Star Wars Episode VII: What the Name 'The Force Awakens' Suggests

Many months after the new Star Wars movie was announced, Episode VII finally has a name. The newest instalment of Star Wars is going to be called The Force Awakens. This was confirmed on Thursday by a tweet from the official Star Wars Twitter handle.

The tweet just mentioned that Star Wars: The Force Awakens has completed principal photography, which is great news for anyone who was worried that the movie might miss its December 2015 release date, since a year really ought to be enough to finish post-production.

Before this, the movie has only been referred to as Star Wars Episode VII; we saw the subhead The Force Awakens for the first time with this tweet, and the accompanying image does not mention the number seven anywhere either.

So how bad is The Force Awakens, as Star Wars film names goes? The first three were called A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi respectively. While the latter two are pretty direct and made references to the mythology of the series, A New Hope was vague enough that it encompassed the general concept of the film, without needing a backstory.

The prequel trilogy did this again, starting with the somewhat vague The Phantom Menace, before moving on to Attack of the Clones, and finally, Revenge of the Sith. Going by what we've seen of the trilogy naming so far, The Force Awakens fits right in. It's slightly vague, and promises that something important is going to happen, but it doesn't give too much away either.

Attack of the Clones and The Empire Strikes Back both only made sense as titles if you'd seen the previous movies, and clearly built up an event in the film. Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith both speak to the larger mythos of the series.

But this reading also suggests that the upcoming Star Wars film is going to be an origin story - despite the fact that it is building on one of the most famous movie trilogies ever, The Force Awakens and the films that follow will clearly have to stand on their own, even if old characters like Han, Luke and Leia all have a part to play in this new film.

Another question that it raises is what we mean by the Force awakening. A New Hope was actually pretty straightforward as titles go. (Some 40 year old spoilers follow - editor's note)

Luke Skywalker was a new hope in the fight against the Empire, and ended up being directly responsible for the death of the Emperor, and Darth Vader's renunciation of the Dark Side of the Force, to die as Anakin Skywalker. Phantom Menace also sounds pretty vague, but the movie was about the hidden threat of the Sith that was going to destroy the Jedi, so that's pretty spot on too.

The Force Awakens suggests that the Force - the mystical religion/ magical energy that is such a definitive concept for the Star Wars films - has been dormant, and it's going to gain in strength now. What could that mean?

Well - as of Return of the Jedi, the total number of people in the Galaxy able to use the Force had come down to one person - Luke Skywalker. Fans think that Leia might be able to use the Force as well, but the point is that she's not been trained to do so yet so the Force is down to one guy.

And what happens if Luke decides he's fed up, and that all he wants to do is become a hermit like Yoda? Would that mean... a galaxy without the Force? Sounds like a case could be made for the Force awakening here.

A possibly theory that sounds a bit more reasonable is that the new film could include the idea of Luke finding and training Jedi apprentices, which as anyone who has played the Jedi Academy games can tell you, is a pretty bad idea because before you know it, the Sith are crawling out of the woodwork to resurrect Force ghosts and cause all kinds of havoc.

At the same time, another interesting point is that the tweet dropped the reference to Episode VII - earlier moves including the last film released, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, kept the episode number in the title, connecting the two trilogies.

There are rumours however that Disney - which now owns Lucasfilm, the studio behind the Star Warns franchise, as well as Marvel and the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) films - is going to launch a number of spin-off movies, set in the same cinematic universe but not necessarily focusing on the same characters as the main trilogy. In this scenario, dropping the episode number from the title makes even less sense, as you could end up confusing people between the main story and the spin-offs.

By the time the movie releases next year, all these questions should be clearer to us all, but for now, it's cool to at least know the name of the next movie, instead of just calling it Episode VII.