“That lightsaber was Luke’s, and his father’s before him, and now, it calls to you.”

George Lucas’ filmmaking enterprise known as Lucasfilm was purchased for approximately four billion dollars by the Walt Disney Company in 2012. Although Lucas was very torn about the decision that he made, he hoped that selling his legacy would expose future generations to Star Wars in a greater way and pass on the torch to future filmmakers. Disney also owns the production and distribution rights to the Indiana Jones films and all other Lucasfilm productions, but Star Wars is obliviously their biggest asset today, aside from Marvel. That may change in a few weeks if Disney goes through with buying 20th Century Fox, but that is another story.

After acquiring Lucasfilm, Disney’s first intention was to produce a new cinematic Star Wars epic story that would be set after the original trilogy, revolving around a new generation of galactic heroes. “The Force Awakens” serves as the first film in this sequel trilogy. Before its release on December 18, 2015, the film was the most hyped Star Wars movie since “The Phantom Menace” back in 1999. However, whereas that film failed people’s high expectations, “The Force Awakens” successfully fulfilled—and even exceeded—them. The film was directed by J. J. Abrams, who had previously helmed the underrated science fiction thriller “Super 8” and the first two films in the “Star Trek” reboot series. Its screenplay was written by Abrams, “The Empire Strikes Back” screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt.

Taking place about three decades after the collapse of the Galactic Empire, the mysterious Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker has vanished. Led by the evil Supreme Leader Snoke, the sinister First Order rose from the ashes of the Empire and intends to overthrow the Galactic Republic and kill Luke, the last remnant of the once extinct Jedi Order. Luke’s twin sister, General Leia Organa, leads a brave Resistance to counter the acts of the First Order, and she is desperate to find her brother and regain his help. Leia has sent out the brave pilot Poe Dameron to the desert planet Jakku, where an elderly villager named Lor San Tekka has a clue to Luke’s whereabouts: part of a map that will reveal Luke’s location. As soon as Poe receives Tekka’s information, the village is attacked by a battalion of First Order Stormtroopers, led by the intimidating Kylo Ren. Ren and his Stormtroopers kill Tekka and maraud the village, and Poe places the part of the map in his spherical astromech droid, BB-8. Unlike his fellow comrades, one Stormtrooper, given the codename of FN-2187, finds himself unable to kill the villagers and retreats back to the First Order’s ship. After Ren interrogates Poe about the map to Luke, he is brought on board to one of the First Order’s space stations. There, Poe is tortured by Ren with the Force, and Ren discovers that BB-8 is carrying the part of the map. FN-2187, feeling that being a part of the First Order is wrong, decides to free Poe, and they escape the space station together in a First Order TIE fighter. As they outrun other fighters, Poe dubs FN-2187 “Finn.” The TIE fighter crash-lands on Jakku, where Finn eventually wakes up hours later. As the fighter sinks into the sand dunes and explodes, Finn assumes that Poe has died and wanders through the scorching desert.

Meanwhile, BB-8 has been mindlessly rolling around Jakku, avoiding capture from the First Order. While getting into trouble with a creature named Teedo, BB-8 is saved by a lonely female scavenger named Rey, who lives in an abandoned Imperial AT-AT Walker in solitude, whose only company is a junkyard run by the ruthless Unkar Plutt. Rey and BB-8 go to a nearby village where Finn is hiding. BB-8 detects Finn, who is wearing Poe’s jacket, and alerts Rey about his presence, thinking that he stole his master’s Resistance uniform. After a chase and a beating from Rey’s staff, Finn lies to them that he is with the Resistance and that Poe was his compatriot. To their surprise, the First Order, who was contacted by Plutt, attacks the village with a deadly airstrike. Rey, Finn, and BB-8 all escape in the deteriorated and rusted spaceship the Millenium Falcon, which was an item in Plutt’s junkyard.

