Star Wars: The Force Awakens - 10 Ways It's A Remake Of A New Hope

To quote die hard Star Wars fan and comedian Patton Oswalt: "J.J. did it." After more than ten years of waiting (or 33 years, if you want to pretend that prequels never happened) Star Wars: The Force Awakens is finally upon us, and feverish audiences the world over have been returned to a galaxy far, far away to see what everyone has been up to. The good news is that The Force Awakens is pretty damn fantastic. It has been met with rave reviews across the board, wracking up a score of 94% on critical aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, with most of the praise falling on writer/director J.J Abrams. The best thing about the movie by far, though, is that it feels like Star Wars. Genuinely - and thankfully - The Force Awakens has the tone and the atmosphere and the texture of Episodes IV-VI. And isn't that, fundamentally, what everyone was hoping for all along? Forget the plot or the twists: Abrams' job was to deliver something that felt true to the original trilogy, a movie to recapture their essence, and that is exactly what he has done. To an extent, though, The Force Awakens feel more like a remake of Star Wars: A New Hope than a fully-fledged movie in its own right. It's not as though this wasn't expected of the film, however; trailers already showcased a number of familiar aspects, from desert planets to planet-sized superweapons, but - sitting down to Episode VII - you almost feel like you're watching a rebooted version of Episode IV. There are that many similarities. You can understand why Abrams went down this path, of course; his job was to create something that embraced both the old and the new, and The Force Awakens is arguably a perfect amalgamation of the classic films paired with a modern blockbuster mentality. Still, those well-worn Episode IV parallels and story beats are in major abundance. Hey, George Lucas clearly wasn't kidding when he said that Star Wars was "like poetry... it rhymes." Obviously, be prepared for SPOILERS.