In defense of "The Force Awakens": Special Edition (Parts I-IV combined)

See my full opening crawl here.

What follows is a slightly edited full-length version of my four-part series in defense of The Force Awakens. I have linked to each individual part in various places throughout this post, but here, in their original order (not the order in which I placed them in this post) are part one (in defense of the movie's politics), part two (defending it against Rey being a Mary Sue), part three (defending it against its being a rip-off of A New Hope), and part four (defending it against plot holes).

It’s possible that no movie has ever had higher pre-release expectations than Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Between not only continuing the epic story begun in the beloved original trilogy more than 30 years ago, but also overcoming the ill-will garnered by the widely-reviled prequel trilogy 10 years prior, The Force Awakens had quite the task before it.

Did it succeed? In my view, yes. On my first viewing (going into which I went to great lengths to avoid spoilers) it blew me away--so much that I felt compelled to see it a second time the next day. In doing so, I hoped to ensure I was confident enough in my opinion of the movie to go about testing it against the other reviews that had appeared, as too often I find the opinions of others inevitably influencing my own views of movies.

I thought highly of the movie after my second viewing, and still do after my third and--so far--final. If everyone shared my opinion, then I would simply review the movie here and be done with it. I have learned, however, that not everybody shares my affection. Indeed, I am already beginning to sense a great disturbance in the Force in the form of pushback from naysayers (who can count George Lucas and the Vatican among their number). 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 (I am going to ignore the criticism that it used "too much CGI," because that is both stupid and untrue; while it did technically have more VFX shots than the reviled Phantom Menace, it blended everything infinitely better, and used more practical sets/effects). My individual responses are linked below: 

Part 1: Its politics make sense
Part 2: Rey is not a Mary Sue
Part 3: It's not just a new New Hope
Part 4: Plot holes don't ruin it 

Because I have always been better at defending my views from criticism than making positive cases for or against something, and even though I tend to be a contrarian when concerning super-popular things that probably don’t need me to defend them anyway (I turned against The Dark Knight when it first came out before coming around to it later), here follows my attempt to address each criticism in turn. In doing so, I shall not quote excessively from the takes I am citing, and will instead try to summarize their general argument fairly, while linking to them for those who wish to read them in full.

1) The politics are too vague/confusing.
Examples: Ben Domenech, Alyssa Rosenberg, Sonny Bunch

Clearly there wasn't enough of this in The Force Awakens.

The basic thrust of this argument is that, unlike the clear-cut Empire/Rebellion struggle of the original trilogy, the political situation of The Force Awakens seems much less straightforward. Implicit (and explicit) in these arguments is a desire for more politics/political exposition in The Force Awakens. 

This is strange argument, for three reasons. First, even the deliberately understated political exposition we get in the movie suffices: The New Republic is the government the Rebellion formed after Return of the Jedi. The First Order is a sort of half-state/half-terrorist organization (think ISIS) that arose from the ashes of the Empire. (I shall say more about the First Order in rebutting argument #4). Though the First Order actually controls territory, the New Republic refuses to act on the threat, requiring Leia’s Resistance. 

If the prequel trilogy’s political narrative showed the transformation of a decadent republic into an empire, and the original trilogy’s narrative showed the success of a Rebellion against that Empire, then this trilogy’s political narrative seems likely to show the difficulty of keeping a newly-established regime true to its roots and preserving it against internal and external threats as it becomes ever more removed from the time of its founding (a problem Abraham Lincoln once described). The seduction of Kylo Ren, the child of two of the Rebellion’s most prominent figures, by the Dark Side is a literal representation of this difficulty of maintaining a regime. Though canon non-film material confirms this, I gleaned all of it from just watching the movie (and surely we’ll learn more in sequels).

Second (and stepping outside of intra-movie logic), to ask for more politics in The Force Awakens invites a return to the rote overexposition of the prequel trilogy, which forced viewers to learn far more about the taxation of trade routes than they ever expected. 

Third, it suggests that people actually watch Star Wars movies because of their politics, which I can pretty much guarantee is not the case. This seems the weakest of the better arguments against The Force Awakens.

2) There are too many plot holes.

Examples: Looper, This college English professor who probably was bored over winter break and/or was avoiding grading. 

A plot hole on the first Death Star.