The Falcon outruns the First Order TIE fighters over the deserts of Jakku and leaves its atmosphere before it is pulled into a freighter ship. When Rey, Finn, and BB-8 hear footsteps, they nervously hide underneath the Falcon’s floorboards. The footsteps belong to former smuggler Han Solo and his first mate and loyal companion Chewbacca. In the past, Han and Chewbacca piloted the Falcon together, and the ship itself was used in the destruction of the second Death Star constructed by the Empire. Rey had heard folktales in her youth of Han’s adventures with Luke and always assumed them to be mythological. Han assures her that everything in those stories is true, and that the Jedi do in fact exist. While BB-8 displays the incomplete map to Luke’s location, Han explains that Luke was training a new generation of Jedi after the Empire had fallen. One boy, an apprentice, turned against him. Luke felt responsible for the boy’s actions and just walked away from everything.

Meanwhile, news from a gang that Han owes money to has reached Snoke, reporting that BB-8 contains the map to Luke and it is aboard the Falcon. Shockingly, Snoke additionally reveals that the droid is in the hands of Ren’s father, who is Han. Ren assures Snoke that he will not be seduced away from Snoke’s training, to which Snoke regards that statement with much doubt.

Han chooses to take the Falcon to the lush green planet Takodana, where a centuries-old orange alien named Maz Kanata owns a gigantic castle by a watering hole. Han hopes that Maz can get BB-8 to the Resistance safely. One of the robot patrons in Maz’s bar alerts the Resistance that the missing BB-8 has been found, while a seductive female patron communicates with the First Order and tells them that BB-8 is on Takodana. During all that, Finn tells the truth about himself and his past to Rey and goes to leave her at Takodana, intending to set out in search of his lost family. Then, Rey curiously walks around the castle as she hears a young girl crying. She is mysteriously led to a hidden room underground. The room consists of many artifacts, one of them being a chest. Rey opens the chest and is greeted to the sight of Luke’s former blue lightsaber, which was once owned by his father Anakin, who later became Darth Vader. Luke lost this lightsaber along with his hand when he was fighting Vader in Cloud City in “The Empire Strikes Back.” Out of wonder, Rey touches the lightsaber. The room vanishes, and she finds herself in a corridor in Cloud City. The atmosphere then changes, and she falls and lies on the ground, where she sees the image of a cloaked figure placing his skeletal metal hand on an astromech droid. Suddenly, Rey is saved by a violent clan leader when a red lightsaber blade stabs him while he is trying to kill her. Rey stands up and sees several deadly warriors, and one of them approaches her before she horrifyingly witnesses her younger self crying to the sight of a ship flying away while she is with Unkar Plutt, shouting “come back.” The setting of the vision then changes to a snowy forest, where a mysterious voice calls her name. A person then comes to her with a red ignited lightsaber, and Rey then finds herself in the room again.

Stupefied of what she has experienced, Rey is approached by Maz, who informs her that the lightsaber she touched is calling to her. Maz also tells her more about the knowledge of the Force and prompts her to take the lightsaber. Rey states that she will never touch it again, and walks away. However, the First Order begins attacking Maz’s castle, and Rey scaredly flees into a nearby forest. Maz gives Finn the Skywalker lightsaber, and he fights Stormtroopers together with Han and Chewbacca. When the trio is captured, the Resistance come to the destroyed castle, led by Poe, who is miraculously alive. Leia and protocol droid C-3PO arrive at the scene as well. Leia was Han’s former spouse, and they divorced because of tensions revolving around their disgraced son, Ben, who became Kylo Ren and sparked the birth of the First Order. Ben is also the apprentice that Han spoke of that turned against Luke, causing him to go into self-imposed exile. Nevertheless, Han and Leia still love each other, and are grateful to be on good terms.

In the forest, Rey hears the sounds of igniting lightsabers and grows paranoid, before Ren finds her and freezes her with the Force. Ren then drains her consciousness, and takes her to Starkiller Base, the main space station and superweapon of the First Order. Seeing Ren’s shuttle take off with Rey in it, Finn screams out in great anger and regrets his decision to leave her.

