Star Wars TFA can be viewed as a metaphor for the franchise

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (TFA) is less about the Star Wars universe than it is about the Star Wars Franchise. Most characters represent a part of the world that makes, bought, and/or loves the series, and TFA acts as an illustration and narrative for how the makers want to relate to an old and new demographic of buyers. The hope is that Rey and Finn, the young new audience, will learn about the franchise in their own way, not from the sour, dour angry fanboys like Kylo Ren.

The First Order is the fanboy legion. They guys who festered on scraps of star wars errata and bound together to try to control the franchise. They are the guys who live and die by “canon”, and judge Star Wars products accordingly. They are the sticklers who, if they WERE making a new weapon for the empire, would INSIST that it have one point of terminal weakness BECAUSE it’s cannon. The big death machine HAS TO HAVE A WEAK POINT. The first order are the guys the Han and Luke and Leia should have been able to shut down after RotJ, but somehow things got out of control and we ended up with the prequels and double ended lightsabers and a backstory to Vader that is almost worse than nothing.

Kylo Ren is the fanbase that felt betrayed by the prequels. After RotJ, the franchise thought they could build more, move forward, but something went really bad. So bad that Rey and Finn, our bright and unblemished young consumers, don’t even get to hear about it. Kylo is a great wad of entitlement, feeling that his devotion and expectation make him deserve the greatness of the original trilogy. He studied with the original, Luke. He never should have had to endure the embarrassment of the gungan, the betrayal of the money grab that was the prequels. Kylo represents the part of people like me who don’t know if we can trust the franchise to make a good movie. As Rey lays out for us, “You’re afraid you won’t be as strong as Vader.” YES I AM afraid that these movies won’t be as good and powerful as Vader and the original trilogy. And when things happen in the movie in ways that feel outside of my experience of the original trilogy and cannon, I AM Kylo, thrashing around throwing a tantrum. “THESE FUCKERS CAN’T JUST RUN INTO THIS FRANCHISE SCRAPPING THE EXPANDED UNIVERSE WILLY NILLY! I STUDIED! I READ THE NOVELS! I EVEN WATCHED THE PREQUELS! THERE IS NOT HEART LEFT IN THIS FRANCHISE, IT’S ALL JUST MONEY. I’VE TURNED TO THE DARKSIDE, TURNED MY BACK ON THE FILMS, AND NOW KNOW THAT LOVING THEM, LOVING THE FEELING OF STAR WARS IS THE SEDUCTION OF THE LIGHT SIDE OF THE FORCE, AND I FIGHT THAT FEELING. THE PREQUELS WERE TOO MUCH, AND I WON’T BE BETRAYED AGAIN.” At it’s worst, Kylo Ren is the racism and misogyny of a fanbase that could barely tolerate black leads and storm troopers, and a female lead jedi. Kylo is the grody part of the fanbase that wants to act as gatekeepers to the franchise, defining for younger generations what is good and bad about the Star Wars World. He sees that Rey might be a promising fan, someone who really might love the movies, and he tells her he could teach her what’s what in the Star Wars world. Rey defeats him, asserting that she will experience Star Wars for herself, unfiltered by the hate for the prequels that flows through Kylo. Disney is expressing their hope that control over the public perception can be wrestled from the grody, exclusive fanboys, and delivered to a new, fresh generation of buyers.

Rey and Finn.

These two act mostly as one unit, the Young Millennial and Younger. The kids who never saw an original Star Wars in theaters, who heard the legends, but almost can’t believe they are true. Their place is summed up in their meeting Han. “You saw them, didn’t you? Rey said you camped out for two days to watch Empire Strikes Back at the premiere. That you found out Vader was Luke’s father IN THEATERS?” Rey and Finn look on in wonderment as Han is almost lost in a reverie of seeing the original trilogy for the first time, “You know, when my friends told me to see the first film, I didn’t think it could be as good as they said. But when I saw it, I became a devotee. It’s true. All of it.”

