Let's talk new Star Wars

Here’s why I already hate the new Star Wars movie(s).

I’ll skip my most major concern for a few moments and address the main “fact” that we know.

Let me jump around again (I’ll try to stop but this is just how it is when we’re talking “the biggest travesty the film industry could ever make”). We really don’t know anything. We know a few people that have been rumored to be working on scripts, production and actors that may show up. The truth is most of what we know or think we know are just rumors. I won’t put too much stock into rumors when it comes to “the biggest travesty the film industry could ever make”. That’s why I’ll try my best-est to only focus on facts. But within these facts, I base my opinions which may contain rumors. Even if these rumors are just figments of my imagination to “the biggest travesty the film industry could ever make”.

JJ Abrams. Or just JJ, as how We his friends call him. What, you don’t believe that JJ and I are friends? I’m offended. Fine, call him and ask. He’ll tell you. I’ll wait. Oh, you don’t have his number, that’s right because you’re NOT his friend are you. You can’t check, so BLLLAAHHH-HAAA-HA to you. Now let me get back to my friend JJ.

Personally I don’t have anything against JJ. I consider myself a decent fan. I’m not a fanboy who’s been into his shit from the Felicity or Alias days but I like a ton of his work. There are very few fans, and / or defenders, greater than me when it comes to LOST (which really isn’t “his” but still, you know what I mean). I loved Lost and will defend it anytime you want to have that argument. From shows like Alcatraz, Revolution and certainly Fringe, I’m a fan. I can’t say the same about Undercover, What About Brian (Really, What about BRIAN – that’s been an inside joke to myself. I don’t know why, but it always gets me. Who cares about Brian, he’s such a whiny bitch. I’m glad he’s not my friend. So “what” about him? – said in my valley-est of valley girl voices), Six Degrees and Persons of Interest (I can tell you one thing, THIS “person” isn’t “interested”, get it…haha to myself. But really, I can’t get over the Ben Linus / Jesus team-up. I know, I know…old people like the show. My parents love it but I don’t, sue me.). All his movies that he’s directed / produced are really solid. MI3 wasn’t the worst Mission Impossible movie. Ghost Protocol was really good. Super8 tried to be something and fell short (I’ll never kill a director for trying something especially with regards to something he / she clearly is fond of, and not hitting a homerun. We live in a world where people and studios don’t “try” things.). Cloverfield was what Godzilla should have been and we all would have been happier in 1998 (and up until Chronicle, Cloverfield is one of the best big budgeted movies done as a POV / found footage movie). Star Trek was great. Even go back to whatever writing / producing involvement he had on Armageddon and Regarding Henry, those are solid movies (If you don’t cry at the scene when the black physical therapist Bradley and Harrison Ford’s Henry have beer together, you’re a fucking robot. It’s just one of those scenes where if you get caught watching it, you’ll cry and re-evaluate how you’re doing in life even if you just won the lottery.) And I expect the new Star Trek to be just as great, if not greater than the first one he did. I have full faith.

Deep breath in…
I do NOT like JJ doing Star Wars. Oddly, here are all the reasons I should. He’s a Star Wars fan. Much more than he is/was Star Trek, this is by his own admission. He’s able to convey and control a “universal” story. From Earth to Vulcan and even across time, I wasn’t confused or was lost during Star Trek. JJ understands that no matter the subject, special effects or movie stars involved; it’s the STORY that will make or break a show (whether he’s been 100% successful is another debate but he knows this to be true). He respects his audience. Another good example is Bryan Singer. Not initially an X-Men fan but he knew and understood that these characters and world mean a tremendous amount to a lot of people and if you’re going to work in that world you come to it with the respect that the world deserves. Unlike the Fantastic Four movies which have been cum shots to the eyes of anyone watching them. Oh the burn! Nothing from those movies (except Chris Evans portrayal of Johnny Storm) was anything close to what had been in the FF comic for 50 years. They were bad special effects explosions that seared your eyes. (Again, feel free to debate me on how god awful those movies are, I’m more than happy to discuss, but before you do let me just say two words “The Thing” because if you can’t justify the choices made with that character you have no chance at winning an argument about the rest of the movie either. Galaxy Quest had a more believable rock monster and that movie was made six years prior and with a far less budget.) JJ respects the Star Wars world and the audience. He’s a big enough director to get anyone he wants to work with him AND seems to know that a village makes a movie and has well respected people help him and collaborate on decisions. (If you’re ever interested in seeing true creativity and what could have been, look up production sketches on any of the Star Wars movies. The talent and love for the Star Wars universe by artists is unlimited and boundless. Which is especially infuriating when you see what was chosen for episodes I – III and what could have been, but also amazing because conversely the things that were picked for episodes IV – VI were some of the best. Lucas, you are an enigma.). My point being, I feel very confident JJ would bring the best he could to the table.

