One could probably guess the subtitle of the new Star Wars movie given enough adjectives and a Mad Libs worksheet of blanks. "Jedi,""Sith" and "The Force" likely would have led the list of potential terms you’d assume would have to be in the title. And yet, this story of a Star Wars fan guessing the exact title roughly TWO YEARS AGO is pretty insane. The Force, as it turns out, is strong with this one.
ScreenCrush dialed in to the guess posted by Queen Gimmedale on a Star Warsmessage board back in 2012. Oddly enough, this person was a member since December 18, 2012… and Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens on December 18. Voodoo! According to the site, this wasn’t the case of one user guessing thousands of possibilities and eventually landing on it. This was one post, by itself, perfectly guessed.
If the story stopped there, it’d still be cool. Except TheForce.net, which housed the message board, contacted Queen Gimmedale through the back channels and was able to tell her about the incredible guess she pulled out of thin air. And the user elaborated:
Ultimately this was a random guess. No inside info or connection to Lucas. But to me it seemed logical that the first movie in this trilogy would need to address the force. I'm a believer that the movie titles in each trilogy closely relate and I suspect this will carry over for the ST. So I knew it was going to be 3 words, and the force. I also know that the wording would be vague/ambiguous/old fashioned like all the other six movie titles."
And it kind of is! As many pointed out on Twitter after the title was revealed, Awakens follows the expected Rises, Dawn and from-the-ashes tone that basically every film franchise tries to dial into nowadays. That doesn’t mean that The Force Awakens is a bad title, by any stretch. Just that it’s an intentionally vague one that doesn’t reveal any details that J.J. Abrams and his team don’t want to unearth, with more than a year left to go before the sequel opens.
Where will the new subtitle rank amongst the previous, possibly better Star Wars subtitles? Time will tell (but this is how Eric feels about the order of the titles, to this point). Here’s hoping that Queen Gimmedale goes out and buys a few lottery tickets… then tells us what episodes 8 and 9 are going to be called.