In Defense of "The Force Awakens" Episode III: It's Not Just A New "New Hope"

Note: Luke and Leia never appear in this position in the movie.

Though I quite enjoyed Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, I've learned since watching the movie that not everyone shares my affection. Having read more Star Wars hot takes since December 20 than I hope ever to read again, I have identified the four strongest and most common criticisms of The Force Awakens: 1) The politics are too vague/confusing; 2) Rey is too perfect/powerful; 3) It is too similar to past Star Wars movies; and 4) There are too many plot holes. I responded to the first criticism here, and to the second criticism here. Here follows my response to the third criticism.
 
3) It is too similar to past Star Wars movies. 
Examples: Ross Douthat, Vice, Los Angeles Times, Sonny Bunch (again)

The basic thrust of this argument, probably the most convincing I’ve encountered, is that The Force Awakens is a sort of Star Wars “greatest hits” album by a cover band, repurposing and repackaging bits from the old movies into a “new” whole that doesn’t truly amount to something new. This criticism ignores, I think, some of the newest elements introduced in the series: a turncoat Stormtrooper; a young Sith struggling internally against good, Han Solo dying at the hand of his own son (who does what Boba Fett, Darth Vader, Greedo, and Jabba the Hut all failed to do), etc. 

But it is true that much of the movie seems ostensibly familiar, a criticism that I am sure really bothers J.J. Abrams and all the fans who were wondering before the movie came out whether it would feel like a Star Wars movie. It definitely did, but these critics have ironically come to suggest that it was too much like a Star Wars movie. 

Yet at least three of the factors of familiarity are quite defensible. First, Rey’s narrative hews to the basic monomyth/hero’s journey model of virtually all fiction of this type, endowing the movie with all the familiarity that implies. Second, the continued existence of the Empire in the form of the First Order makes sense; a regime as expansive and powerful as the Empire in the original trilogy isn’t just going to go away, and surely garnered some sympathizers during its tenure and some nostalgic revivalists since its demise. Real-world parallels to this are difficult to draw, as the scale of the Empire at its peak dwarfs anything we’ve seen on Earth, but history offers plenty of examples of a once-mighty empires lingering on past their prime while obsessing over a more glorious past. Third, it makes complete sense that this would-be-Empire would make another Death Star-type weapon if a) it aspires (somewhat desperately and maniacally) to the greatness of the Empire and b) the technology exists in the Star Wars galaxy to make these weapons. Indeed, given b), it’s a wonder that galaxy hasn’t devolved into a sort of nuclear arms race writ-large, or that the New Republic did not construct such a weapon itself, or at least act to defend itself against the possibility (but the United States still lacks a missile defense shield, so there is a real-world parallel). And given how the weapon in The Force Awakens works--it absorbs the energy of a nearby sun--it is logically coherent that it would require some sort of exhaust mechanism, and that this would be the weakest point of the structure.

The rest of the similarities may seem indefensible rip-offs, but either follow as understandable (and likely inevitable) consequences of built-in Star Wars movie logic (some things just have to happen in a Star Wars movie) or improve when understood as deliberate similarities meant to accentuate differences, as explained in full here. A long but worthwhile selection from that post follows:

This is why, while I can certainly understand the impulse to complain about The Force Awakens as derivative, I really think this is more repetition with a difference than mere or base or stupid repetition. One Death Star is a horror; two Death Stars and one Starkiller Base and whatever horrific murder innovation the First Order will come up with for Episode 9 is something more like the inexorable logic of history, grinding us all to dust. Likewise, it’s true that The Force Awakens hits many of the same story beats as the Original Trilogy, but almost always in ways that are worse: the death of Obi-Wan was sad but mysterious, suggestive of a world beyond death which the Jedi could access, while the death of The Force Awakens’ version of Obi-Wan is not only brutally material but visceral, and permanent, as far as we have any reason to believe right now. The loss of Alderaan is sad, but the loss of what appears to be the entire institutional apparatus of the resurgent Republic is unthinkably devastating; aside from the loss of life it would take decades for the Galaxy to recover from such an event, even if they weren’t having to fight off the First Order while doing it. The film is extremely vague about the relationship between the Republic and “the Resistance,” but it appears to be a proxy guerrilla war against the First Order fought inside their own territory, secretly funded by the Republic — and prosecuted by Leia, Akbar, Nien Nunb, and all our heroes from the first movies, whose lives are now revealed as permanently deformed by a forever war they can never put down or escape...It’s horrible to lose a parent to addiction, or to mental illness, or to ordinary everyday cruelty, however you want to allegorize Vader’s betrayal of his children — but how much worse would it be to lose a child to it, how much worse would such a thing taint every aspect of your life and poison all your joy.

Cycling and repetition, moreover, have always marked the Star Wars saga (not to mention Western mythmaking as a whole). Just watch the prequels. Or even the original trilogy, which in Return of the Jedi returns to Tatooine and Dagobah after having spent A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back there, respectively, has the Empire construct a second Death Star, has Luke and Darth Vader fight each other again after they faced off in Empire, and even features another cantina, a la A New Hope. (Another note concerning cantinas: the presence of one in The Force Awakens strikes me not as derivative but as good world-building; it deepens our understanding of the Star Wars galaxy as a seedy place).

Even with all of these qualifications, however, I’ll still concede some excess similarity and familiarity that requires me, again, to go outside intra-movie logic to justify. On the front end, The Force Awakens had to restart a franchise that had been dormant for ten years, and continue a story that hadn’t moved forward in over 30. It may seem strange to obsessive fans who have waited decades for this new movie, but caution was surely the by-word during this film’s production, as its task was to get things started again after the franchise had been frozen in carbonite (remember how hard those first few post-carbonite moments were for Han?). A by-product of this caution was surely to stick with what works: i.e., Star Wars. The argument that The Force Awakens lacks A New Hope’s originality, as that movie represented a unique melange of influences, seems both unfair, since that novelty could never be replicated, and moot, since by being so firmly a Star Wars movie The Force Awakens assumes and displays those influences tacitly (e.g., the samurai-esque snowy silvan duel between Rey and Ren).

On the back end, moreover, The Force Awakens does enough differently from A New Hope to take the franchise in exciting new directions in the future. For while A New Hope ended with the Empire having suffered a major setback and the Rebellion ascendant, The Force Awakens ended with both the First Order and the New Republic essentially wiped out, leaving the galaxy essentially an open playing field once more. And while it took until The Empire Strikes Back for Luke to find Yoda, The Force Awakens ended with Rey having already found Luke, the new trilogy’s Yoda-equivalent, who is far less likely than an old puppet simply to remain in exile while Rey goes off to confront some villain. 

From a mythology standpoint, moreover, the fact that Luke chose as his exile what we believe was the site of the first Jedi temple, as well as the mysterious power of Supreme Leader Snoke, suggest that the next two movies will explore the history of the Jedi and the Sith in great depth. And from a more present-tense standpoint, the next two movies will have to fill in the mysteries of the intervening 30 years: e.g., why Luke’s training efforts failed so spectacularly, who are Rey’s parents, etc. 

Of course, if the next two movies do not take the series in any new direction, and simply mad-lib rehash The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, then--and only then--can one judge this new trilogy accordingly, a statement that applies to other criticisms of the movie as well. That The Force Awakens cannot stand on its own is both untrue and irrelevant; A New Hope was meant to stand alone because Fox and George Lucas genuinely had no idea if it would succeed, whereas the sequel to The Force Awakens is already being filmed.

Next: I respond to criticism 4): There are too many plot holes, and conclude my series.