Buuuuttt….. He’s just fucking done Star Trek. The same god damn director should NOT do both movies. It’s like if the same director did Dante’s Peak and Volcano. Wait, did the same person do both movies? That actually would make sense. No, no, I’m only confusing myself and I’m trying to be serious. There are great directors in this world. Not one of them should do the tent-pole franchise movie for the same genre. The closest argument you could make is Scorsese making Goodfellas and Casino. But he’s also one of the creative forces behind Boardwalk Empire. All “gangster movies/shows” but it’s different in that they’re all based somewhat on real life events and characters AND although you could say the characters are different, the themes are very similar. The world in which they inhabit is the same. The struggle for and to keep power, and what corruptions will people endure and partake in, are universal themes of those movies. Star Wars and Star Trek are like if Jesus sat down, wrote the Bible and then decided to bang out the Koran. (Ok, the atheist in me says, both the Bible and the Koran are the same pieces of crap just in different packaging so who’s to say they weren’t written by the same shysters. Again, take my bias out, you get my point.) My point is, they’re in the same genre of Sci-Fi but they couldn’t be more different. Like the NBA and the WNBA. It’s called basketball but they’re playing two completely different games.

Is there no other talent in this world to where JJ Abrams is the only person who can direct these two totally different movies? On a purely philosophical point, every director has a “style”. Even the best of them can’t hide who they are. Spielberg, who has done every kind of movie (and I feel is the best director of all time) has a style which even if you’re talking Jaws or Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan or War of the Worlds or Lincoln, you always know, to some extent, these are Spielberg movies. Even a director like Danny Boyle, who has tackled so many different movies from Trainspotting to 28 Days Later to 127 Hours, has a style. A base where all their creative powers come from. Which is all totally fine, except for when we’re talking about Star Wars vs Star Trek. Never the two shall meet. They’re totally different in every way. If for one second I feel that the two movies / worlds are linked, I’ll be upset. I’ll be mentally taken out of the movie / world. Even if you had the same script but titled one Star Wars and the other Star Trek, I’d want them to look and feel different. They would look and feel different because it’s fucking Star Wars VS Star Trek. I can’t explain it any better. One is a space opera and the other is a social commentary of the future.

That’s the reason JJ can’t do Star Wars. It’s a totally irrational reason but totally explainable and logical argument. NEVER THE TWO SHALL MEET. Whether you’re a fan of one or the other OR both, everyone would say the same thing when it comes to Star Wars vs Star Trek.

So while I love JJ and respect him and will continue to enjoy his work, I don’t understand the thinking of having him do both movies. Even if it’s been his dream to do a Star Wars movie, he let that ship sail when he took on Star Trek. He could have said, “No, I’m not going to do Star Trek because even if it’s a .0000001% chance that another Star Wars movie is ever made and I have a .0000000000000001% chance of directing it, I will wait for that chance. Because the same person can’t make both.” But he didn’t. He made Star Trek. It was nothing to be ashamed of. It was a great movie. Continue to do great work on the Trek franchise and we’ll see you in line for Wars.

All of this, going on about the director, is really just part of the larger issue. WHAT’S THE RUSH?

The simple answer is money. If you’re Disney, you just bought Star Wars and now let’s get to milking this cow. Don’t get me wrong, Lucas has been doing this for years. Putting out crap video games, crap comics, crap TV shows, crap merchandise. You name it, there’s a Star Wars version. Maybe 1 out of 10 times you get something good, like the Star Wars Legacy comic or the Knights of the Old Republic video game. The difference is that Lucas has put out his own movies and can continue to shine them up in HD or 3D and get another financial life cycle out of them. Disney wants the big pop of the movie(s). Which no matter how awful they are, they’ll still make money (see SW ep. 1) and then they can use that to catapult everything and anything they want. I totally understand the business side. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be new Star Wars movies. The world is open, you’ve got actors from the original series that are now the perfect ages to play their roles as preludes to the next generation of Star Wars protagonists who will be introduced and Star Wars is so beloved and wonderful that it should be mined again. I just want the diamonds to be found not quartz or some geo crap that maybe shinny but in reality is worthless.

