Star Wars The Force Awakens May Be The Greatest Remix Ever

Several years ago, P-Diddy released, “We Invented the Remix,” an album which highlighted his label’s knack for sampling older songs, updating them with modern hip-hop beats and vocals, and making new hits.

In many ways, J.J. Abrams has done a similar thing in the science fiction genre. It first started with his excellent Star Trek “updates”, including Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, and has now continued big time with Star Wars The Force Awakens!

Here are seven “old but new” scenes or themes that resonated with me in the film:

1. The opening scene where we see a massive spaceship flying through outer space harkened back to Star Wars: A New Hope’s opening scene.
2. Aaah…the desert. Let’s keep it real: Jakku is basically an update on Tatooine. It may have faked some people out in the trailers, as the “original” desert planet that was featured in five of the six previous Star Wars films, but it serves as a visual homage of sorts.
3. In The New Hope, the Rebellion had a read-out of the first Death Star’s technical plans hidden in R2-D2? And in The Force Awakens, the Rebellion Resistance has a map which include Luke Skywalker’s location hidden in BB-8. Sound familiar?
4. The Millennium Falcon evades imminent danger from tie-fighters and has a rookie combatant (then-a young Luke Skywalker, now-a young Finn) shooting them down, and being ever-so-excited in doing so.
5. Kylo Ren not only dons a black cape and mask, buoyed by a gravely, deep voice, he even has the burnt Darth Vader mask in his possession. My question is: where did he get it from? We’ll hopefully find out in Episode VIII.
6. When will the bad guys learn to stop building Death Stars? In the Force Awakens, Starkiller Base was just a bigger version of the original space station (built inside a planet no less), but it still got destroyed in a similar fashion to the previous iterations in Star Wars and The Return of the Jedi. Memo to the Galactic Empire/First Order: build another damn weapon with a tighter defense!
7. The aforementioned space station brought back visual memories of the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back and the Forest Moon of Endor in the Return of the Jedi. It felt like a hybrid of both atmospheres, which I thought was cool. I mean, a lightsaber looks great in the snow!

Some may feel that these recurring themes make this film woefully derivative. But I don’t view it that way.

Firstly, I truly believe that very few ideas are original. So why not borrow heavily from a transcendent franchise like Star Wars?

Doing so, helps ensure story continuity, pays homage to the franchise’s millions of fans across the globe, and provides a good framework on which to build a new foundation of stories.

And build a great, new foundation is what J.J. Abrams has successfully done. The film title carries a loaded meaning for me-not only was the Force awakened, but so was the Star Wars franchise!