STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS - Blu-Ray Thoughts

[AndyDursin]

Finally official casting news.

Von Sydow lives!

So Serkis is playing a CGI character I'm guessing...and apparently Harrison Ford has a "huge" role across all three new movies.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/04/ ... /?mod=e2tw

Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill are back in the “Star Wars” fold, as expected, and they’re being joined by some new faces as the latest installment in the space saga is set to start filming in a few weeks.

Walt Disney Co. unit Lucasfilm announced Tuesday that Adam Driver (“Girls”), John Boyega (“Attack the Block”), newcomer Daisy Ridley, Domnhall Gleeson (“About Time”), Oscar Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis”), Max Von Sydow (“The Exorcist”), Andy Serkis (the “Lord of the Rings” films) will join the original big three cast members in director J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars: Episode VII.”

There was no word on which characters the new faces will play, but it’s pretty safe to assume that Ford, Hamill and Fisher will reprise their roles as Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) and Kenny Baker (R2D2) are also back.

Here’s the full release from Lucasfilm:

Actors John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow will join the original stars of the saga, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker in the new film.

Director J.J. Abrams says, “We are so excited to finally share the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII. It is both thrilling and surreal to watch the beloved original cast and these brilliant new performers come together to bring this world to life, once again. We start shooting in a couple of weeks, and everyone is doing their best to make the fans proud.”

Star Wars: Episode VII is being directed by J.J. Abrams from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan and Abrams. Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, and Bryan Burk are producing, and John Williams returns as the composer. The movie opens worldwide on December 18, 2015.

[AndyDursin]

Interesting they went with a total unknown for the female lead instead of some of the established leads they had going there.

As for Billy Dee Williams...well...in case you missed it....

[DavidBanner]

Why do I have the feeling that this horrifying DWTS clip may actually be more entertaining than the new movie?

[AndyDursin]

Why do I have the feeling that this horrifying DWTS clip may actually be more entertaining than the new movie?

Anytime I start to muster enthusiasm for the first JJ Disney Star Wars, I think back to STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS and my excitement level is greatly diminished. lol

[DavidBanner]

Maybe they could dust off the Star Wars Holiday Special and all those great musical numbers.
It would save them a lot of time and money, and probably be a lot more interesting for the fans.

[AndyDursin]

Major female lead yet to be cast:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-v ... ing-699924

[Eric W.]

Anytime I start to muster enthusiasm for the first JJ Disney Star Wars, I think back to STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS and my excitement level is greatly diminished. lol

Any time I think about that or the sell out shaggy dog make it up as we go along story that was Lost I know I have very little enthusiasm. That's more against that team of writers than JJ himself but still.

[AndyDursin]

Anytime I start to muster enthusiasm for the first JJ Disney Star Wars, I think back to STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS and my excitement level is greatly diminished. lol

Any time I think about that or the sell out shaggy dog make it up as we go along story that was Lost I know I have very little enthusiasm. That's more against that team of writers than JJ himself but still.

Yeah I place that more on Lindelof and his writing staff. Abrams was more of a producer on that series than directly involved in its narrative AFAIK.

I'm more excited about Williams' scoring as opposed to the actual film.

[DavidBanner]

JJ Abrams was barely involved with LOST after completing the pilot. Damon Lindelof tells an interesting story about it in Jon Favreau's interviews on the Blu-ray for Cowboys and Aliens. Lindelof recalls walking into the editing bay where Abrams was finishing his work on the pilot episode, and noting that Tom Cruise was sitting in with him. Even at that meeting, Cruise and Abrams were talking about the upcoming prep and production of Mission Impossible 3, and Abrams' new career as a feature film director. Lindelof says he knew at that moment he'd not likely be seeing much of Abrams on LOST after that.