It seemed that as soon as the purchase was announced, Disney came out and said, “See you in 2014 for Episode VII!” Wait, what?! I haven’t heard of any rumors about Episode VII? Unless Lucas himself had secretly been working on this in some hidden lab that no one knows about (god help us all), then maybe this all makes sense. But there’s no way. No way a seventh movie has been worked on and NO leaks what-so-ever have come out. Not in this day and age.

Can’t we take it slow? Is the rush to grab all this new money so great that we (as if I’m now working on it or on the Disney board) can’t take a few years to get it right? If Ep. VII comes out in 2015 or 2016 would that kill Disney? Make something more about the art than the money, just this once. I’d love to hear that there was a team that was interviewing 100 directors and / or they hired a group of the top writers just to come up with concepts from which the cream of the crop will be chosen. Then based on the type of story we’ll find a director that can pull this type of story off. They just did something very similar with the Avenger franchise. Joss (another close friend) wasn’t the director of the Avengers movie when the first or second Iron Man movies came out. The idea of getting to an Avengers movie was in place long before there was a director. The bare bones basics of what all the movies that led up to the Avengers were in place and then they got the right director to bring everyone and everything together. Even then it was still a bit of a risk. The biggest reason for the success of the Avengers is the “long game” that Marvel / Disney played.

Granted, you don’t need as much set up with the Star Wars franchise. As I mentioned, Lucas has done quite well for himself by turning out every conceivable piece of Star Wars media. Second tier characters like Boba Fett (no diss on Boba, but he’s barely in one and a half movies and has maybe two lines) are household names and icons. You don’t need a seven year campaign to introduce all the characters and back story to put out Episode VII. Everyone knows Luke, Leah, Han, Chewy, Vader and the Force. We all know, SPOLIERS, Vader is Luke’s dad / Luke and Leah are kissing brother and sister / Han is the bad ass (second only to the smoothest brother in the galaxy, the one, the only, Lando Calrissian and his colt .45 sponsored mining facility, who by the way just made some interesting deals that will secure their safety from the Empire…What, oh sorry, I got carried away. Back to the regularly scheduled rant…). We know everyone and we know how everything is currently wrapped up. SPOILERS; Empire in ruins after 2nd Deathstar is destroyed. The Emperor is dead, thanks to Vader coming back to the light. Han, Luke, Leah and the droids are parting with a Wookie and his Ewok cousins (I gotta throw something out there to get people to comment on this, even if it’s to just to correct something I know is wrong. How about this, I know they’re not on Endor, but rather the MOON of Endor. C’mon, who you fuckin’ wit?). What I’m getting at is that I know the story is ready to go. I’m all in.

After being abused by the new trilogy, I just want the best Star Wars movie. Or at least, the best attempt. Here’s a great example of failure with the best intentions and possibly best efforts, Watchmen. Watchmen was a comic that people had been trying to make into a film for years. No one could figure it out. A studio finally said it was going to be done and they put a ton of money and resources and made the Watchmen movie that everyone deserved. It was faithful (to its own flaw) to the original material. Other than a giant space squid at the end, they had a Dr. Manhattan bomb which made sense how they told it and was 1000 times more practical to pull off in the movie and made the budget feasible. For all intensive purposes the Watchmen movie, even more the extend version and including the animation portion of the Black Pirate crap (I’m one of the few Watchmen comic haters so I don’t really care if I’m 100% correct on my Watchmen vocab) made the movie extremely loyal to the book. You could tell the people making Watchmen loved the source and wanted to make the best Watchmen movie they could. To their credit, they did a fine job. I’ll save my dissertation on why Watchmen isn’t a good comic and why it’s a beloved book from the 80’s but those die-hard fans weren’t enough to bring global success to the movie for another time. Needless to say, it’s a solid movie and not for a second do I feel 100% effort, love and faith didn’t go into the movie. It just didn’t work out. If that’s the fate of the next three Star Wars movies, I can live with it. It took 30 years for Watchmen to get made properly (the box office backs my points about the movie / book) and in turn Watchmen was given its best chance to be a success. That’s all I’m asking for with Star Wars.

