Via Variety.com:

Best original score, best sound editing, best sound mixing, best visual effects and maybe best film editing or best production design. If you’re asking me, that’s the Oscar ceiling on “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Make an overt case for much beyond that and you’re at risk of being a bit sweaty (or arbitrarily filling column inches).

Of course, that’s not at all meant to be a knock on the film, which unspooled at a lavish three-theater ultra premiere in Hollywood Monday night. The movie does its job. It’s exactly what you probably expect it to be. And as befits this series, it excels in certain craft departments — not least of them being sound design, a huge part of the filmmaking legacy of this series, in my book. The splash was big and the smiles were bigger. It satisfied and relieved many, but Academy Awards recognition? A certain perspective is in order.

The first “Star Wars” landed 10 Oscar nominations and six wins (all in crafts fields). It also picked up two special achievement awards. It was a landmark. A thunder strike. That kind of haul was warranted. But even in 1977, things were kept in check; the film lost the best picture Oscar to Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall.”

It was diminishing Oscar returns after that: score, sound and art direction recognition for “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” (plus special achievement honors for visual effects, in years when the competitive field didn’t exist); sound and visual effects noms for “The Phantom Menace”; a visual effects nom for “Attack of the Clones”; and finally, makeup recognition for “Revenge of the Sith,” a first for the series at the time.

None of the prequels won an Oscar.

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