echo itself more than echo its predecessor -- a sure sign of its confidence in its own story.
Minutes 81-90
Star Wars: As Obi-Wan deactivates the tractor beam and distracts stormtroopers, our heroes -- Luke, Your Worshipfulness, the Man Who Only Takes Orders From Himself and the Walking Carpet -- banter their way to better acquaintance. Improbably dumping their stormtrooper disguises (plot hole!), they opt to blast their way out of the Death Star instead.
Luke swings across a canyon with the woman who is definitely not his sister. Obi-Wan and Darth have their sclerotic lightsaber joust to the death.
The Force Awakens: Han and Leia meet -- but again, it's the exact opposite of the original. They barely say anything this time. There are no wisecracks, only heartbreaking layers of love and regret under the spartan discussion of whether his jacket is new or not. Pointedly, back at the Resistance base, she shuts down any discussion of what they did on the Death Star.
The movie spends more time on the reunion of Poe, Finn and BB-8, Leia's chat with Finn, and BB-8's introduction to Artoo. The generations of characters are really starting to mingle.
Kylo Ren mentally tortures Rey with the Force. "You know I can take whatever I want," he says at the beginning of a scene with creepy, rapey overtones -- the exact opposite of Luke and Leia's lighthearted canyon swing. Rey subverts the torture narrative by finding Kylo's fear of not living up to Darth Vader.
Then Snoke reveals that they've traced the Resistance base by tracking its reconnaissance ship -- the only direct echo of the original movie in this reel.
Minutes 90-100
Star Wars: Unaware that they're being tracked via homing beacon, the crew of the Falcon blasts their way past TIE fighters and off to the Rebel base on Yavin IV. Luke has barely any time to mourn the sixtysomething he met yesterday, while Leia seems to have forgotten Alderaan entirely as two men compete for her attention. There's a briefing on attacking the Death Star, Han gets his reward and makes to go, and Luke gets mad at his cowardly smuggler friend.
The Force Awakens: Rey further flexes her newfound Force power, persuading uncredited stormtrooper Daniel Craig to remove her restraints and drop his weapon. It's an obvious echo of Obi-Wan's interaction with weak-minded stormtroopers in Mos Eisley, and Rey's subsequent escape feels way too Obi-Wan-on-the-Death-Star like.
Starkiller starts sucking in a sun. The Resistance has a briefing on Starkiller base that is a little too on-the-nose about pointing out that Starkiller isn't the Death Star, it's larger!
J.J. Abrams needn't have flagged the comparison like that; the two scenes are substantially different when you watch them back to back. The Rebel briefing is a gruff military lecture, a set of mostly unquestioned orders to a room full of pilots.
The Resistance is much more chill. They go around the table. They listen to Finn's insider information. They freestyle a solution.
Abrams isn't doing himself any favors with the remake police in the pilots-boarding-ships scene either. But at least there's an emotional beat with Han and Leia in between, one that again hints at a long and troubled marriage, and goes much father than Han and Luke sniping at each other.
And at least movie takes us to Starkiller base a lot faster than Star Wars took us back to the Death Star, with some fresh buddy comedy from Finn and Han ("that's not how the Force works!"). If Han hadn't suggested throwing Captain Phasma into a trash compactor, this reel might just have ended up on the "not a remake" side of the ledger.
Minutes 101-110
Star Wars: Luke gets another "for luck" kiss from Leia, Threepio bids a fretful farewell to Artoo, Luke hears Obi-Wan's ghost. Then we're into the lengthy attack on the Death Star -- itself a shot-for-shot remake of a reel of footage George Lucas spliced together from World War II movies. Once Vader and the TIE pilots get on their tales, this movie is entirely focused on the X-Wings and their trench run. Stay on target, film editors!
The Force Awakens: My fellow Force fanatics, I am not here to defend the X-Wing attack on Starkiller base. It is way too derivative; worse, it is fundamentally unnecessary. (Starkiller could have been brought down from interior explosives.)
It is the indulgence of a lifelong Star Wars fan who had one shot to make a Star Wars movie, and got carried away with the chance to make his own trench run. It is the one reason above all others why the "remake" epithet has stuck.
It is, however, way shorter than you remember, taking up less than two minutes of this reel.
The vast majority is focused on Han's ill-fated reunion with his son. Does this scene echo Obi-Wan's lightsaber duel with Vader? Sure it does, mostly in Rey's unnecessary Luke-like "No!" when Han dies.
But is it a remake of that duel? Not in the slightest. It's darker, deeper. It's not at all about the action, barely about the lightsaber, and entirely about the emotions at war in both Han and Ben.
Minutes 111-120 (and 111-130)
Star Wars: Everything gets wrapped up with a neat bow at the end of the trench run, with spectacular editing (take a bow, Marcia Lucas, wherever you are) heightening the tension and reintroducing Han perfectly as the Death Star meets its doom.
Nobody seems to care much about the dead pilots, the dead Imperials, and Luke blithely dismisses Artoo's injuries with a "he'll be all right" -- the way you'd react to a dead toaster. But hey, everyone's happy! Everyone's smiling! Everyone gets medals!
Except Wookiees. No medals for Wookiees.
The Force Awakens: The movie is doing its level best to scatter loose ends, not tie them up. Which is part of the reason why it goes on an extra reel longer than its predecessor.
The brief lightsaber fight between Finn and Kylo is somewhat Obi-Wan v. Vader-like, in that they're both a bit hobbled and slow, but Kylo's injury offers something we almost never got to see in Star Wars films before this one: blood.
The X-Wing attack on Starkiller continues to look like a remake, and continues to be mercifully brief.
But the Kylo v. Rey duel is like none we've seen before, especially in its masterful kinetic beginning and too-neat earthquake ending. And the return of the pilots is again the exact opposite of Star Wars -- in the moment of triumph this time, there is little but grief and mourning.
Leia's farewell to Rey back at the base -- May the Force be with you, exactly as Han reluctantly wished it to Luke pre-trench run -- is the last echo of the original movie. As soon as Rey takes off to find Luke, we're in new territory: Star Wars' first ever literal cliffhanger. (Even Empire Strikes Back ended relatively neatly, not in the middle of a scene.)
Now we know that Episode VIII will pick up with the resolution of that scene, since it was re-shot by director Rian Johnson. Again, this is new ground for the franchise. We've never had a gap between movies where the characters are not supposed to have aged two years or more.
The verdict
Out of 12 reels, I found similarities in 6. In 3 of those 6, the similarity was kind of a stretch.
That leaves us with 3 reels, or 30 minutes of a 2 hour 10-minute movie, that felt uncomfortably similar. This sounds about right. I would venture to suggest that number actually makes The Force Awakens more of its own movie than, say, the prequels. (Revenge of the Sith echoed an awful lot from Return of the Jedi, quite deliberately.)
So The Force Awakens is categorically not Star Wars, though it's easy to see why some viewers walked away with that conclusion. Will the as-yet-untitled Episode VIII have the darker, more mature feel of Empire Strikes Back? We'll find out in 2017.
Topics Star Wars
