This is the film we’re looking for. “The Force Awakens” understands what “Star Wars” fans love and delivers it lavishly.

The saga’s seventh episode races across accustomed terrain with familiar faces, thrilling audiences that have been waiting three decades to see them. The film practically pauses for applause at the arrival of Harrison Ford as Han Solo, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia (now General Organa), and Anthony Daniels and Peter Mayhew in their costumes as C-3PO and Chewie.

The film passes its nostalgia check with flying colors. Under the swaggering confidence of director J.J. Abrams — the nerd-savant who already revived the “Mission: Impossible” and “Star Trek” films in grand scale — it provides far more excitement and deliriously daft humor than the last three George Lucas episodes combined. The Disney executives who paid Lucas $4 billion for the rights to the series in perpetuity can take a sigh of relief. This installment could very well earn back half of the investment on its own.

“The Force Awakens” plays like four films in parallel (all discussed here without big reveals). In the first, Oscar Isaac plays Poe Dameron, the best X-Wing fighter pilot ever, flying serpentine loops in the favorite vehicle for Resistance fighters. He joins forces with John Boyega joining the cast as Finn, a defector from the Stormtroopers assault force serving the evil First Order. The pair launch a partnership, bantering at light speed while trying to outfly, outshoot and outlast a battalion of pursuit ships.

The second film is a coming of age story for Daisy Ridley playing Rey, a woman scavenging the desert planet Jakku for crashed spacecraft scraps with a fine balance of grit, physicality and vulnerability. Like Luke Skywalker of yore, she lives among John Ford-inspired images of the arid American West, looking up into the sky in hopes of finding a path to a better life.

The third film is a breezy reunion, with Ford returning to the role of the galaxy’s greatest, gruffest scoundrel and befriending some of the new arrivals. Asked by one, “Wasn’t he a war hero?” Chewbacca gives a shrug and a yodeling “Meh.”

In the fourth, all heck breaks loose in a special- effects action extravaganza when Adam Driver as mysterious hooded villain Kylo Ren aims to use his dark mastery of the Force to “destroy the Resistance and the last Jedi.”

This is by far the most female-friendly film in the “Star Wars” universe. It offers the series’ first female action star (a role Ridley fills with verve and moxie), and its first major female villain (Gwendoline Christie of “Game of Thrones” as Captain Phasma). It also introduces the near-irresistible BB-8, the first droid mascot modeled after a bobblehead soccer ball.

The film looks remarkable, its slick color palette putting the top villains in costumes and settings so blood crimson and black they resemble evil red velvet muffins. And for the first time in decades, the franchise displays a touching level of heart toward its leading characters.

At other times, the film returns to standard “Star Wars” mythology like a solid cover band playing callbacks of old hits. If you liked it before, it’s probably here. A big planet- destroying weapon that has to be attacked by a squadron of heroes; check. Family issues leading to a wrenching battle-station showdown; absolutely. Samurai lightsabers ripping through flesh like Freddy Krueger’s razor fingers; oh yeah. Another visit to a jazzy cantina; you bet. Holographic chess; naturally.

The script Abrams created with Lawrence Kasdan, screenwriter of the classic “The Empire Strikes Back,” whips off parsecs full of big, loud excitement, yet at times the film is so fixated with revisiting its own universe that it can’t transport us beyond what’s already familiar. One scene of the Millennium Falcon filling with toxic gas parallels sections where the film itself needs to breathe fresh air. This year’s revivals of movies about Jurassic Park, Rocky Balboa and Mad Max carried their fan bases to impressive new worlds of plot twists and multidimensional characters. “The Force Awakens” visits its new vistas largely through sublime visual effects.

That said, this is a welcome next-generation return for a franchise that has been a key point in pop-cultural history. It doesn’t just resuscitate George Lucas’ most beloved creation, it gives today’s viewers a “Star Wars” that feels and looks like it fits in their time. Not many will leave disappointed, and most will feel prepared to follow it forward into a future far, far away.