J.J. Abrams Explains Why 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' is A Lot Like 'A New Hope'

It doesn't take an Easter egg video to see that Star Wars: The Force Awakens borrows a lot of elements from A New Hope, just with new characters to progress the story instead of just relying on the original trilogy's heroes. There's even a side-by-side comparison of the two films.

While some critics call the film unoriginal because of this approach, some fans love how it pays tribute to the franchise's roots by featuring a lot of familiar Star Wars elements while expanding its story in fresh ways.

During a special event panel at the Tribeca Film Festival, where he sat down for a chat with Chris Rock, director J.J. Abrams talked about this issue among other topics, specifically why The Force Awakens and A New Hope share a lot of similarities. Here's what he said about those creative decisions (via IGN):

"[‘The Force Awakens'] was a bridge and a kind of reminder; the audience needed to be reminded what ‘Star Wars' is, but it needed to be established with something familiar, with a sense of where we are going to new lands, which is very much what 8 and 9 do. The weird thing about that movie is that it had been so long since the last one. Obviously the prequels had existed in between and we wanted to, sort of, reclaim the story. So we very consciously — and I know it is derided for this — we very consciously tried to borrow familiar beats so the rest of the movie could hang on something that we knew was ‘Star Wars.'"

I think Abram's approach of blending the old with the new in The Force Awakens is smart. It reminds us what makes Star Wars great, and using that as a foundation to build something new in the upcoming sequels. The film helped the general audience grasp onto the expanding universe more easily while being introduced to Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), and Poe (Oscar Isaac). Abrams says:

"All the characters – the Stormtrooper who turns, Finn played by John Boyega, and Rey, the character that Daisy plays, the Scavenger, Kylo Ren, the son of Han and Leia, and Poe the pilot – all these were characters and sort of their roles in the story needed to exist in something that predates them."

It's incredible how Abrams managed to make a movie that feels familiar and fresh at the same time. I can't wait to see how Star Wars: Episodes VIII and IX will take us to a new direction we've never seen in any Star Wars film before. Episode VIII, directed by Rian Johnson, will be released on Dec. 15, 2017.