The Force has awakened, because J.J. Abrams’ long-anticipated “Star Wars” film is exactly what it ought to be.
Since it has been well over a month now since “The Force Awakens” was released in theaters, we can afford to step back and examine this extraordinarily low-stakes debate from a more balanced perspective. You have heard it said the film is is unworthy because it lacks originality; it’s just a remake of 1977’s “A New Hope.” I claim that this argument fails both factually and critically, first because the film diverges in important ways from its predecessor and, were this not the case, this would still not be a fair criticism relative to the ends of making a “Star Wars” film. I will explore these claims in reverse order.
What, in fact, ought we look for in a “Star Wars” film? They succeed in part because they are simple, epic tales which recapitulate the themes of Westerns, pulp science fiction, and samurai films in an exotic, imaginative context. “Star Wars” is about dramatic grandeur and the triumph of the good hero, Luke Skywalker, over an ultimate evil. Retelling this timeless hero’s journey with memorable and likeable characters (Han Solo! Princess Leia!), striking settings, and excellent filmmaking has made it hugely successful. The worthy object of our affection is the timeless narrative of the epic struggle — the story of the Skywalker and Solo families and their fight against darkness. The means of its transmission and reception are the wonderful setting and enjoyable telling.
So I think it is more helpful, and less ridiculous, for the critic to talk about “Star Wars” as it wants to be understood. And by this measure, “The Force Awakens” seems to me to have succeeded.
In a New York Times column, Ross Douthat accused “The Force Awakens” of symbolizing the “decadence” of modern culture. He defines this decadence as “falling off” of the “forms of art” signified by “repetition and frustration,” a definition taken from Jacques Barzun. While etymologically accurate and useful in its own place, it’s too vague to be useful here. We all understand that decadence signifies a decline and an attenuation, but what is its cause?
The decadence that I see at work here, though not in “The Force Awakens,” is the one Dennis Quinn takes from C.E.M. Joad: the identification of means with ends. A decadent is a man who pursues the means of an end for its own sake — a decadent eater confuses the nourishment and fellowship of eating with the pleasure of consuming (hence Aristotle’s tale of the glutton who prayed for the gullet of a crane so that he could experience the pleasure of swallowing more). Decadence is self-indulgence as its own end. How many times have you seen “decadent” modifying “chocolate cake”?
But how does this apply to “Star Wars”? Critics of “The Force Awakens” have taken it as its greatest failure that it follows too closely the plot of “A New
Hope”: a desert planet, an evil empire, a seedy bar, et cetera. Where was the “imagination” we saw at work in the original films, so the argument goes. This seems to me like decadence.
If our basis for enjoyment is simply to be shown new things, to multiply the images our filmmakers present us with into an ever-wider panoply of fantastical diversions, we’ve succumbed to what Quinn calls “the decadence of wonder.” A “Star Wars” film with brilliant new images, imaginative scenarios, and a universe-widening scope would certainly be entertaining. It’s also already been made three times over, and those films were almost universally disliked. If originality in plot were the criterion of an excellent story, we’d certainly have a very different Great Books curriculum than we do now — William Shakespeare is the first on the chopping block, with Chaucer and Goethe in chains behind him
And this is certainly ridiculous, because we all know that we value Shakespeare’s plays not because they simply contain many new situations for us to marvel at, but because they combine eternal stories with the unrivaled skill of a master of his art.
But is this not what “The Force Awakens” has done? The original films wed timeless motifs of adventure stories with brilliant filmcraft and memorable characters to the approbation of all. This story has now taken on a definite form and content in the “Star Wars” universe, and to ask a new “Star Wars” film to reinvent itself completely seems to confuse the pleasures of the original’s novelty with the real content and characters that the “Star Wars” films are in fact about.
By avoiding the question of whether or not “The Force Awakens” sufficiently filled our eye-sockets with new distractions, we can turn to consider what the film itself has done, the moments that Alexi Sargeant, writing for First Things, called “going small.” Kylo Ren is no Darth Vader, nor was he meant to be! If the only value the original films held for you was the extrinsic pleasure of seeing a fearsome new villain, Adam Driver’s performance as a weak, confused try-hard is a disappointment. There’s nothing new about Rey — typical unsuspecting hero who defeats the bad guy — boring. Han Solo isn’t young and handsome anymore, he’s just an old man who isn’t up to anything new — just there for fanservice. Of course this irony exercised at the level of cliché will find nothing of value in what has always been the content of “Star Wars.”
What makes “The Force Awakens” an interesting film is that it weds the timeless narrative at the heart of “Star Wars” with new situations and themes. It emphasizes the new, tragic element in the life of each of its aging characters lacking happy endings while bringing in new players whose stories are still full of hope. Innovation in spectacle is not the name of the game; we should appreciate new variations on a timeless story in a definite setting without bemoaning the familiarity of the plot.
