Was ‘The Force Awakens’ the Savior of ‘Star Wars,’ or a Sacrifice?

Man, what a year 2015 was for Star Wars. There was season two of Star Wars Rebels, DICE’s reboot of the Star Wars Battlefront games, and The Force Awakens capped things off.

On its own, there were plenty of reasons to see it. It was the franchise’s first movie in nearly a decade (and its first live-action one in over a decade) and featured marketing largely focused on nostalgia and vibes over plot. It carried the promise of seeing new faces standing with Original Trilogy heroes. And of course, there was the morbid curiosity of seeing if upon buying Lucasfilm to revive the franchise, Disney would catastrophically (and publicly) screw it up, giving Star Wars a second death.

When The Force Awakens was released on December 18, 2015, it opened to strong reviews from critics and audiences alike and went on to break multiple box office records. It became the highest-grossing film of its year at $2.07 billion. Star Wars fever had hit the world in full force; plenty of people saw it enough times to know the film by heart, and the fan scene lit up with art, fiction, cosplay, and discussion about the film’s themes and what could come next for the characters. For a film whose first lines were about “making things right,” the general consensus was that Disney sure succeeded on that front.

And then… sigh, and then… everything changed, in ways we’re still feeling to this day. Let’s look at how, shall we?

© Lucasfilm

Star Wars is a franchise often at the forefront of technological and storytelling techniques, a trend that continued with Awakens. After that film’s massive success, the industry started trying even harder to revive every franchise it could, either with a legacy sequel or resurgence vehicle for the main star. Think of a franchise without a new installment in at least five years; it probably tried a comeback, including (but not limited to) Scream, Terminator (soon to be three or four times!), Indiana Jones, Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ghostbusters, DC, Top Gun, and The Matrix. Endings aren’t really endings anymore; they’re just stop points for the torch to be picked up again once a studio has passed on enough original ideas for the month.

Dubbed “legacy sequels,” some of these have been good, others admirable or mediocre efforts. At worst, they’re wastes of time, but for as many as there’ve been, very few have hit quite like The Force Awakens did. Those of equal stature would be 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, both of which came frontloaded with their own cultural baggage and momentum of similar stature.

In their worst moments, legacy sequels have felt overindulgent to the point of being insulting, overly relying on callbacks and fan service to the detriment of their veteran and newer cast members. It’s meaningless when everything’s trying for a “Chewie, we’re home!” moment, which is how you wind up with movies like Jurassic World Dominion, where you can see the machinery contrive a reason to reunite the original Jurassic Park trio out of obligation more than anything real.

“Obligation” is something Star Wars itself knows all about. It’s not wrong to say Disney overplayed its hand early on by trying to annualize the franchise, alternating between chapters of the Skywalker Saga one year and a prequel or spinoff the next. Really, there was no reason for it other than the studio wanting to have two Marvels, and this went about as well as it has for anything not named Marvel. The experiment was binned after just a few years and four films of fluctuating quality and box office turnouts: how you feel about Rogue One depends entirely on whether or not you retroactively factor Andor into the equation, Solo is okay at best, and when paired with Awakens, The Last Jedi, and Rise of Skywalker… well, the point is, Star Wars was not built for what Disney aspired for it, if there were ever any beyond “make money and stick around in the popular culture.”

© Lucasfilm

The Force Awakens is to Star Wars what Avengers: Age of Ultron was to the MCU in that it mainly exists as groundwork for future franchise moves. But unlike Ultron, Awakens isn’t weird to talk about so much as it is sad and kind of frustrating. However well-intentioned it was in playing things safe, it’s a victim of its own success, as everything around it has tried following in its footsteps, and its direct follow-ups were awkwardly caught between replicating its energy or trying to do their own thing.

Whatever turnaround that eventually comes for the Sequel Trilogy, as it did for the Prequel Trilogy, will be fighting for oxygen alongside the ongoing resentment for what could’ve been and debate over whose fault it ultimately is things ended as messy as they did.

These things were out of Awakens’ control when it was released in 2015, and that’s still the case now. As is, the film remains so overwhelmed by its own franchise and the larger culture that followed in its wake that in a crueler world, it’d be more forgettable. Instead, it’s just like Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren: in a state of arrested development, waiting for a catalyst to help give it deeper meaning.

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