Similarities between A New Hope and The Force Awakens

The similarities between the original Star Wars (A New Hope) and a Force Awakens is dizzying but amazing to think about. The narrative of the two movies is also very similar: The Heroes’s Journey.

The similarities of the two movies are that there is a desert dweller child who “dreams of something more”. In A New Hope, the desert dweller is Luke and in the Force Awakens, it is Rey. Both movies Have a dark antagonist, a father-figure who dies, and a world-killing-machine that needs to be blown up.

Even though the new movie A force awakens is taken on by JJ Abrams instead of George Lucas, JJ manages to stick to the original Star Wars canon with some minor changes. Part of the backbone to the whole of both films is the Heroes’s Journey. The Journey of both Luke and Rey. Where Luke was stuck on the planet Tatooine with his aunt and uncle, Rey was looking for some semblance of a family.

Rey is not staying in the Ordinary World because she is trapped — it is her choice. This identity, longing for family, is key in her journey. In order to become her own person in society, she will have to move past this lock that traps her in place.

As she scraps, she is subjugated by the society that spurns her. The junk trader does not give her an appropriate amount for her payment. She scratches out the days on the walls of her junked out home — a symbol from an earlier time of other heroes. And as she watches spacecraft fly off her Ordinary World, she wears a helmet that suggests her dream of becoming something greater. This is when the Call comes.