5 (spoiler?) Predictions for The Force Awakens (before I’ve seen it)
Through the insider advantage of being a genius and thinking about things, I have a lot of expectations for the new Star Wars movie based on a formula of using the previous 6 movies and the intentional symmetry they are supposed to have as a compilation of trilogies. George Lucas stated that the prequel movies were intended to “rhyme” with the original and brief analysis reveals many such purposeful reflections that I’m assuming will continue in this 3rd trilogy.
While this post contains no actual spoilers since it is being written before I haven seen Star Wars The Force Awakens, it contains a lot of analytical speculation that you may want to not have muddy the waters of your mind before you see it yourself. My genius brain notices patterns to a higher degree than yours probably does, which means I probably know things that are going to happen that you haven’t suspected.
Here are the 5 things to expect to see (if the filmmakers know what’s good for them), preceded by an explanation of why that includes a similar thing in the same vein happening in 1978’s A New Hope and 1999’s The Phantom Menace.
1- A comic relief character will be accidentally masterful
Perhaps it’s The Force subtly favoring the good guys, but in the first movie of the 2 Star Wars trilogies there are notable instances of a good-guy character not knowing what the hell they’re doing, winging it, and pulling off an impossible victory.
In A New Hope (Episode 4): After Imperial forces detain and board Princess Leas cruiser, her crew exchanges fire across a entrance hall. Paying little attention to the danger, R2D2 and C3PO casually look around and walk directly through the line of rapid laser fire from both directions, comically reaching the other side of the hall completely unscathed.
In The Phantom Menace (Episode 1): Jar Jar Binks is made a General in the Gungan army despite being a notorious screw-up and, unsurprisingly, on the battlefield he is a hapless mess. His stumbles and bumbles inadvertently save him from enemy fire and by getting stuck to a battle droid and while flinging his leg, he accidentally defeats nearby oncoming threats without knowing or trying.
PREDICTION In The Force Awakens (Episode 7): There could be lots of possibilities too large to hazard a guess but I doubt any will come from the new female character simply because of the political correctness sensitivity to portraying a feminist action hero making an achievement accidentally so I’m going to guess that the character the black actor portrays and/or someone new we haven’t seen much of in the trailers will be the one to fall into the “accidental badass” role. I don’t believe the new rolling ball droid BB-8 will be the one to do this because Star Wars treats its droids as being smarter and more prescient than the humans surrounding them, with the pompous childish C3PO being the exception to the rule.
2- A pro will fight an amateur and the amateur will win by both plucky revelation of skill and by being aided by friends.
This will then create a heightened interest in the amateur by the villainous Pro they defeated.
Star Wars movies have a running theme of a seemingly invincible evil force arrogantly displaying its power only to be shockingly defeated by a less powerful but noble opponent. As a companion to that theme, friends of that noble opponent aid the victory in the times of highest need.
For instance, in Return of the Jedi (Episode 6), Luke, as a prisoner of the Emperor, tells him that his overconfidence is his weakness. The Emperor scoffs and says “your faith in your friends is yours”. This ideology of the conflicting sides is a recurring theme in every star wars movie: The bad guys overestimate their invincibility due to rigid emotionless control while the plucky heroes are constantly saved from jams and are able to pull off stunning victories via the help of their teammates who act more as family than as co-soldiers. While the Dark Side is constantly outgunning the Light with organization, numbers, and actual gunnery, the good guys pull off defeats by saving each other the way friends do.
This theme represents itself in direct battles between a master and an amateur, bewildering the master as they are bested by their underpowered foe via the help of their friends.
In A New Hope (Episode 4): In the X-Wing assault on the Death Star by the Rebel Forces, the space station prepares to destroy the rebel planet while the rebel fighters attempt to exploit the known weakness of the Death Star in where a missile to an exhaust port will start a chain reaction that will destroy it. The battle for the Rebels goes just as impossible as one would assume as a squad of Imperial TIE fighters led by Darth Vader himself pick off the Rebel attackers one by one. As Vader closes in on Luke Skywalker, it looks like its gonna be curtains for the Rebellion until Vader is unexpectedly fired upon from behind by Han Solo who had previously collected his money and said his goodbyes but came back to save the day in a last minute change of heart. The shots from Solo send Vader spinning away, giving Luke the chance to make the shot, destroying the Empires biggest and most deadly weapon.
