By George & Josh Bate
Oh, what a time it was on this day 10 years ago. Arguably the most anticipated movie of all time, the revival of Star Wars and the introduction of a whole new era of storytelling in a galaxy far, far away, hit theaters after months of rampant speculation and unbridled excitement. Every teaser, trailer, and poster ahead of the film’s release was a momentous event unto itself, such was the enthusiasm for seeing Star Wars (and the original trilogy’s collective of heroes) on the big screen again.
For the 10th anniversary of The Force Awakens, we’re taking a look back at why the movie is so special, how (despite its $2 billion gross and 93% on Rotten Tomatoes) it remains underrated, why some of its criticisms are unfounded, and more.
“There’s been an awakening. Have you felt it….?”
J.J. Abrams couldn’t have picked a more apt title for Episode VII as the film, indeed, was an awakening in every sense of the word.
2015 was a radically different landscape for the Star Wars fandom than 2025. The prequel trilogy, despite pockets of fervent fans, continued to be looked upon in a negative light by many. One only had to scroll on Twitter to quickly find memes poking fun at various aspects of the trilogy. The prequels had yet to undergo a drastic reappraisal, which occurred years later and correlated with the maturation of many younger viewers who loved the prequels upon release but were too young to have their voices heard by the masses. With Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, Star Wars – still the most popular and relevant media franchise of all time – needed a course correction for general audiences.
The most prevalent critique of The Force Awakens is the extent to which it is deemed as derivative of A New Hope. While thematic and narrative parallels are clearly evident, such a critique overlooks the context in which Lucasfilm made Episode VII. The company had to win back audience members, many of whom took a disliking to the prequel trilogy, deeming it to be overpopulated with CGI and deprived of various elements that made the original trilogy so special. Naturally, Lucasfilm addressed these critiques head on by crafting a movie that wore its practical effects and original trilogy influences firmly and overtly on its sleeve. The promotional campaign for The Force Awakens regularly featured bits about the use of practical effects, harkening back to the techniques employed by George Lucas and company in the original trilogy. And, of course, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher featured prominently in promotional materials, a way to indicate to audiences that the upcoming Star Wars film is more aligned with the original three films than the three prequel films.
Critics of The Force Awakens have lodged complaints that the film lacked the subversiveness and originality of Lucas’ approach to the prequels. While this is a valid critique, it again overlooks the monumental challenge Lucasfilm had before them. So much was riding on the film, not just for Star Wars, but for Disney itself, which needed to make back its $4 billion investment in the franchise. If taken in too radical of a different direction, this revival of Star Wars could have died as quickly as it came to be, leaving the future of the franchise in dire straits. For us, we always viewed the lack of originality of The Force Awakens as being born out of necessity. The film had to win audiences over, after which the franchise would once again have a sturdy foundation to move ahead with more subversive stories. That exactly played out as The Force Awakens was followed by Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, possibly the most daring and unpredictable big-budget blockbuster of the 21st century.
The Force Awakens is better (and bolder) than you remember
Beyond the complaints about The Force Awakens, re-evaluating the movie 10 years later shows just how underappreciated the film is. That’s saying something as the film bolsters a box office tally and Rotten Tomatoes score most studios would kill for. Let’s take a look at why The Force Awakens was so good.
Firstly, the film achieves what the very best of Star Wars stories have always achieved – balancing crowd-pleasing spectacle with genuine emotion. For as stunning as the visuals and cinematography from Dan Mindel are, The Force Awakens wouldn’t hold up nearly as well if it wasn’t for just how heartfelt the movie is. The story of a nobody, deprived of parents and wandering aimlessly throughout life, stumbling upon a journey that leads her to unlock her full potential holds relevance and applicability that transcends culture and time. “The belonging you seek is behind you – not ahead,” Maz Kanata poetically states to Rey, a sentiment that feels like J.J. Abrams is reaching out to the audience and cathartically telling us to not be lost hopelessly in the past but orient forward to the possibility of a brighter future.
The Force Awakens also hits hard through its pitch-perfect inclusion of legacy characters. Abrams could have easily created a film that revolves solely around Luke, Leia, and Han but opted against this in favor of focusing on a new generation of heroes. In doing so, Abrams avoided merely repeating character development from the previous films by actually doing something different with these three iconic characters. Han is a divorced dad, mourning the dissipation of his marriage and the lapse of his son to the dark side, the latter of which can easily be seen as an allegory for parents who have lost their kids to addiction, mental illness, or other troubles. Leia, meanwhile, has dealt with this grief by throwing herself into her work, namely as a politician in the New Republic and burgeoning First Order. Abrams doesn’t take the easy route with neither Han nor Leia – he places his characters in unfamiliar situations with unfamiliar challenges to overcome, which gives rise to some gut-wrenching moments in the film. We’d put Han and Leia’s reunion on Takodana up there with the most moving of Star Wars scenes. The swelling of John Williams’ Leia theme accompanying a reunion audiences have waited to see for 40 years somehow brings a tear to our eye every single time we watch it. Then, of course, we have Han’s death, another bold decision from Abrams that shows his prioritization of new blood over old. The death does not go in vain either, as Han looms large over Episodes VIII and IX, culminating in the terrific parallel scene in The Rise of Skywalker.
Beyond its emotional resonance, The Force Awakens is simply and unrelentingly a fun movie. Abrams paces the movie perfectly, quickly shifting his characters from scene to scene with just enough respite as to never feel overwhelmed. From BB-8’s thumbs-up to the banter between Rey and Finn to Oscar Isaac’s improvisation, the film features so many laugh-out-loud moments, arguably more than any other Star Wars film to date. It’s a testament to Abrams’ handling of the film that you can be having a rollicking good time one moment and be crying your eyes out the next, across a 2+ hour movie that flies by like the speed of the Falcon.
Marking another pivot from the prequel trilogy, Abrams also crafted a streamlined storyline for the film to avoid the convoluted plotting that plagued Lucas’ latter three efforts in a galaxy far, far away. In doing so, Abrams allows his film to be less bogged down in plot and exposition and, in turn, more focused on characters. It’s an intelligent shift, one the Russo Brothers and company employed in Avengers: Infinity War, another sprawling big-budget sci-fi epic that, in order to balance all of its interesting character work, had to streamline its central storyline considerably.
Finally, The Force Awakens took another bold swing by relegating the original trilogy’s central character Luke Skywalker to a dialogue-less cameo in a single scene. While some have taken issue with the decision and the fact that it entailed the original trio never got to share the screen altogether again, we commend Abrams and co-screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan for taking such a leap with their film. In doing so, The Force Awakens was shrouded in mystery: Where is Luke Skywalker? Did he turn to the dark side? Why isn’t helping to fight the First Order? What role did he play in Ben Solo’s turn to the dark side? Abrams could easily have featured the bad-ass Skywalker from Return of the Jedi and The Mandalorian feature in every moment of his movie, but he opted for a more subversive choice, one that led to Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, which gave a perfect send-off to one of cinema’s most beloved characters.
A legacy sequel with a legacy of its own
For all intents and purposes, The Force Awakens was the first legacy sequel of the modern era. In fact, at least to our knowledge, the term ‘legacy sequel’ was hardly, if ever, used prior to Episode VII. But, in creating the film, Abrams and Lucasfilm also created a template for countless other legacy sequels to follow.
One of the (many) strengths of The Force Awakens, once again, is its balancing of legacy characters and new characters. Despite the prominence of Han and Leia in the film, The Force Awakens clearly belongs to Rey and Finn, a new duo of protagonists that audiences quickly fell in love with. In doing so, the film operates effectively both as a standalone film that requires little prior knowledge of previous movies and as the whopping seventh chapter of an ever-expanding saga.
This blend of reboot and sequel, of legacy and new characters, has been replicated countless times in the decade since The Force Awakens. David Gordon Green employed a near-identical structure in making his legacy sequel to John Carpenter’s Halloween, balancing Jamie Lee Curtis’ returning final girl with a new final girl to root for. Ghostbusters: Afterlife similarly applied The Force Awakens formula to make a follow-up that also works as a sequel. Then there’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream (2022), Top Gun: Maverick, Creed, Blade Runner 2049, The Craft: Legacy, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Bill & Ted Face the Music, The Matrix Resurrections, and numerous others that mirrored The Force Awakens.
Beyond establishing the modern legacy sequel, The Force Awakens also broke new ground in terms of on-screen representation. Unlike the vast majority of big tentpole projects at the time, Abrams’ film starred a woman. While there’s obviously plenty of female-led films to predate The Force Awakens, none were as big and high-stakes as The Force Awakens. In doing so, the film set a precedent for female actors to lead big-budget films for the decade to come. We’ve seen this since with the likes of Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Furiosa, Barbie, and even Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, demonstrating the enduring influence of Daisy Ridley’s powerful turn as Rey.
