Yeah, I kinda hated Abrams’ Star Trek movies. But my expectations are different for Episode VII. Case in point: when we saw the Enterprise being built on the surface of the Earth I thought that was just about the dumbest thing ever for a franchise that had well-established space-drydocks popping up in movies and TV episodes decades ago. But then, just an hour or two ago, I see a crashed X-Wing poking out of the sand. And I go, “how 'bout that.” And then I notice the crashed Star Destroyer behind it. Not blown into unrecognizable bits of wreckage, but gently plowed into the sand like it was a rookie parking job. And rather than thinking “wotta load o’ horseshit,” my mind instead kicked into “Holy shit, that’s amazing!!”
It’s a fine line that must be walked when it comes to my suspension of disbelief.
Its about the way texture suggests realism. The smashed up darth vader helmet. The sweat on the scared storm trooper. Star wars episodes 1-3 and recent star trek just looked too clean to be real.
It varies (as a jedi, you hand-build your own lightsaber, because obtaining the rare crystals is part of the fun/ritual and there’s no mass-production possible) but most lightsabers have the on/off switch placed internally - you have to consciously turn it on and off with the force. There are clearly other knobs and stuff on it but that’s clearly just part of the late 70’s aesthetic and it’d be hard to come up with any legitimate explanation (although I’m sure people have).
I was cautiously optimistic about the first trailer, but this one is very, very promising. And I don’t care what anyone says about 30-years-later stories being cheesy, Han and Chewie showing up at the end literally brought tears to my eye.
FUN FACT: When Han said “we’re home” he and Chewie were actually just returning to their condo on Blyterieen after a hard day’s walking around the mall.
Funny you mention it, my brain jarred on that very image. I had to rationalize that those things are battleships and built extremely tough and could withstand a sloooow descent into a pliable mass of sand lol! Then I began wondering about the engineering behind those massive engines and assumed that there would be way too much junk in there to have a dogfight. Sigh… the story better be damn good because plausibility doesnt seem to be much of a factor.
I assume this woman is the lead in this movie? The “you” Luke is talking about. You’ll notice that the person being handed the light saber (or whatever it is, it is awfully wide to be a light saber, maybe it is folded over?) is definitely a woman. The voiceover at that point says “my sister has it,” but those hands do not belong to Carrie Fisher (though the one handing off the light saber could be hers).
Oh god, I’m becoming one of those people who hyper-analyses trailers.
If this movie sucks, I’m burning down J.J. Abrams house for crimes against Star Trek and Star Wars. Who’s with me?
Personally, I hope he leaves his own style at home. I hope he just makes the movie that he wanted to see a week after he first saw Return of the Jedi. Ixnay on the enslay areflay, and enough with the '78 Spielberg imitation he tried in Super 8.
But StarWars was so good to me as a kid. (I’m in my 40s, so were talking real StarWars not that late 90s…incident)
Isn’t that the “problem” though? Those of us who are the original generation bring the wrong sort of expectations to new Star Wars films - The Phantom Menace was as loved by those 10-year-olds as the original was by us; it was “their” Star Wars in the same way.
Meanwhile, I now find it hard to watch the original trilogy without the equal perils of close to 30 years rearing its head: Return of the Jedi is just terrible apart from the last half-hour (and even that has the absurd Ewok stuff in it); the ending of “A New Hope” makes no sense (when it was just “Star Wars” it was fine; as part of a longer story it is ridiculous); Luke’s whineyness makes Anakin seem positively restrained, and C3P0 is at least as annoying as Jar Jar Binks; etc. etc.
But, like you, the fundamental story hit me at the right moment, so it’s easy to pretend these issues don’t exist. But the same problems are going to exist with a new film - we simply aren’t 10 years old any more.
Personally, my biggest problem is that I-VI tell a perfectly good self-contained story that has a beginning, a middle and an end (albeit shown interestingly out of order), and there is absolutely no need to go back to a universe that doesn’t make any sense except for the telling of that one story. The more you examine the Star Wars universe, the less sense it makes. This is true of most story universes, of course, but I accept that few of them have the “GDP of a moderate sized country” potential involved. (Hence my equal disappointment that Warner persuaded JK Rowling to agree to some spin-offs there.)
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to make a sequel where we pick up on a character’s exploits some decades after we’ve last seen them but it’s kind of anticlimactic when the answer is “they’re doing pretty much the same thing they were 30 years ago.” Forget the fact that everyone is still hanging out with the same people—Han appears to be wearing the same damn vest. Ford did the same thing in that last Indiana Jones movie and it felt sad then too.
It’s like going to your high school’s 30-year reunion and finding out the star quarterback is still hitting on young women at the same neighborhood diner, driving the same Trans Am and wearing his old letterman’s jacket. Everyone says “oh my, you haven’t changed a bit!” but in their hearts nobody really thinks of it as a compliment.
I’ll grant you the ewoks, but… I just don’t see any contest here. Even at his most animated and prissy, C3P0 was so much easier to deal with. And he could be turned off!
My biggest issue with the prequels was how wooden the acting was, especially in the first one. I felt like I was watching people read directly off cue cards rather than actually discussing the trouble they were in. The originals just managed to show a lived-in, believable universe that the prequels didn’t quite manage to hit.
And despite Alec Guinness’s complaints about dialogue, I don’t recall anything in the originals quite as bad as the “I don’t like sand” speech.
It’s interesting. This trailer seems to be counting a lot on nostalgia which I don’t really have. I liked Star Wars well enough, but came to it kinda late so never had the strong childhood memories of it. I’m a little sad that this left me completely cold.
