Star Wars: Infographic Shows Parallels Between ‘The Force Awakens’ and ‘Knights of the Old Republic’

When Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released into theaters in 2015, a lot was made of the film’s structural similarities to the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope. However, fans may have missed another Star Wars story with some similarities to The Force Awakens, and that’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

For those who aren’t familiar with the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, Knights of the Old Republic was a 2003 role-playing video game developed by BioWare. The game’s story took place 4000 year’s before the events of The Phantom Menace began the rise of the Galactic Empire, during an era when both Jedi and Sith were plentiful, with the former group deemed protectors of the Republic and the latter ruling a separate empire.

As for the actual plot of the game, Reddit user the-jedi-apprentice has drawn up an infographic detailing the similarities between the story of Knights of the Republic and that of The Force Awakens. Check it out below:

As shown in the infographic, both stories involve “a british girl fighting with a long stick” (Rey from The Force Awakens and the Jedi Bastila Shan in Knights of the Old Republic) looking for a map that “leads to an ancient power” (Luke Skywalker/the Star Forge) to defeat a “deformed pale dude” (Supreme Leader Snoke/Darth Malak), with a facility that gets power by draining a star (Starkiller base/the Star Forge again), with the help of a Wookie (Chewbacca/Zaalbar), a pilot (Poe Dameron/Carth Onasi), and an “old man” (Han Solo/Jolee Bindo).

While this may seem compelling at first, it relies on only a surface-level reading of both texts and requires you to play pretty loose with how each narrative fits together. The fact that the Star Forge has to fill two places in this infographic to force the comparison to work is pretty damning, and reducing characters to such simplistic roles as “old man” and “a pilot” does no justice to how different these characters actually are and how they play entirely different roles in their respective stories.

For example, Rey is the main protagonist of The Force Awakens, while Bastila Shan is a supporting character. Poe Dameron is barely in The Force Awakens, while Carth Onasi is one of the player’s first companions in Knights of the Old Republic. When it comes to what you get out of this comparison, your mileage may vary.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens currently has a 91.42 ComicBook.com Composite score and 4.45 out of 5 ComicBook User Rating. Let us know what you thought of Star Wars: The Force Awakens by giving the film your own personal ComicBook.com User rating below.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is now playing in theaters. The Star Wars sequel trilogy will conclude with Star Wars: Episode IX, releasing December 20, 2019. The next Star Wars standalone movie is Solo: A Star Wars Story, releasing May 25, 2018.