There’s nothing I want more than JJ, the writers, producers and Disney to hit a home run. From my experience that doesn’t happen when you rush or push projects like this. What happened when the studios pushed for a Godfather 3? What happened when Batman and Batman Returns (I love that movie, I said it) turned into Batman & Robin and Batman Forever? Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull? X-men 3? Jaws, anything that has a number after the word Jaws? 60% of the James Bond films? The Matrix Returns and Revolution? Star Wars Episodes I – III?!?!? The list of examples of movies that were not needed or ready or pushed out just to make an extra buck goes on forever. Maybe it’s my own paranoia. I just want, so badly, to have a great Star Wars continuation. Maybe I’m jealous that it’s not me working on it or deciding which direction the franchise goes into. I just want a good movie.

I don’t understand, artistically, the extreme rush to pump out the next incarnation of Star Wars. The money will be there a year or two later. It’s not going anywhere. The most I’ve heard about the next Episode is who the initial writer is, who the director is and which of the original movie actors will be in the new one. (Ok, one last rant. As if any of the old actors, even Harrison Ford, wouldn’t or couldn’t be persuaded back to the Force? This is Star Wars and this is Disney and this is more money than god and they’ll get whoever they want to be in the movie. Oh really, Anthony Daniels is to busy? Doing what, giving hand jobs out behind the Walmart? I’ll take my chances and go into production on the movie and just assume everyone will come back. No shit, an actor will want to make an appearance in what will be the biggest movie(s) of the year / decade / all time. Sam Jackson is already on a plane to England to start shooting, and his character is DEAD! Thanks for all the breaking news each time an actor says they’ll reprise their role (is italics the sarcastic type font?). Why don’t the gossip rags just calm down with those newsbreaks. Get back to nip slips and beave pics of actresses getting out of cars. You don’t have to waste my time with every actor that will be in the next Star Wars film.)

It all just seems too fast. Maybe this one time we could take it slow and get it right. Not worry about the money that’s going to be made, because it’s going to be made regardless. Make a movie for the fans. This if any movie deserves it, it’s Star Wars. If any group of fans deserves it, it’s Star Wars Fans. This isn’t some indy book like Scott Pilgrim, which was a great movie and made specifically for the 259 die-hard Scott Pilgrim fans (by the way, it’s a good movie). There is no risk involved. The next gen Star Wars movies will make all time record money. Whether it’s today tomorrow or next year, the money will be there because of the enormity of the fan base. Take the time to make it right. I’ve already mentioned the obscene amount of money Lucas has already made by whoring out his properties. I’d bet that 1 out of 4 people have bought some piece of junk just because it has something to do with Star Wars. Give something back to the fans. Not only as a “thank you” for previous spending but as a jump-off to the next round of Brink’s trucks you’re going to be able to grow on trees. Take the new Bond movie, Skyfall. Everywhere you turn that movie is influencing pop culture, in a good way, and everyone wants to be associated with the Bond flavor. It’s revitalized the old shitty Bonds and made the old good ones shine even brighter. Imagine what a GREAT new Star Wars movie will do?

For all my hesitation, I’m so excited. I want a new Star Wars movie. I want a new Trilogy. I also want it to be good and I don’t care if I have to wait an extra year or two to get it. Patience and big business don’t usually go hand in hand. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t have the highest faith in a project that seems to be pushed by the business end of a studio rather than the creative end. Here’s my challenge to Disney, JJ and everyone else; PROVE ME WRONG. If you’re going to hit the hyper-drives, then show me that you’re not going to fly into a star and blow up. Let’s plot out an awesome story that isn’t just some rehash of the old movies. Have it live in the universe of Star Wars, give nods and even base some plot points strait out of the first six movies but then also take some creatively planned artistic chances. There’s no lack of major league artists (visual, writing, special effects, etc.) that would die to help be a part of this project. If there ever was a “holy grail” of a movie, this is it. Use this enormous toolbox to give all of us Star Wars fans really what we want, a great movie.

May the Force be with you…