The Force Awakens also featured a black character as a co-lead, something no previous Star Wars film to date did. Not only that – the film featured a prominent black character wielding a lightsaber front-and-center. Yes, Mace Windu wielded a lightsaber in the prequels, but he was always peripheral to the main story involving Obi-Wan and Anakin. That was not the case in The Force Awakens as Disney positioned John Boyega’s lightsaber-wielding Finn front-and-center of promotional material.
Speaking of the on-screen talent of The Force Awakens, another lasting legacy of the film is its incredible collective of stars, who have since gone on to flourish across a number of different projects. Let’s start with Daisy Ridley, who was a complete unknown prior to being cast as Rey. Since wowing audiences as the new face of Star Wars, she has since gone on to impress in the likes of Murder on the Orient Express, Ophelia, Sometimes I Think About Dying, The Marsh King’s Daughter, Magpie, Young Woman and the Sea, Cleaner, and We Bury the Dead. And, of course, Ridley is set to headline another Star Wars movie as Rey, showcasing not only audiences’ interest in the character but also interest in Ridley as a performer. In just 10 years since The Force Awakens, Ridley has cultivated a fascinating, versatile filmography, and we’re looking forward to seeing what the next 10 years have in store.
Next up, there’s Adam Driver. What can be said about Driver that hasn’t been said already? The actor previously known best for his role in Girls is widely regarded as one of the industry’s best actors working today. In addition to receiving two Academy Award nominations since The Force Awakens, Driver has excelled in films helmed by Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Mann, Steven Soderbergh, and Francis Ford Coppola. Despite appearing in projects beforehand, The Force Awakens showed the world what Driver was capable of, an even more incredible feat when considering that he has relatively few scenes unmasked in the movie. Like Ridley and Rey, interest in Driver and Kylo Ren remains among Star Wars fans. This almost led to The Hunt for Ben Solo, a film that would have revived Driver’s character and continued his journey beyond the sequel trilogy. Although the film has since been scrapped by Disney, we’re keeping our fingers crossed it seems the light of day somehow in the future.
If Ridley and Driver weren’t enough, The Force Awakens also catapulted Oscar Isaac into the spotlight. Like Driver, Isaac is regarded as one of the industry’s best working actors and, since The Force Awakens, has been a busy man. From television shows like Scenes from a Marriage and Moon Knight to stage productions like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet to acclaimed films like Dune and Frankenstein, Isaac has matched quantity with quality of performances over the past 10 years and seems to be a movie away from winning an Oscar.
Finally, we have John Boyega, who has been more selective about his film choices after The Force Awakens. Boyega headlined the big-budget Pacifc Rim Uprising, a movie he also produced, but has largely stuck to smaller fare in the 10 years since Episode VII. He delivered strong performances in Breaking and They Cloned Tyrone, and is set to make a follow-up to the beloved indie sci-fi flick Attack the Block. While Boyega has been more than vocal about his dismay regarding the direction the sequel trilogy head in post-Episode VII, the actor still could have a future in Star Wars. If Rey is coming back, it only makes sense that her closest companion (and possible love interest) does too.
“Still looking to the horizon…”
Ten years after its release, The Force Awakens remains our favorite movie-going experience of all time. Nothing can compare to sitting in that theater, watching the opening crawl, hearing John Williams’ iconic music, and having no idea what’s to come from a new era of our favorite franchise. The Force Awakens was not just a cinematic event – it was a cultural event. The movie remains the highest grossing domestic release of all time, by quite a stretch too, and introduced characters that have since adorned theme parks, toy stores, and, soon, a whole new collective of movies, including Simon Kinberg’s new saga, New Jedi Order, and (hopefully) The Hunt for Ben Solo.
Looking back to December 18, 2015, there was something really beautiful about the state of Star Wars fandom. Everyone was joined together by anticipation and excitement for a film that would re-introduce Star Wars to the world. In the years since the release, more cynical voices have grown louder and cast doubt on how good of a movie The Force Awakens really is, but, for us, the movie is just as good, if not better, in 2025 than it was in 2015. Here’s hoping that another global Star Wars event that brings us all together once again isn’t too far away.