In The Phantom Menace (Episode 1): Obi-Wan Kenobi is what is known as a Padawan – a person still learning the Jedi arts during field training with his Master Qui-Gon Gin. When Qui-Gon is killed in battle, however, Obi-Wan fights his killer and loses the fight until Maul balks at the last minute and toys with Obi-Wan, dangling from a sconce on the side of a bottomless pit. In an unexpected move to Maul, Obi-Wan combo-moves force-grabbing Qui-Gons light saber with a force-fly straight upward and quickly chops Maul in half with it, sending Maul down the bottomless shaft, still with a look of shock on his face.
PREDICTION In The Force Awakens (Episode 7): The new villain Kylo Ren is clearly trained in the Jedi ways and while the trailer shows the new black character and the female character holding light sabers, there is no other evidence to suggest they have been trained how to use it at all. In using both the “amateur victory” and the “bailed out by friends” tropes of the series, perhaps they will defeat Ren by ganging up on him, but if so, it would only happen after he displays the typical Star Wars villain character trait of being wildly over-confident of his eminent victory.
3- A New Villain, but not *THE* Villain will Die
(but their more powerful partner lives for 2 more movies)
The first films in the Star Wars trilogies feature 2 villains: A politician and a Sith Lord. One of them dies in the first movie while the other is a mainstay in the following 2 of the trilogy.
In A New Hope (Episode 4): Seemingly the most powerful political operative in the Empire second to the Emperor himself, General Moff Tarkin holds the leash to even top-dog, Darth Vader, and orchestrates all the events in the first Star Wars movie. While Vader is sent out to destroy the surface assault by the Rebels around the death star, he fails and when Luke makes his winning shot and the Death Star explodes, it does so with Moff Tarkin inside it cautiously watching the events unfold from the commanders bridge while Vaders TIE fighter ship is sent spiraling away in defeat but not death.
In The Phantom Menace (Episode 1): Darth Maul confronts the Jedi on Naboo and after killing the master, his arrogance causes him to underestimate the Jedi apprentice Obi-wan Kenobi who sucker-slices him right in half, sending him down a shaft in 2 pieces. Darth Mauls master, the future Emperor Palpatine, remains safely away from the conflict on another planet as the Senator from Naboo.
PREDICTION In The Force Awakens (Episode 7): I put the odds of Kylo Ren going the way of Darth Maul at near zero mostly because any casual observer can tell that it was an idiotic move to kill off Darth Maul in Episode 1, purely for marketing purposes and merchandise sales. Disney won’t do that to Ren. They’re investing in this character as a new villain with staying power. I think it is much more likely that we get introduced to a new Moff Tarkin type in this new iteration of the Empire who, as in the first Star Wars movie, outranks the Sith Lord but gets killed on board a ship in an explosion caused by a Rebel attack.
4- A Father-figure Will Die At the Hands of the Main Villain
(and the person closest to them will witness it)
The first movie in a Star Wars trilogy introduces a paternal character who helps the main character and is thereafter helped by that main character. In the process, he reveals things to them about themselves and about life in general and how it all works, bonding to them as a guide through their previously directionless and lonely existence. Within days of this encounter, however, the character is killed by an attack instigated by the main villain of the movie: the Junior half of the Dark Side duo.
In A New Hope (Episode 4): Desert hermit Obiwan Kenobi rescues Luke Skywalker from aggressive locals and takes him in for a chat in where he reveals that he knew Lukes father. Luke joins Kenobi on an important mission to Alderaan but having arrived at the Alderaan System, their ship is captured by the Death Star’s tractor beam, as Alderaan was recently destroyed by said Death Star, and the group must plan an escape. Kenobi goes to disable the tractor beam but in his return to the ship he is met by his old apprentice – Darth Vader – who had sensed Kenobi’s presence and was waiting for him around the corner of a corridor with his light saber drawn and ready. As the two battle, they draw the attention of nearby storm troopers. Meanwhile, Luke & Company are escaping into their ship when Luke is dismayed to see Obiwan engaged in sword combat and surrounded by guns. Seeing that he’s cornered, Obiwan stops fighting and allows Darth Vader to deliver a death blow as Luke screams in anguish, unable to intervene from a distance.
