Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

The Force Awakens opens three decades after the Empire fell, with a new military power, the First Order, searching for Luke Skywalker, the Jedi who has gone missing. Poe Dameron, a Resistance pilot, tucks a fragment of the map to Luke's location inside his droid BB-8, and the First Order raids his village.

BB-8 rolls out into the desert of Jakku and finds Rey, a scavenger who lives there alone. The droid's cargo drags her into a fight she never asked for. Finn, a stormtrooper who has lost his nerve, helps Poe get away and then crosses paths with Rey. Soon all three are being pursued across the sand, and a stolen ship carries them to Han Solo and Chewbacca.

The setup stops there, before any of the later turns. The full plot summary that follows covers the rest. For where the film sits in the saga, see Star Wars movies in order.

The full plot of The Force Awakens runs from the hunt for a map to Luke Skywalker through to Rey finding him on a remote island. Supreme Leader Snoke, the shadowy head of the First Order, wants Luke found, since the Jedi vanished after his students were destroyed. Poe Dameron collects part of the map from Lor San Tekka, an old ally, and Kylo Ren, a dark warrior in black, takes him prisoner.

In the Jakku desert, BB-8 slips away and crosses paths with Rey, while the stormtrooper Finn deserts his post and frees Poe. Finn and Rey flee the planet aboard the Millennium Falcon, and Han Solo and Chewbacca track them down. Han brings the group to the cantina of Maz Kanata, where Rey is drawn to a lightsaber that once belonged to Luke and is shaken by a troubling vision.

Meanwhile the First Order turns its giant planet-sized base on the New Republic and destroys several of its worlds. Rey is captured, and Kylo Ren tries to pull the map out of her mind. She resists him and finds that her connection to the Force is strong. Han, Chewbacca and Finn slip into the base to bring its shields down and get her out.

On the base, Han faces Kylo Ren, who is his own son and the child of Han and Leia, and Kylo kills him with a lightsaber. Poe leads the Resistance pilots in a last strike that blows up the base. In the snowy woods, Rey and Kylo fight, and she beats him by calling on the Force. Rey then sets out with Chewbacca and R2-D2 to find Luke.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released in US theaters on December 18, 2015, after a Los Angeles premiere on December 14, 2015. Box Office Mojo reports December 17, 2015, for both the UK and Australia, one day earlier than the US. The premiere took place on Hollywood Boulevard, using the El Capitan, Dolby and TCL Chinese theaters.

The film runs 136 minutes. It is rated PG-13 in the US, 12A in the UK and M in Australia, which answers the common question of whether this Star Wars film is PG or PG-13: for this film, it is PG-13.

The box office figures are large against the cost. According to Box Office Mojo, the film had a budget of $245 million and took about $937 million domestically and $1.13 billion internationally, for a worldwide total of $2.07 billion by Box Office Mojo's count. That is more than eight times its budget, so by any practical measure it was a hit. The full series picture is on the Star Wars box office page.

Where can you watch it? As checked on November 2, 2026, via JustWatch data on TMDB, the film streams on Disney Plus in the US, UK and Australia, and it also streams on Philo, YouTube TV and Starz in the US. It can be rented or bought on services such as Amazon Video, Apple TV Store and YouTube. Availability changes, so the where to watch Star Wars page is the place to recheck.

The Force Awakens ends with Rey finding Luke Skywalker on a cliff top on a remote ocean island and holding out his old lightsaber to him. Before that moment, the Resistance has destroyed Starkiller Base, but Han Solo is dead and Kylo Ren survives, badly wounded. Leia Organa mourns Han alongside Rey, who has now shown strong Force ability, and R2-D2 wakes up to reveal the rest of the map.

What does it all mean? The ending resolves the chase, because the map is complete and Rey reaches Luke. It also hands the real question to the next film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, because Luke's response is left for the next film. In my opinion, that is the smartest thing the film does, because it turns a race for a map into a meeting between two characters.

What does it leave open? Kylo Ren lives, so the story has a villain who is wounded but not finished, and Supreme Leader Snoke stays shadowy. The film does not reveal Rey's parents, and it could be argued that this gap is deliberate, since a film that withholds the answer keeps audiences talking until the sequel.

Perhaps the cleanest way to read the ending is as a handover. The old trio of Han, Leia and Luke gives way to Rey, Finn and Poe, and the final image places Rey opposite Luke. For the chronological context around this scene, see the Star Wars timeline.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was filmed mainly at Pinewood Studios in the UK, with Abu Dhabi in the UAE standing in for Jakku and Skellig Michael in Ireland as the final location.

The Abu Dhabi shoot was large. About 700 people were involved at its peak in May, which gives a sense of the scale behind the scavenger world Rey calls home.

The third location is Skellig Michael in Ireland, where the production filmed for about three days in late July 2014. It is the remote island where the film ends, so a very short shoot supplies the final image of Rey facing Luke.

The best known piece of production trivia is the injury to Harrison Ford. Ford broke his ankle on the Millennium Falcon door during filming in summer 2014, and J.J. Abrams said he hurt his back helping Ford out from under the door.

The other well known story concerns a name. Abrams said he took the name Captain Phasma from the horror film Phantasm, which is where the chrome stormtrooper commander played by Gwendoline Christie got her title.