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Star Wars Superfan’s Review of the New Trailer
Anyone who knows me will say that I am the world’s biggest Star Wars fan. Guilty as charged! I saw the first movie in the theater as a kid and made it to all the sequels and prequels on opening weekend. (Missed that last one, come to think of it.) As you know, director J.J. Abrams is relaunching the franchise with an all-new blockbuster, The Force Awakens. Today the studio dropped the new trailer:
This is happening! Even if you’re not a Star Wars “superfan” like myself, you have to be excited about the reboot of this iconic five- or six-film franchise. I could review the trailer in detail, but you can watch it for yourself. However, we superfans are most interested in what the trailer didn’t show:
- No mention of fan favorites Boba Fett, Lando Calrissian, or Paul Mua’dib. Hope they’re at least referenced in the new film.
- We don’t know if “Han shot first,” but now we’re certain that Han Solo is a replicant.
- And where’s “space cowboy” Han Sulu’s brown coat? Pay attention to the details, J.J!
- You have to look quick, but the new light phasers no longer have a “stun” setting.
- Good news: Jar-Jar Binks, Ewoks and Tribbles are nowhere to be found.
- Thrilled to see R2-D2 back. Let’s hope he’s still being voiced by Mel Blanc (“Bidi-bidi-bidi, let’s truck, Luke!”)
- There better be a nod to original director Gene Roddenberry, who retired in the ’70s to found Scientology.
- Anyone else see that crashed battlestar at the beginning? Looks nothing like the Enterprise.
- Yoda’s a chick now? “Not good do I think this is.”
- That desert setting looks like it could be Moonbase Alpha but I didn’t see any sandworms.
- How do they get around the fact that use of The Force violates the Optimus Prime Directive?
- Glad they got rid of the midichlorians and that stupid British police box.
- Was that a reference to Dark Helmet at the 40-second mark?
Correction: There are no Ewoks present except Chewbacca.
Published in Entertainment
Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
Without looking it up, answer the following questions:
1) Who played the Chief Jawa in A New Hope, the Chief Ugnaught in Empire Strikes Back, and Teebo the Ewok in Return of the Jedi.
2) What is the movie that George Lucas states was the inspiration for the Death Star trench run? (hint, it’s not The Dambusters).
3) What movie was George Lucas’ primary inspiration for R2D2 and C-3PO?
4) What is the name of the company that manufactures the X-Wing starfighter?
5) What is the name of the company that manufactures the Imperial Star Destroyer?
6) What is the name of the company that manufactures the R2-series of astromech droids.
7) What is the name of the planet Han Solo hails from?
If you cannot answer all seven correctly, without looking up the answers, you cannot be the world’s biggest Star Wars fan.
;-)
1) Probably that short guy in Game of Thrones
2) I read a long article that it was Dambusters.
3) I’m guessing The Day The earth Stood Still because of Gort
4) Mattel
5) Hasbro
6) Harvard Robotics Laboratory
7) Chicago
Buckaroo Banzai is AMAZING.
We are a far, far lesser people for never having seen the exploits against the World Crime League.
If you know all the answers to these off the top of your head I bow down to your superior Star Wars knowledge and fandom. I do know the answer to Number 3, though- Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress.
John Podhoretz on GLOP: “It is going to stink because it is going to be full of these fake, unearned emotional moments, at which JJ Abrams just gooses the audience with its own nostalgia about these characters, and doesn’t actually try to tell a story that is credible and that is internally consistent.” Amen. Abrams makes good trailers though.
You mean your hate for Abrams? Make that 2 of us. (although I also kind of hate Lucas. What I’ll probably do when the movie comes out is go back and watch the original and then just forget about it.)
Knowing George Lucas, the answer is probably that this is actually a joint venture between Koch Industries and Halliburton.
Actually, that wasn’t Lucas phoning it in. On the contrary, that was Lucas’ full, independent, my-way vision of his saga. The prequels were the Full Lucas. They were what you get when George Lucas has an unlimited budget, and total and complete creative control of the process from beginning to end. Don’t take my word for it. Do a search on the web for the early drafts of the first Star Wars movie, the ones before his wife took over the scripting chores and edited the hell out of the first story. They’re out there. The early versions… again, with Lucas the sole creative force… were as ridiculous as anything in the prequels. I mean Jar Jar Binks weapons-grade awful. Darth Vader was a general that wore a rebreather so he could leap from ship to ship in space during attacks. The hero of the story? Anakin Starkiller.
