As we grow closer and closer to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, It's looking pretty great right? I want to take a look at current cinematic trends, the new Disney-created Star Wars material, and what we've seen of the movie so far to see what the end result could be like, and the pitfalls it needs to avoid.
Another property owned by Disney, Marvel has popularized the "shared universe" and now it seems like every major studio is trying this with their more well-known franchises. Disney appears to be doing this with Star Wars, which should work well because it lends itself well to this type of expansion. What needs to be avoided, however, is being a two hour long commercial for the next five Star Wars movies. This is what killed the most recent Spider-Man reboot and almost derailed Avengers: Age of Ultron. This is one of the most highly-anticipated movies of the past ten years and can't be wasted setting up the rest of the universe. It needs to follow the example of the Original Trilogy and tell a story, while also leaving the ending open for the next two films in the trilogy.
From what information we've been fed so far, it looks like there's a lot of love and respect being put into this film, which has also been carried over into Marvel's current Star Wars run. Lucasfilm is putting a lot of effort into using as many practical effects as possible. A similar approach to this year's critically-acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road, which mostly used practical stunts, and CGI was mainly to enhance the scenery, but because everything looked so real, it was very noticeable when a large portion of a shot wasn't. With such a big budget, though, this shouldn't be an issue.
J.J. Abrams shown himself to be a very competent director capable of some truly amazing shots, but when he overdoes something, he tends to really overdo it. *Cough* Lens Flare *Cough*. He has to make sure to craft each scene precisely to prevent this. For The Force Awakens he has gone the same route as George Lucas for the Original Trilogy and cast relatively unknown actors, which definitely payed off then, but will the new cast be skilled enough to carry the majority of the weight? Will the returning cast still have their edge? Harrison Ford remains as good as he was 30 years ago, and Mark Hamill still takes the occasional live-action role, and is always delivers a good performance when he does. Carrie Fisher, though, hasn't been in a project of this scale for a long, but still frequently acts.
The major problem I've noticed with the current Star Wars canon is that writers often reference the source material too much, and it can feel forced and awkward, so hopefully J.J. will accomplish this in a natural-feeling way.
Perhaps the most troubling information so far is that the First Order- a new form of the Empire, has been confirmed to to have a new super weapon, a la the Death Star, which makes me worried that that it will retread a lot of ground already covered, but, as with most of this, we'll have to wait until December 18th to find out.
Both Anthony Daniels, who portrays C3PO, and legendary artist Drew Struzan, who will be painting the poster for the movie, have said that The Force Awakens will be the best Star Wars film to date, but many fans will likely be disappointed no matter what due to the astronomical hype.
So what do you guy think? Will Star Wars: The Force Awakens live up to the hype? Leave your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading!