NANO (Dec 2017)
Editors’ Introduction for NANO Special Issue 12: Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Narrative, Characters, Media, and Event
Abstract
The Force Awakens enables, even fosters comparisons: is Rey a worthy hero? Is Finn believable as a once-Stormtrooper turned good resistance fighter? Is Kylo Ren anywhere close in power and ability to his role model, Darth Vader? Readers can glean my opinion from that evaluative sentence. Are the scenes parallel to earlier movies? This movie, the new characters, the new poster, the toys, the novelization (by Alan Dean Foster, the science fiction writer and film novelization specialist who served as ghost writer for George Lucas’ Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, 1976, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, 2016), and the countless viewing parties, the information sites such as Wookieepedia, and wonderful spoofs such as YouTube’s Bad Lip Reading enable me to say that this film is far beyond simple nostalgia and money-making scheme—though both of those are in play here. It is not the completeness and closure of The Force Awakens that compelled the editors to select that movie and those experiences for a special issue. Instead, it is the excitement that this jump-start has created. The structure at the center of the Star Wars universe has held, and the future looks bright for more new characters and also more wars. The battle for political and economic control on Jakku has something to do with our current Earth-bound problems about inequality and migration and war. But more locally, for Issue 12, questions about identity come to the fore: Who gets to create new Star Wars characters? Who gets to play those new characters? Who gets to play with storylines? Who gets to be the hero and villain? Who gets to voice opinions about the new shape of the First Order? These questions lead to “how” questions—especially how should new viewers and readers understand The Force Awakens. These questions motivate the four articles and one interview in this special issue.
