Ten Years Ago, ‘The Force Awakens’ Changed Everything
A decade ago this week, modern blockbusters changed forever. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first of Disney’s splashy additions to the Star Wars universe, made its debut in theaters on December 18, 2015.
There are a lot of individual elements of the movie that warrant discussion: its bizarre alien designs, its snowy lightsaber battle, its role in its younger cast members becoming household names. But in between all of those smaller odes, one thing is clear: the movie’s impact, both on Star Wars and on popular culture, can’t really be overstated.
Instead of the untold history of the Prequel Trilogy, and the ambitious tapestry of Extended Universe novels and comics, The Force Awakens took a different approach. It acknowledged how much time had passed in the real world since the Original Trilogy, catching up with Luke, Leia, and Han in the latter stages of their lives and careers. That choice arguably, helped create a new subgenre of movie: the legacy sequel.
The idea of revisiting characters from an original franchise decades after the fact, potentially to have them pass the proverbial torch onto a new generation, felt novel on the big scale of Star Wars. But in the decade that ensued, it didn’t stay novel at all, with Ghostbusters, Top Gun, and countless other movie series following that formula, to the point of people now being more than a little tired of it.
I Miss This Star Wars…
Star Wars had already been well-known and beloved before The Force Awakens graced our screens… but its bond between the old and the new resonated with people on a whole other level. It showed the younger generations that they could have their Star Wars, with all of the limitless potential that that could entail. You can have whatever opinion you want on where that potential went in the subsequent sequels, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. But the fact still remains that the movie felt like a multi-generational moment, one that we haven’t quite had on that scale since then.
We haven’t had it, in part, because of how the Star Wars franchise has evolved since then. Offscreen, toxic fandom culture has reared its head in countless, baffling ways. Onscreen, a number of new movie ideas have not gotten far off the ground, with the output largely being Disney+ streaming shows set across different eras of history. The Mandalorian stole everyone’s hearts with its pint-sized “Baby Yoda”, and has since transformed into one of several shows that doubles as a stealth Star Wars: Rebels sequel. Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi bridged the gap between the Prequel and Original Trilogies, Star Wars: The Acolyte and Star Wars: Skeleton Crew became under-the-radar fan favorites, and Star Wars: Andor became the indisputable, awards-worthy bright spot.
Going into the future, we have more seasons of Disney+ shows, a movie adventure for The Mandalorian, and a star-studded adventure led by Ryan Gosling. There are even plans for a Sequel Trilogy sequel, centered around Daisy Ridley’s Rey training another new generation of Jedi. We’ll see what that future holds… but either way, it probably won’t feel quite as special as The Force Awakens once did.
(featured image: Lucasfilm)
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