How The ‘Star Wars’ Sequel Trilogy Mirrors The Original Trilogy
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Since the release of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, there has been some discussion of how the movies mirrored their respective original trilogy movies in sequential order. Specifically, whether The Force Awakens was essentially a soft reboot of A New Hope and, to a lesser extent, how The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker drew on their respective original trilogy predecessors, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. This article will attempt to analyze how closely (if at all) the sequel trilogy movies actually mirrored the original trilogy movies in terms of storyline, events, and theme.
While it may be a bit much to call The Force Awakens a reboot of A New Hope, beat-for-beat, its storyline heavily mirrors it. We have a budding Jedi named Rey from a desert planet leaving home for the first time in her life, becoming embroiled in a galactic conflict between what is essentially a reborn Empire called the First Order and a ragtag group of rebels, now known as the Resistance.
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Second, we have an even more powerful planet killer used by the villains to wreak havoc on the galaxy in the form of Starkiller Base. Third, we have a cutesy droid named BB-8 charged with ferrying secret information back to the Resistance. Fourth, we have a Darth Vader-esque character named Kylo Ren, apprenticed to a Palpatine-like figure named Snoke, who is Supreme Leader of the First Order. We have the death of a major character who becomes a father figure to Rey in Han Solo.
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Finally, we have a lightsaber duel between Rey and her principal antagonist, Kylo Ren, while a group of X-Wings fight Tie Fighters and blow up Starkiller Base at the film’s climax. I should emphasize that, in pointing all this out, it is not to say that it is a bad thing that The Force Awakens is a lot like A New Hope. I also strongly suspect that Lucasfilm and director J.J. Abrams probably leaned heavily into it, given the tremendous amount of nostalgia Star Wars fans have for A New Hope and their desire to overcome what was, at that time, still a lot of polarization over the prequel trilogy among Star Wars fans. Judging by the response of fans and my own feelings about the movie at the time, if that was their goal, then I think it was a smashing success.
While The Last Jedi did not mirror The Empire Strikes Back quite as closely as The Force Awakens did to A New Hope, many elements still tie the two movies together. The Resistance was routed and pursued by the First Order, as the Rebels were by the Empire at the Battle of Hoth. Rey went off to another planet to try to get an elder Luke to train her in the ways of the Force. She later left him abruptly to confront Kylo Ren and attempt to turn him back to the light side. The First Order deployed (redesigned) walkers to destroy the Resistance base at their salty redoubt on Crait while the Resistance briefly attempted to hold them off with their Ski Speeders.
Even Yoda appeared to Luke, even more firmly tying the two movies together. Finn, Rose, and the entire Resistance are betrayed to the First Order by DJ. One of the surprising departures from The Empire Strikes Back was Kylo Ren turning on his Palpatine-like master, Snoke, like the way Vader turned on Palpatine in Return of the Jedi (albeit without the redemption of Kylo Ren). The primary theme that runs through The Last Jedi is about failure and what it can teach us, as all of the main characters experience failure but come through their experiences stronger and wiser.
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Of the three sequel trilogy movies, The Rise of Skywalker appears to mirror its respective predecessor, Return of the Jedi, the least. The most prominent link between the two films, of course, is Palpatine, who is now resurrected and threatening the galaxy again, albeit with planet-destroying Star Destroyers. There is also the redemption element with Kylo Ren finally deciding to turn away from the dark side and aid Rey in her confrontation with Palpatine, although Palpatine knocks him out of commission during the fight.
However, he does recover just in time to bring Rey back from death before he passes into the Force, presumably to be reunited with Leia, who also passed away during the film. There is also a big battle between the Resistance fleet and Palpatine’s “Final Order,” albeit not a space battle since it takes place on a planet. Thematically, The Rise of Skywalker seems to be about one’s blood not being destiny, which is driven home by Rey’s rejection of her newly discovered family heritage as a Palpatine, ultimately choosing to assume the Skywalker family legacy instead.
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In writing this article and thinking about comparisons between the Star Wars original trilogy and Star Wars sequel trilogy in terms of themes, I had to think long and hard about what the themes of the Star Wars original trilogy actually were. The overarching themes seemed fairly subtle to the extent they were there, at least compared to The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. For instance, there is no doubt that The Last Jedi’s theme of failure being the best teacher could be equally applied to The Empire Strikes Back, which had a similar darker tone to its story as well.
Nothing went well for the protagonists, short of living to fight another day. The Rebels lost their secret base on Hoth and had to scatter and flee from the Empire, Han was betrayed by an old friend, captured, and frozen in carbonite, and Luke abruptly left his training with Yoda to rush to confront Vader, which resulted in him being both physically and psychologically injured by a confrontation that he was not prepared for. In Return of the Jedi, however, a stronger and wiser Luke and his friends saved Han from Jabba the Hutt and succeeded in bringing his father back from the dark side, something that everybody told him could not be done.
Additionally, Palpatine and his Empire were finally brought to an end by the Rebel Alliance. Some themes have been familiar to almost every Star Wars story, specifically hope versus fear and “freedom versus oppression, but nothing quite as blatant as the themes introduced in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. This is, however, not meant to diminish the Star Wars original trilogy, which was groundbreaking and entertaining in its own time.
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Source(s): Disney+