Abrams apparently did try to stay in touch with Cuse and Lindelof from long distance, but they had issues with him doing this from afar. After MI3 came out and shall we say did not meet expectations, Abrams said he was going to rededicate himself to LOST. He apparently helped a little with the story for the first episode of the third season, said he would do more and maybe direct another episode. And then he disappeared again, going off to start the series "What About Brian" and "Six Degrees", followed by directing an episode of "The Office", and then jumping in full time to the series "Fringe". And then there was that Star Trek movie, which he actually shot in late 2007/early 2008. Oh, and a failed pilot or two, the pilot and series for "Undercovers" and the little movie Super 8. None of which really had anything to do with LOST.

Which just goes to show that Abrams was MIA from LOST pretty much after the beginning of the show. At a certain point, likely by the 5th season in 2008, it is my understanding that Cuse and Lindelof gently had him removed from the process, since he was so far removed from the situation anyway. He apparently didn't complain, since he hadn't been there in years by that point. I still believe that Abrams should have returned to LOST for its final season and directed the series finale himself. While Jack Bender's work on that show was okay, I do think Abrams would have provided a lot more flair and a much more interesting take on the proceedings. Abrams really has always been quite good with television. Give or take an "Undercovers" or "Alcatraz", that is... He's just not cut out to be a feature film director, sad to say. We have seen the unfortunate results with MI3, both Star Treks and Super 8. I still say that the last Star Trek might have had a chance if it had a decent director who could get them to write a better script, someone like Nicholas Meyer, who was available and capable of doing so.

The upcoming Star Wars movie has all the earmarks of a reboot, only built in the form of a sequel with some of the original cast and apparently with George Lucas' implicit blessing. Of course, if you paid me several billion dollars, I probably wouldn't mind if you made a reboot either...

[AndyDursin]

The upcoming Star Wars movie has all the earmarks of a reboot, only built in the form of a sequel with some of the original cast and apparently with George Lucas' implicit blessing. Of course, if you paid me several billion dollars, I probably wouldn't mind if you made a reboot either...

To be fair, it sounds much more like a sequel than I ever anticipated. And I'm not sure how you can make a "sequel" that's not a thinly disguised "reboot" when you're talking about a follow-up to a picture that came out over 30 YEARS ago. There are only so many people involved in that film still professionally working to hire. And who wants to see Carrie Fisher in a lead role in 2014? I can't believe Abrams is even using Fisher and Hamill to any degree in this movie, but I guess he wants them and in a much larger capacity than the original scripts utilized. So this actually is a sequel, instead of a fresh story, really.

Frankly, the STAR WARS universe is so vast -- or potentially vast -- I'd have expected them to cast new actors and new characters...and tell a NEW story...and I'd have been fine with that. Going back "there" to nostalgia land is a waste of time. I'd have been excited about seeing Luke Skywalker on-screen again 20 years ago, but it's been too long in coming, and Hamill and Fisher are almost like punchlines as actors in the 21st century.

C3PO, R2D2, Chewie and even Han Solo (since Ford is still working and in good shape) is fine, but a washed up Luke and Leia? That doesn't get the fanboy in me excited at all. lol. Who cares about the "Skywalker kids"? That story ENDED, it came to a natural conclusion. Why not bring in new characters and start fresh?

But it also goes to show -- no matter WHAT Abrams does, this movie will never, ever have the impact of the 1977 film. Even if it's well rendered and satisfying, it will be more of the same, and will be lucky to just be "more of the same". And it's also a Disney corporate product now. You can hate what Lucas did with the prequels, but they were HIS movies, told from his viewpoint. Not so with anything branded with the STAR WARS (TM) tag from this point forward. It'll be focus-group driven and carefully constructed by Disney executives as all of their "products" are.

In fact, if it's like THE MUPPETS revival, I'm sure there will be a credit line "Based on Disney's STAR WARS" buried in the end credits! What an insult that was to Jim Henson's legacy.

[AndyDursin]

Real locations -- at least in these shots leaked by TMZ -- to go along with the news that Lupita Nyong'o and Gwendoline Christie have joined the cast.