Similar to the two Death Stars constructed by the Empire, Starkiller Base is even bigger in size and it can destroy multiple planets at once. Unlike the Death Stars though, the base was retrofitted and converted out of a large snow planet. Starkiller Base has also recently destroyed the capital planet of the Republic, Hosnian Prime, with its destructive energy surges powered by the sun’s rays. Prior to interrogating Rey, Ren takes off his helmet in front of her to reveal a handsome yet angsty human being. Ren asks Rey about the droid. While Rey refuses to answer Ren’s prompting, Ren can visualize from her head a remote island out in the ocean, along with a lonely girl desperate to sleep. Out of the blue, Rey randomly takes control of the situation, and exclaims to Ren that he will never be as strong as Darth Vader, his maternal grandfather. Ren reports Rey’s mind-reading powers to Snoke. Meanwhile, Rey is being guarded by a Stormtrooper. Rey mandates the Stormtrooper to remove her restraints and leave her cell with the door open. Despite resisting at first, the Stormtrooper obeys Rey’s command, even dropping his weapon at her request. Rey wanders around Starkiller Base, desperate to find any means of possible escape.

On the planet D’Qar, BB-8 is safely delivered to the Resistance’s headquarters by Han, Finn, Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO. BB-8 stumbles upon the astromech droid R2-D2, who assisted Luke on his adventures to become a Jedi Knight. R2-D2 has been in a dormant state ever since Luke’s disappearance, and C-3PO infers that he contains more of the map to Luke’s location. News has reached Leia that Starkiller Base is aiming at D’Qar for its next attack, and it has begun collecting the light from the sun. Fortunately, Starkiller Base has a thermal oscillator that, if hit, can cause it to collapse within itself. Leia dispatches Poe to lead a squadron of X-wing pilots to lead an assault on the base, and sends Han, Finn, and Chewbacca to sway Ren back from the Dark Side and bring him home. Once on the base, the trio infiltrates the First Order’s facilities. Finn and Rey reunite, but she cannot explain how she escaped Ren and the Stormtroopers. Later, Han finds his son on a bridge and urges him to abandon Snoke and return to D’Qar with him. In tears, Ren tells his father that he wants to be freed of his pain, but he does not know if he has the strength to do it. Ren asks Han if he will help him, and Han replies that he will. A conflicted Ren hands his lightsaber to Han, and as he grabs it, Ren is unable to let go. He then ignites the lightsaber through his father’s chest, and after bidding him a soft “thank you,” Han falls off the bridge down into Starkiller Base’s main energy reactor. Deeply saddened and angered, Finn, Rey, and Chewbacca all fire shots at Ren before Ren chases Finn and Rey outside to a snowy forest. Meanwhile, the last of the sun has been obtained by Starkiller Base, and they will fire at D’Qar in two minutes.

Finn and Rey hear the sounds of Ren’s lightsaber, and see him moments later. As Ren punches himself, he insists that Han cannot save them. Ren then uses the Force to propel Rey into a tree, temporarily knocking her out. Wanting to avenge his friend, Finn ignites the Skywalker lightsaber after Ren calls him a traitor. Ren orders Finn to give him the lightsaber, but the latter tells him to come and get it. The two have a brutal fight, the Skywalker lightsaber gets thrown in the snow, and Finn is severely wounded in the back, draining his consciousness. Ren uses the Force to pull the lightsaber out of the snow, but it does not go in his direction. Instead, it has gone towards Rey, who has suddenly awakened. Ren and Rey battle, and at first, Ren is winning the fight. Then, Ren tells Rey that he can show her the ways of the Force. Rey closes her eyes, channels her inner energy, and pushes herself to defeat Ren by scarring his face through his right eye, leaving him injured yet alive.