Rey and Finn are different in that Finn wants to escape something, and Rey wants to belong to something. Finn is trying to escape the First Order, who represent the fanboy legion that sprung up after RotJ left theaters, enforcing rules of canon vs non-canon. He just wants to break from all the stifling regulation of the Star Wars Franchise and experience it freshly, on his own terms. No kid who hasn’t seen Star Wars enjoys being “educated” on the subject by their overzealous dad or uncle.

Rey wants connection to the force and the Jedi lineage. She KNOWS that the franchise is worth being involved in, but she’s discouraged by what people say about the prequels. She wants the genuine article, the life-changing devotion that people of an older generation seem to have for the series. And she’s willing to wait. If she has to wait patiently on Jakku for two more years for the next movie, she’ll do it.

Worth noting is that Finn is a male discarding the toxic masculinity of the First Order, questioning a seemingly endless war. Rey is a girl with brute-force competence. She’s like Hermione but front-center. That the main inheritors of the franchise are a black man and a woman is notable but almost not risky nowadays (almost). I imagine JJ Abrams kneeling in a dark chamber asking, “How liberal should we make the film, my master?” and a colossal hologram of Mickey Mouse says, “Enough for Buzzfeed.” Disney wasn’t going to take the risk unless the market research showed that the internet would rally around them for it. It’s definitely a good thing, but let’s not break our wrists jacking off Disney for their casting choices. Some of the casting and writing teeters awfully close to regressive stereotypes, with Lupita Nyongo, the black woman of the main cast playing the sassy, world-weary-and-wise semi-mystic elder handing truth and power to that nice white girl, and General Leia Organa operating as little more than a doting wife and mother, who spends much of her onscreen time wondering whether she did a good job balancing work and family. They could have done riskier things, and they chose not to, but maybe the next movies will deal with that.

Han I’m still confused about. He’s Lucas or Abrams. He and Luke are the ones responsible for the Prequels. When Han and Leia give the “mea culpa” about Kylo’s turn to the dark side, that’s the franchise owners apologizing to us, the audience, for how the Prequels turned out. For abandoning us after RotJ, for not living up to the potential they had. Han is Lucas in that he failed us after RotJ, but was so great in the original trilogy. He’s now willing to just step out of the story, or be forced out of it. Kylo tells Rey of the Father of Star Wars, “he would have disappointed you.” Han is Abrams in that he knows he can’t make everything perfect, but he’s gonna try to do the right thing by Rey, the promising new audience, and he’s gonna do everything he can in one movie to make things right with Kylo, the child he abandoned. Abrams is on for one film, steps in, does his thing, and exits.

Leia is Disney, the Princess become General, who looks to Han, the Abrams/Lucas and says, “if you see our fanbase Kylo out there, bring him home.”

Luke represents the best parts of the old franchise, and to a degree Rian Johnson. Abrams can make the apology to Kylo Ren, can begin to foster Rey, but this franchise can’t live on a movie that is just an apology for the Prequels. The young fans need a new story teller/jedi master who can help develop in them a true love for the franchise/force. Rey literally hands the baton to Rian Johnson/ “The legend of the franchise” as if to say “be great again. Teach us, the young buyers, what was so great about Star Wars. What still could be so great.”

The Force itself is a love or hate for the Franchise. The light side is love of the franchise, the dark side is a hate for it. Kylo, the betrayed fanboy, wants to love, the franchise, feels the “seductive” pull of the light side, but is fighting it. Rey wants to know the light side, and looks to Luke to teach her how. In the end, Rey beats Kylo by trusting the franchise to deliver her past the hate and twisted feelings of Kylo. Disney sees great potential in Rey to love Star Wars. Kylo wishes he could just enjoy Star Wars but feels he has to hate it after the Prequels.

Poe Dameron and Chewie are just raw sexual energy on screen, and don’t enter into my theory yet.