With 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens,' Disney is afraid to let go of the past

*This article will contain spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens*

Back in 1983, Star Wars fanatics everywhere lined up for Return of the Jedi, their expectations were through the roof for the next installment in the series. It was a satisfying sequel overall, but one element rubbed a lot of people the wrong way: the repetition of the Death Star storyline. The opening crawl promises a station "even more powerful than the first dreaded Death Star," yet in the movie, it's basically just the exact same thing again.

Couldn't the film have given us something different? Do we really need another climax that involves blowing up a giant planet-sized base? That complaint could be cast aside, though, considering how awesome the movie was otherwise. Besides, surely we won't see anything like the Death Star again. That would be absurd.

Leaving The Force Awakens 32 years later, it's hard not to feel a sense of déjà vu, as this latest movie repeats Jedi's mistake to a T. It's similarly satisfying and overall an excellent entry into the series, but Disney simply cannot break free of the past to truly surprise us.

About halfway through The Force Awakens, we're introduced to something called the Starkiller Base, a new weapon built by the First Order which can destroy several planets at once. As soon as it comes on screen, it's the first indication that anything is off about this otherwise pitch perfect sequel and we're instantly filled with dread asking ourselves, "Seriously? Another Death Star?"

We get a sequence reminiscent of the destruction of Alderaan in A New Hope when the Starkiller's capabilities are showed off and chaos ensues. See, it's like what happened in that other movie, but...bigger! There's even a moment during the third act when a character brings up the fact that the Starkiller is basically the Death Star again. It seems like the film is about to subvert our expectations and surely someone else will explain, "No, it's actually totally different from the Death Star because..."

Instead, it is simply confirmed that the size does appear to be the main distinguishing factor. There was an opportunity to make the Starkiller more distinct, and it was not taken. Han cracks a joke about how they always seem to be able to blow these things up, a nice bit of meta dialogue, but acknowledging how dumb this is doesn't make it any better.

Perhaps the presence of the Starkiller wouldn't be as big of an issue if the rest of the final act didn't so closely resemble A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. We get the briefing sequence in which our heroes pull up a holographic image of the base and discuss its potential weaknesses. We follow a group of rebels flying in to destroy it, all while a major conflict occurs inside i.e. Luke and Vader in Jedi. Finally, our heroes are successful as the base is destroyed in an enormous explosion.

That gives us a total of three movies in the Star Wars franchise about blowing up a base whose purpose is to destroy planets. Why? This was supposed to be a reinvigoration of Star Wars and for the most part it really is. There are all new characters and locations while the film still pays tribute to what came before, yet it feels like J.J. Abrams and Disney chickened out and feared straying from our expectations even a little bit.

Why not have the Starkiller simply disabled, at least visually distinguishing it from A New Hope and Return of the Jedi? Why not make the Starkiller a different shape, so it has a similar purpose as the Death Star but doesn't actually look like it? Can we at least not have another trench run?

To be fair, it does make sense story wise that the two are virtually identical. Kylo Ren has based his whole personality on trying to emulate Darth Vader and so it fits that he and Snoke would essentially try to redo the Death Star. But from a storytelling perspective, it's disappointing that what should have felt like a fresh adventure too often feels like a retread, especially when Return of the Jedi already gave us our A New Hope retread.

One movie of this is somewhat acceptable, but if Star Wars hopes to survive long into the future, Episode VIII absolutely must offer something new. Help us, Rian Johnson. You're our only hope.