Poe and the Resistance X-wing squadron have successfully penetrated the thermal oscillator of Starkiller Base. As the base starts to crumble, Snoke asks First Order commander General Armitage Hux to find Ren and take him to his temple to complete his training. Chewbacca picks up Rey and the anesthetized Finn in the Falcon after Rey takes the Skywalker lightsaber. The Falcon flies away alongside Poe’s X-wing squadron as Starkiller Base explodes into a giant supernova. Back on D’Qar, Finn is discovered to have a pulse and is housed in an extensive Resistance medical facility. Both mourning over the death of their former husband and mentor, Leia and Rey hug. R2-D2 randomly wakes up and is shown to have the rest of the map to Luke’s location, which is on an island in the seas of the oceanic planet Ahch-To. Before Rey leaves in the Falcon for Ahch-To with R2-D2 and Chewbacca, she kisses Finn on the forehead in his sleep, and Leia bids her the always-iconic line, “May the Force be with you.” Once on the island, Rey climbs hundreds of steps and passes by several stone huts before seeing the backside of Luke, who is looking out towards the sea over some sort of tombstone. Sensing Rey’s presence, Luke turns around to see her holding the Skywalker lightsaber out towards him. Awestruck, the aged Jedi Knight silently stares at the sight placed before his eyes.

A Star Wars movie should be fun, exciting, eventful, and enjoyable, and “The Force Awakens” is an exceptional culmination of all of those things. While the prequels are undeserving of their negative reputation, they were not exactly “great” Star Wars films, or films in general for that matter. With their iffy acting and writing, boring and rambling political discussions, and over-reliance of computer generated special effects, all three Star Wars prequels do not rank alongside the films of the original trilogy. “The Force Awakens” however, surpasses each and every Star Wars film to date so far, though that is a personal preference, as many Star Wars fans place the film even lower than the prequels.

When “The Force Awakens” was released almost two years ago, some fans noticed a great number of similarities that it shared with the very first Star Wars film, “A New Hope.” In a few respects, they are correct. Both films include a good guy placing vital information in a droid, the droid coming across a lonely protagonist on a desert planet, the protagonist leaving their desert planet in the Millenium Falcon, the protagonist learning about the Force, the protagonist meeting a mentor who somehow shares a connection with one of the bad guys, a deadly spherical superweapon built by the bad guys with a fatal weakness in its plan, X-wings blowing up the superweapon, the protagonist’s mentor getting killed by the villain from their past, and one of the good guys being rescued by someone in a Stormtrooper uniform. Here is the bottom line though. Despite its more original storytelling, the prequel trilogy took risks and steered itself away from the traditions of Star Wars. To most people, these risks that Lucas took with the prequels ended up not paying off. Instead of receiving honorable predecessors to three of the most popular films of all time, all people received were three underwhelming letdowns that miserably paled in comparison. The main reason why “The Force Awakens” is the greatest Star Wars film ever made is because it sticks to the conventional Star Wars formula. It is something that audiences are familiar with, but it is presented in such an entertaining and unique way that it still is an outstanding movie to experience. Take “Toy Story” for example. Before its release, several films revolved around the idea of toys coming to life in the absence of their owners. Since that film was so innovative and captivating with its brilliant characters and sharp comedy however, “Toy Story” manages to be not only be the greatest sentient toy movie of all time, but one of the very greatest animated movies of all time. “The Force Awakens” is essentially Star Wars updated with all of the filmmaking techniques found in modern cinema, and because of that, it still retains freshness and novelty.

Abrams and his crew had big shoes to fill considering the trainwreck of the prequel trilogy and the expectations of fans, and while the acclaim was not unanimous, they produced a film that stands above the rest of the entire Star Wars saga because of its emotional and involving storytelling, usage of realistic practical effects, respect to Lucas’ dedication and vision towards the original Star Wars films, and the convincing acting performances. Like “The Empire Strikes Back,” the film also cleverly ends on a cliffhanger that should keep anyone eager to see the next chapter revolving around the Skywalker Family. If a movie grips and holds its audience and keeps it in suspense, it is definitely doing something that it should be doing. With “The Last Jedi” coming out to theaters in a few days from now at the time of this writing, one can have a new hope that “The Force Awakens” will begin to make things right.