In The Phantom Menace (Episode 1): Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jin is Obiwan Kenobi’s teacher and takes a liking to the newly introduced Anakin Skywalker, who grew up without a male figure in his life (not counting his ant-eater hummingbird slavemaster). Qui-Gon is seemingly the first to treat the boy as the prodigy he is, frees him from slavery and brings him to the Republic capital for training as a Jedi. While on Naboo, however, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are confronted by Darth Maul who waits to engage them in battle and during the combat, Maul skewers Qui-Gon as Obi-wan screams in anguish, unable to intervene from a distance.
PREDICTION In The Force Awakens (Episode 7): The tradition of entering a new character for the sake of fulfilling this intro-bonding-dieing arc could be broken by using an existing character from the original trilogy. Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie are all back in this movie, so any one of them could bite it. For this one, I have to cheat a little and go outside my analysis of the symmetry among the films and go instead to my experience in entertainment financing and marketing + social/pop cultural observations. They’re not going to kill the black guy because the whole reason he’s introduced is to be the new Solo (unpredictable male) while the new female character is the new Skywalker (Force sensitive big-heart plucked out of no where). I don’t know anything about the new pilot character so he might be the one to bite it after teaching the female about everything going on but if it isn’t him, then it will be one of the 3 human returning cast members. I know it won’t be Chewie because, again – marketing. There is no reason in the world to kill off a popular toy item character who is timeless not only due to his fictional species life-span but also due to the fact that since it’s a costumed character – anyone can play him. Chewbacca will be immortal in this series so that leaves Luke, Lea, and Han Solo. Out of those 3, only one makes sense to kill and it’s most clearly Solo for 2 reasons:
1) is character has already arched and was originally intended to die in Return of the Jedi (which he should have, to round out the story and his character and show some actual consequence to the series).
2) money… Harrison Ford is the only one of the 3 to command tens of millions in acting paychecks in his post-StarWars life. Disney doesn’t need that. They’re going to make monster bucks off Star Wars no matter what so why pay Ford an ever-increasing salary of millions, never knowing if he’s going to crash his private plane in real life and make filming impossible, just to bridge their franchise over to a new generation of cast members anyway? If Solo doesn’t die, he will be die in the next movie for certain (to mirror his cliffhanger carbonite freezing in The Empire Strikes Back). The way they could twist this trope would be to set up Lea as a mother figure for some new characters and then kill her off instead, forcing us to watch Solo grieve his love and that would be cool but unlikely for the logistical corporate reasons I mentioned. Han or Lea are on the chopping block in this movie, with my money on Han – and if both of them survive – look to any character taking on a leader/guidance role to be the one who is doomed to heroically die in the 2nd or 3rd act of the movie.
5- The Film Will End With a Grand Award Reception
The first episode in the 2 existing trilogies all introduce characters from a home planet and thrust them into a pre-existing conflict which they win with the help of a 3rd party and the victory is commemorated with an award ceremony.
In A New Hope (Episode 4): After successfully exploiting the weakness in the Death Star, the Rebel Alliance led by Princess Lea awards medals to Luke and Han (while Chewie awkwardly just stands there growling, joining them on stage but with no medal of his own). The final shot of the film before the iris closing into the peppy credits is the lineup of the new crop of heroes facing the Rebellions adulation.
In The Phantom Menace (Episode 1): Having defeated the Trade Federations invasion attempt with the help of the Gungan natives, the Naboo capital city hosts a grand parade in where the leader of the Gungans and Queen Amidala signify their bond as she passes him some kind of electric orb thing in front of the cheering crowds in where the Gungan leader yells “PEACE!”.
PREDICTION In The Force Awakens (Episode 7): Not enough clues here to make a real prediction but I would suspect that it would strongly mirror A New Hope in assembling the new team. A nice touch, if they can figure out a way to make it not too blatantly on-the-nose would be for the award to be handed from the previous cast, Elder Statesman style, to the new, exciting the audience at the adventures and newness to come before teasing that excitement with the abrupt iris-out closer to the credits.