Watch: A Side-by-Side Comparison of ‘The Force Awakens’ and the Original ’Star Wars’

The 2015 reboot of the Star Wars franchise, The Force Awakens, has been labeled by many as more of a remake instead of the beginning of a new trilogy, with a plot that closely follows the original 1977 film, Star Wars: A New Hope.
Jonathan Zhou
3/27/2016
Updated:
3/28/2016

The 2015 reboot of the Star Wars franchise, The Force Awakens, has been labeled by many as more of a remake instead of the beginning of a new trilogy, with a plot that closely follows the original 1977 film, Star Wars: A New Hope.

A new side-by-side comparison of shots between the two movies will only further cement the new film’s reputation as a reiteration of the original, providing visual evidence of just how much was borrowed from the first trilogy. 

Some fans of The Force Awakens defended the new film in the comment section, arguing that the similar shots were an intentional homage to the original, and not evidence that the filmmakers were out of ideas, and even brought up the fact that George Lucas had borrowed scene-compositions from Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, made in 1958.