This is probably the most annoying argument against The Force Awakens. For one, many of the supposed “plot holes” suggested by nitpicking critics are unfair. Those identified by the above college English professor who clearly was bored over winter break and/or is avoiding grading are either a) results of his not paying close enough attention to the movie b) assertions of different writing choices he would have made c) stupid d) uncharitable or e) questions future movies will likely answer. I won’t rebut all 60 of his (“unforgivable”!) complaints (though one valiant soul has adequately rebutted the first 40 here), but I’ll challenge some of them to provide a sample:   

Example of not paying close enough attention: To blow up the 120-km "Death Star" in Star Wars, the rebels needed detailed plans for the base and a full-scale invasion force -- as well as the supernatural targeting skills of the most powerful Force-user in the galaxy. To destroy the exponentially larger and better-protected "Starkiller Base" in The Force Awakens, all that was needed was a janitor with no special skills, a few run-of-the-mill handheld explosives, a couple not very difficult X-wing blaster strikes, and some moxie. It also helped that the Millennium Falcon was able to ‘fly low.’”

Rebuttal: It’s clearly stated in the movie that the Resistance also based its schematic of Starkiller Base on a reconnaissance flight (that the First Order tracked back to the Resistance base). Also, as pointed out here, the assault was far more difficult than this argument would have you believe, nearly failing and requiring some excellent piloting to succeed.  

Example of asserting different writing choices he would have made: “Let's be clear: Han's son joins the First Order, and Luke's attempts to train new Jedis goes horribly wrong, and both men respond to these setbacks by, well, abandoning the Resistance to be utterly slaughtered by the First Order. Luke chills on an island, and Han on a smuggler's freighter, while untold thousands or millions of innocents are killed by the Order. Can we even comprehend how pissed Leia would be at both of them, and how cowardly Leia (at least the Leia we see in the first three films) would consider them both? And yet she seems only mildly peeved at Luke, and, despite Han implying otherwise, is almost entirely happy to see him when he turns up at the Resistance stronghold.

Rebuttal: So if this guy wrote The Force Awakens (an unfulfilled desire to have done so being, I speculate, a hidden source of much of the criticism of this movie, but I have no way to prove that), Leia would have slapped Han when she first saw him again, I guess. Cool.
 
Example of stupid: “Kylo Ren is the head of the Knights of Ren, but there are no other Knights of Ren in the movie.”

Rebuttal: This is both untrue (we see what are heavily implied to be the Knights of Ren standing by Kylo in a field of corpses in Rey’s vision) and dumb: We’ll probably see them in the next movie. 

Example of uncharitable: “Kylo Ren has such a Force-enabled sense of where his father is in the Galaxy that when his father lands on Starkiller Base, Ren immediately exclaims to himself, "Solo!" Yet a few minutes later, when Ren is just twenty feet from Solo, he can't detect him -- and actually starts searching for him in the wrong direction.”

As stated here, the Force has always been arbitrary and convenient in the Star Wars universe. For example: Darth Vader tortures his own daughter in a A New Hope without realizing who she is; he also struggles to find Luke while the latter is hiding behind a column or something in Return of the Jedi.  

Example of questions future movies will likely answer: “How pissy is it of Luke to (a) abandon the Resistance, and then (b) leave an obnoxiously coy trail of bread-crumbs to sort of (but not really) help people find him (at some unspecified time)? Why did he leave multiple maps out there in the ether, anyway, given that him having done so allows the First Order to find one of them?”

Good question. I sure hope this movie has a sequel!  

Out of the 60 (!) “plot holes” this guy identifies, I’d say maybe a handful are legitimate. To which I respond to him and to others that Star Wars movies have never been perfect; The Force Awakens is not an unusually violent offender of plot logic compared to its brethren.

3) Rey is too perfect/powerful.
Examples: Megan McArdle, Sonny Bunch (again)  

"Do you really think I'm a Mary Sue?"

The basic thrust of this argument, one of the first to emerge against The Force Awakens, is that the character Rey (played by Daisy Ridley) is just too perfect. The particular phrase used is “Mary Sue,” which refers to a character for authors of fan-fiction who appears in an already extant universe and is both perfect and represents the author herself. Of course, Rey cannot literally be this, as some critics claim, since all of the screenwriters and the director are male and she is female. It is also odd and highly speculative to think that those writers would want to insert themselves into a Star Wars movie. Perhaps this is a case of projection by critics? But I digress. 