[Eric Paddon]

But it also goes to show -- no matter WHAT Abrams does, this movie will never, ever have the impact of the 1977 film.

So true and for another reason that only people our age can understand, because to those of us who were kids who had to wait the long three years to the next film (and to a child that's a VERY long time) we were looking at it through a pure innocent lens of not being weighed down with the later plot gimmicks of Vader as Luke's father, Han and Leia's romance (the whole tone of SW does not suggest that Luke and Leia are destined to be brother and sister reunited) etc.

[AndyDursin]

But it also goes to show -- no matter WHAT Abrams does, this movie will never, ever have the impact of the 1977 film.

So true and for another reason that only people our age can understand, because to those of us who were kids who had to wait the long three years to the next film (and to a child that's a VERY long time) we were looking at it through a pure innocent lens of not being weighed down with the later plot gimmicks of Vader as Luke's father, Han and Leia's romance (the whole tone of SW does not suggest that Luke and Leia are destined to be brother and sister reunited) etc.

That's also why, for me, there's a purity to the original STAR WARS that makes it the "best" -- there is no "foreshadowing" of a long and drawn-out franchise, the Luke & Leia thing absolutely was not figured out like you said Eric. About the only sequel element was the bad guy getting away...which makes Lucas' whole "I had this mapped out from the start" mantra hard to swallow IMO.

This new movie can go out and make $1 billion at the global box-office -- but socially, historically, culturally, it will never have the impact of the original film (or the original trilogy).

[DavidBanner]

Lucas' story that he always planned Star Wars' entire arc from the beginning is completely disproven by the Rinzler books. Among the other things those three tomes have given us is access to the various drafts he was writing.

You can easily see the development of Star Wars from an offshoot of Apocalypse Now and Flash Gordon to what it eventually became. There are some basic story elements present that would turn up in the later movies and in the prequels but not in any way that I would consider completely set. Lucas had a lot of different thoughts about story fragments, which he was pulling from multiple inspirations. He kept revising the original pass until he got to what he could shoot for Star Wars and left some unshootable pieces out.

My understanding, at least from another book where Gary Kurtz was interviewed, was that he and Kurtz had discussed a story structure where Darth Vader wasn't anyone's father, where Luke and Leia weren't siblings and where neither Luke nor Han wound up with Leia in the end. The story ending I heard was the notion that Vader would remain the primary villain of the piece, and that in the final piece, the Rebels would defeat Vader and the Empire once and for all, Leia would be crowned Queen of her people, and Luke and Han would go their separate ways. It would be a similar ending to the last moments of American Graffiti and I personally think it might have worked better than what we eventually got.

As for the new Abrams movie, I can only say that I am deeply skeptical. He hasn't encouraged me to want to see anything he's directed, and there hasn't been any information put out to make this even interesting to me. If anything, I'm concerned that he may be attempting a reboot in the guise of a sequel, where he can use the original characters to pass the baton to his new characters (as he did with Spock in his Trek movies), and then merrily go off to do his thing. JJ Abrams is a very, very good television director. His pilot for LOST was tremendous. But he doesn't have the gift for innovative storytelling and frankly risk-taking that George Lucas was demonstrating at a much younger age. Lucas himself may have lost that touch with age and complacency, but when he did THX-1138, American Graffiti and Star Wars, he was operating at a level many other filmmakers don't ever hit. And Abrams certainly has never hit that level.

[AndyDursin]

Lucas himself may have lost that touch with age and complacency, but when he did THX-1138, American Graffiti and Star Wars, he was operating at a level many other filmmakers don't ever hit.

The fanboys who dump on Lucas and say he "can't direct anything" (and you see this all over the place) clearly have never seen AMERICAN GRAFFITI.

As for the prequels, they take an awful lot of unwarranted heat, but I contend REVENGE OF THE SITH is ten times the movie that STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is, so there's at least that (I do enjoy "Phantom Menace" in spite of its shortcomings but I will not defend "Attack of the Clones").