Well, we've got the whole Star Wars name to kick things off. All of the other films started with those two magical words—Star Wars—and it helps to keep them all bound up in a neat little bow.

With the Star Wars movie universe looking to become its own genre—with new movies every year or so if Disney has their way—the Star Wars masterminds wanted to draw a clear distinction between the "core" episodes (I-IX) and the outliers. There's an easy way to do that without getting too weird…by making sure Star Wars is in the title.

As for what The Force Awakens means, well, that's intentionally cryptic. Kind of like the Force itself.

It suggests that the Force hasn't been a big player on the galactic stage, letting things play out and possibly costing Luke a whole school full of apprentices as a result. That means what we see here is the start of something: a new era for the galaxy.

We just don't know whether that era is going to be good…or very, very bad.

It also draws a nice parallel between Rey's personal journey and the big, bad universe she may just be on her way to saving. Rey has got some awakening of her own to do: realizing who she can become, finding a larger galaxy beyond her little borders, and twisting those pesky stormtroopers' minds into funny animal shapes. Girl's got it going on, but she's only now starting to realize it.

The Force is awakening all right, but she's the one who's got to decide what to do with it.