Rey, the argument goes, is multilingual, technically proficient, good in hand-to-hand combat, an ace pilot, figures out how to use the Force and a lightsaber without anyone to train her and bests a trained Sith in combat, and, overall, is uninteresting and never does anything wrong. This is inaccurate for many reasons. The first three traits (multilingual, technically proficient, good in hand-to-hand combat) are logical outgrowths of a lifetime spent taking care of herself as a scavenger on a hostile, diverse desert planet (also, note that Han Solo was fluent in at least three languages in A New Hope: Wookie, Hutt, and whatever the heck Greedo spoke).

Rey’s piloting skills, Force ability, and lightsaber prowess are also wholly defensible. One can account for the first from a combination of Rey’s familiarity with starships from her occupation and her latent Force ability (the same sort of ability that allowed a young Anakin Skywalker to win the Boonta Eve podrace and destroy the droid control center in The Phantom Menace, and that allowed Luke Skywalker to fire two proton torpedos into a 2-meter wide space on the Death Star). Rey herself is a bit mystified by her piloting skills, which further suggests a manifestation of Force sensitivity. 

But that’s just piloting a starship. What about Jedi mind tricks, use of the Force, and lightsaber dueling? Concerning the first two, it’s inaccurate to remark, as some have, that Rey has no reason to know it’s even possible to use the Force, much less in the way she uses it. For in addition to imbibing a sort of mythic sense of Luke Skywalker (who, let us not forget, is able to fight Darth Vader, a much more experienced Sith than Kylo Ren, after having been trained for about five minutes by Obi-Wan Kenobi and maybe a day by Yoda, and then defeats Vader relying on "feelings" of anger after not much additional training from anyone else since the time of his last fight) at some point in her life prior to the movie, learning from Han Solo that the Force is real, learning from the wise Maz Kanata that the Force has called to her, and having an introductory Force “vision quest” from Luke's lightsaber, Rey has received unwitting instruction from Kylo Ren, her rival by the end of the movie, in the ways of the Force by his using it against her. This Force feedback loop is especially apparent when he, attempting to read her mind, gets his own mind read, but it is reasonable to infer that this happens at other times (e.g., Rey learns that the Force can influence the minds of others when Ren uses it to knock her out; she learns the Force can be used telekenetically when Ren uses it to throw her against a tree). 

But what about the lightsaber fight? Surely even a self-awarely Force-sensitive youngling couldn’t best a trained Sith like Kylo Ren? Au contraire. For not only is Ren--whose training, we learn from Snoke, is incomplete--compromised emotionally--by killing his father (note his somewhat-psychotic punching himself where wounded to make himself bleed)--and physically--by a shot right to the stomach from a weapon established earlier in the movie as quite powerful--but he also faced Rey after having already dueled and dispatched the valiant but Force-insensitive Finn. Rey also fights Ren with a weapon established earlier in the movie as having a mind of its own, a mind that has sought her out, and a mind that seems to act in her favor. Ren is also fighting her not to kill her but to capture her for Snoke (for Pokemon players: Ren wanted to catch Rey, but he didn’t have a Master Ball).

When Ren and Snoke discuss Rey, moreover, they speak of an “awakening,” a term that has not appeared in any prior Star Wars film, which suggests Rey is taking a different path along the Force than we have seen before. Ren and Rey’s unusual Force potency likewise suggests that the Force itself is acting differently from past movies (the movie is called The Force Awakens). This becomes ironic in light of the criticism (I shall discuss next) that The Force Awakens is too similar to past Star Wars movies, as many of its critics hold simultaneously that a) Rey’s path to the Force is too different from what we’ve seen in past Star Wars movies and b) The Force Awakens is too similar to past Star Wars movies. And if Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke, two of the galaxy’s three most powerful Force users, felt Rey’s awakening, then surely Luke Skywalker, the galaxy’s third, felt it as well. This is speculation for now, but who is to say that Luke did not guide her from afar?

Stepping again outside of intra-movie logic, recall that Star Wars is replete with powerful characters. Indeed, the Force itself is a bit of a cheat, enabling whatever powers or plot points required at any given moment and generating powerful characters. Whether you consider this a bug of Star Wars, or a feature underscoring a balance-seeking order that the Force upholds in this universe, an order that manifests itself in repetition, it has been characteristic of Star Wars since the beginning and is hardly unique to this movie. (A friend of mine once suggested to me that the best way to understood Star Wars is to replace every instance of “the Force” with “the plot.” E.g., Star Wars Episode VII: The Plot Awakens; “The plot is strong with this one”; “Use the plot”; “The plot is all around us,” etc.). Even so, Rey’s reliance on “feelings” to become greater in tune with the Force is consistent with the Force’s somewhat inconsistent logic.

