Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) Review: Hope Rises Again

Kylo Ren is the most compelling villain the franchise has produced since Darth Vader, and the reason is simple: he is not finished becoming evil. He tells Rey that he is torn between the light and the dark, and we believe him. Every mask he wears is a performance. Every tantrum he throws reveals a boy desperate to be what his grandfather was but terrified he cannot measure up. This is not a monster. This is a young man who made a catastrophic choice and has been running from the guilt ever since.

The film gives us the wreckage of a family: Han and Leia, who sent their son to train with Luke, and watched him transform into something monstrous. The scene where Han confronts Kylo on that narrow bridge is devastating because it is so quiet. There is no lightsaber combat. There is only a father, reaching for the son he remembers, and a son who cannot hear him anymore. The choice Kylo makes in that moment is not the choice of a man who has won. It is the choice of a man who cannot forgive himself, and has decided that no one else should either. That kind of spiritual anguish is rare in blockbuster cinema, and it gives the film a weight that lingers long after the credits roll.

Star Wars has always borrowed from spiritual traditions, and The Force Awakens leans into that inheritance without apology. The Force is described as an energy field that binds all living things together. Characters speak of it as something that can be felt, trusted, and even obeyed. For Christian viewers, the parallels are hard to miss. The Force functions as a kind of universal grace: present, accessible, and available to anyone who opens themselves to it. It does not play favorites. It does not belong to the powerful. It responds to faith.

Rey lives by this belief even before she understands what it means. She senses things she cannot explain. She trusts instincts that have kept her alive on a hostile desert world. When the dark side reaches for her through its visions, she does not collapse. She holds her ground and finds her own strength. This is not passive spirituality. It is active surrender to something larger than herself, and it consistently rewards her for that trust. The film does not preach, but it does suggest that there is a right order to the universe, and that alignment with it matters.

Finn's arc is the film's clearest moral thesis. He was manufactured to serve. Every Stormtrooper in the First Order was taken as a child, stripped of a name, and reshaped into a tool. Finn was good at it. Then he was not. One order to execute innocent villagers broke something loose inside him, and he chose to run. Not because he was brave. Not because he was special. Because he finally saw what he was becoming and refused.

That choice echoes in the film's final act. Finn lies bleeding on the ground of Starkiller Base, having thrown himself between Rey and a blow meant to kill her. He did not have to do that. His defection had already proven his freedom. But freedom, the film argues, is not merely the absence of orders. It is the presence of love, and love means showing up for people even when it costs everything. Finn learned what the First Order never taught him: that the measure of a person is not what they were built for. It is what they choose.