Looking back at it now, 10 years later, the warning signs were clear from the start — from the first trailer, in fact. Its initial image was a shot of a speeder zooming past the wreckage of a long-forgotten battle, an X-wing in the foreground dwarfed by a Star Destroyer in the background. Following it is a close-up of the melted, twisted husk of Darth Vader’s helmet. It ends with a wistful Han Solo (Harrison Ford) telling his wookiee comrade, “Chewie, we’re home.” 

Which was the problem. Disney took us back home. To the Star Wars we thought we had lost. Together, we’ve been scavenging the ruins ever since. Contrary to critics and fans who believe “Disney Wars” only went awry later, the issues which have come to plague the franchise — from its inconsistent, contradictory plotting and endless recycling of itself, to its overall lack of vision — are present not merely in incipient but in fully mature form in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015).

Episode VII felt off as soon as the lights went down. For the first time, a film in the series opened without the 20th Century Fox logo and its accompanying fanfare. Evidently, this would not be your father’s — or, if you’re my age, your own — Star Wars. But it so desperately wanted to be. From the opening scenes of the First Order’s raid on the Jakku village mirroring the Empire’s seizure of Princess Leia’s (Carrie Fisher) ship, to the climactic attack on Starkiller Base recapitulating the assault on the Death Star, the parallels to the original are so numerous that calling them copies or ripoffs might be more accurate. There are so many that a side-by-side comparison video compiled at the time couldn’t capture them all.

If being a rehash weren’t bad enough, The Force Awakens is marred........

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