It is also untrue that Rey is uninteresting and fails to do anything wrong. Unlike the whiny, spoiled, wanderlusting brat Luke in A New Hope, Rey clings to her life on Jakku in the vain hope that the parents who long ago abandoned her will return; it visibly pains her to leave that hope behind. The next claim (never does anything wrong) is also untrue: On Han Solo’s freighter, she accidentally releases dangerous monsters, nearly killing several of her friends; in Maz Kanata’s castle, she runs away from her apparent destiny to become a Jedi, persisting in the hope of returning to her parents; having run away, she nearly gets herself killed when failing to fire a blaster properly (something Luke, in this argument a superior character, didn't have any trouble doing on the first Death Star, by the way), and soon afterward gets herself captured.

Thus, Rey is a far more interesting, believable, and defensible character than the rap against her suggests. And we haven’t even seen her arc play out fully. Luke was nothing interesting by the end of A New Hope; it is unfair to ask Rey to have a trilogy’s worth of character development in one movie.  

4) It is too similar to past Star Wars movies. 
Examples: Ross Douthat, Vice, Los Angeles Times, Sonny Bunch (again)

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

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, as mentioned above (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 a final battle take place over a forest moon, 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 Rey’s parents are, 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 stands on its own less than A New Hope 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.

We can say The Force Awakens sucked if Episode VIII reveals Snoke is Darth Jar Jar

Well, there you have it: My massive addition to the pile of Star Wars hot takes. I defended the movie because I liked it, because I hold out for the possibility that good Star Wars movies can be made today, and because so many of the critics of the movie that I read are 30-40-year-old-men whose petulance in reacting to the movie one could psychoanalyze endlessly (refusal to believe that anything could be as good as something from their childhoods? Jealousy/anger that they didn’t get to be a part of a new Star Wars movie? Seduction by the ease of tearing down rather than defending?) but baselessly and unprofitably.*

I can say one thing with more certainty, however: The Internet has subjected movies to more pressure, analysis, and hot takes than ever before. Based on the expectations going on, and the fact that the Star Wars Internet criticism machine has been churning along for 16 years now, it was perhaps inevitable that some backlash would occur, and that some people would be more primed to pounce on another Star Wars movie than to enjoy it. For many of these people, I would speculate that A New Hope and its sequels constituted a powerful personal experience upon first viewing and assumed an incredible standard of perfection as a result, and that they would derive satisfaction from nothing less than a complete replication of this unduplicable novelty and perfection (so-called) from The Force Awakens. Having watched the original trilogy two weeks ago for the first time in at least decade, I question the legitimacy of the claim that it was perfect anyway. Yet I digress. 

I really liked the movie. I was happy and, indeed, grateful that J.J. Abrams literally broke his back* to continue this story in a natural way (unlike 2015’s fellow massive franchise restarter, Jurassic World; will they ever figure out that cloning dinosaurs is a bad idea?), and also did so with fun characters old and new, in a way completely consonant with past films. And in an age when subjectivity and stubbornness make convincing people that they’re wrong about something almost impossible, that may end up having to be enough for me. (I still recommend that critics understand Abrams' rationale for doing what he did, which they can find here.) 

And now that I have written more than 7,000 words about Star Wars (and read far more), I am tired of Star Wars takes, Star Wars analysis, and all other attempts to read into these movies more than there is and to do anything other than be entertained by them, which is, after all, their main purpose. I’m not quite to the level of Alec Guinness (the actor who originally played Obi-Wan Kenobi), but I might be getting close:

In the final volume of the book A Positively Final Appearance (1997), Guinness recounts grudgingly giving an autograph to a young fan who claimed to have watched Star Wars over 100 times, on the condition that the boy promise to stop watching the film, because, as Guinness told him, "this is going to be an ill effect on your life." The fan was stunned at first, but later thanked him (though some sources say it went differently). Guinness is quoted as saying: "'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities."

 I shall now write no further about Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens**.

Until the next movie comes out, that is.

*Seriously, read this article. Apparently, when Ford fractured his leg on the real hydraulic door set piece of the Millennium Falcon, Abrams rushed over to help the door off him, only to fracture a vertebrae. But then he kept it hidden from everyone, wearing a back brace under his clothes and not telling anyone on set what had happened.
**Or maybe I will.