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Finn and Poe Escape

New friends bring us classic

Star Wars action

Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens

Writers: J.J. Abrams & Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt

Director: J.J. Abrams

When Star Wars fans settled into their (luxury) movie theater seats in December 2015, you couldn’t blame them for feeling a little tense. Star Wars Episode VII was about to begin, and the pressure was definitely on The Force Awakens. You could (and someone should) write a book about that factor alone. J.J. Abrams and company had been tasked with bringing back Star Wars, introducing it to an entire new generation, satisfying generations of Star Wars fans with some pretty intense feelings about the saga, and needing to be perfect at every turn. Like a lone Ewok hammering the foot of a moving AT-ST, it was a tall order.

Yet The Force Awakens wasted little time in giving fans a sequence they could breathe easily about. First Order stormtrooper FN-2187 was having a change of heart about being part of an intergalactic team of bullies and he needed to leave the Star Destroyer Finalizer before his chrome dome of a supervisor could send him to the executioner troopers. So, he quickly concocted a hairbrained scheme to get out of his situation: rescue captured Resistance pilot Poe Dameron, steal a TIE fighter, and flee to safety.

Simple!

Except nothing is simple in this galaxy. Thankfully.

FN-2187 employs some false bravado and frees the Dameron and what follows is a fast-paced sequence full of a still tethered TIE fighter, stormtroopers blasting, and heroes on the brink of disaster. Like with most sequences in Star Wars, there is a lot going on within the dialogue and set piece that rounds out the story and pulls you in deeper to this new chapter of the beloved saga. We have a dashing hero flying like an ace as Poe Dameron is established as the go-to hot shot pilot. We have a reluctant hero finding a new identity as FN-2187, a nameless cog in an evil machine, becomes Finn. Yet, in this case, we can stay decidedly on the surface of the scene. Finn and Poe escaping the Finalizer let us know that Star Wars was definitely back.

The sequence comes just under twenty minutes into The Force Awakens. The first act is done, and we too are ready to break out just as these characters are. This is a literal smashing into the second act. Whereas the first twenty minutes of the movie did let fans relax just a little, we were still waiting to exhale. Laser blasts and lightsabers had already made an appearance, but by this point fans wanted to feel fully entrenched into a Star Wars movie.

So, enter traditional Star Wars bells and whistles (almost literally). The classic “Force Theme” rises as a music cue when our new heroes meet, and the pacing picks up while the tension builds aboard a very familiar Star Wars landscape—the hanger of the bad guys! And much like the events inside the Death Star in A New Hope, we are immersed into the situation with mumbled intercom broadcasts, marching troops, and mouse droids. We’ve been here before and we’re starting to get cozy.

The actual breakout includes an amazing new sound—the sputtering of the stolen TIE fighter—but even that gives way to classic sound of a TIE fighter roaring through space. For many fans, right here, right now, is the first time they’ve seen and heard a classic Star Wars space fighter since 1983! That’s not a judgement on the prequels at all, it’s just the reality of the situation and, as Finn and Poe race from under the belly of the First Order’s beast, blasting cannons along the way, this absolutely feels like Star Wars.