The Star Wars that everyone knew and loved was largely a result of his wife making a coherent, traditional good vs. evil story out of the mystic mess he came up with (which, by his own admission, was supposed to be an anti-imperialism analogy with the the Galactic Empire being the United States military in space, and the rebellion being space Viet Cong… again, don’t take my word for it. Look it up. WE were the bad guys in Lucas’ mind). George Lucas is the luckiest SOB in the history of Hollywood, because he concentrated on building his Lucasfilm empire while turning over writing, directing and other creative chores to very good people in the first three flicks (he directed the first, with the wife scripting, but not the second and third, and Lawrence Kasdan was responsible for much of the story in those movies). They took the kernel of his ideas and made good movies out of them that sold a lot of toys and made him a billionaire. Lucas’s greatest talent wasn’t being creative, but being a businessman in Hollywood. He was smart enough to hang on to the rights to the franchise himself, and cut a fast food deal with Taco Bell that was better than anything McDonald’s or other chains would give him. He used what his special effects crew learned in the first movie to make a company that specialized in doing nothing but special effects (Industrial Light & Magic, of course), where previously, most FX was done by the studios themselves in-house. He fully capitalized on the business end of his movies with additional companies doing software for games. If you don’t know this, he even started Pixar, but sold it to Steve Jobs before he knew what he really had there.
Had he complete story control during Star Wars, there’s no way it would have been the monster it became in 1977. It would likely be remembered today as a quirky, silly sci-fi fantasy that had really good special effects, but nothing to write home about as a movie.
Dis the prequels if you must, but I find it rather amusing to see adults getting so angry about plot holes and bad acting in a film whose target market is young boys — and I say that as a huge Star Wars fan who will certainly see this new movie when it comes out.
But the fact of the matter is we look at the classic trilogy through a mist of nostalgia because we grew up with them. I recently asked my friend’s son — who is roughly the same age as I was when I first saw Empire — which was his favorite Star Wars movie and he said Phantom Menace. He loves Anakin and the pod race scenes. Same with my cousin’s kids.
Lucas knows his target audience, and if you’re reading this comment, sorry but you’re too old to be part of it any more.
This is really disingenuous stuff. Success is a vague term–selling the movie successfully establishes nothing about knowledge of the audience, unless you mean, people are as stupid as the stupidest thing you can sell them. If that is what you mean, you should just say that.
If you take the criticism of the newer movies to be correct, you should think about your reaction again. It is a problem if boys are too stupid or too careless to notice incompetent story-telling, if they do not know a good story or do not care for good stories. A guy who sells them or their families movies based on the belief, ‘boys are mentally retarded, for purposes of movies, at least’ is despicable. What he knows about his audience is that he’s making the worst of a bad situation, for fun or profit.
Without the first movies affecting people so much that they went to see the rest the rest would never have been made. Those movies may not be worth what people think they’re worth, but making comparatively worthless stuff is still a problem. This is not just about whether some kid liked a scene with racing. Partly, this is about whether people should take their kids to these movies because of how they remember the first movies. Partly, it’s about whether these kids will have any reason to like these movies after they’re no longer damn near mindless.
Not to old to show any of these movies to my nephews–others to show them to their kids or younger siblings.
So you think geezers aren’t part of the target audience for this new movie?
If that’s the case, then I don’t understand why a couple of rusty old droids and a bunch of mostly overweight, sagging, pale, wrinkly grandparents are featured so prominently in the hype.
(Sorry, there for a minute I thought I was on the thread about the Democrat party leadership.)
Of course it’s nostalgia.*
Of course it’s cynical.
I can’t wait.
*After all, is there anyone who thinks that George Lucas will NOT vote for Hillary Clinton for President?
The prequels are garbage.
Is this movie set in the universe where Khan is still alive?
a) There are fan edits that make them far less garbage-like.
b) The Phantom Menace is ackshully pretty great whenever Anakin isn’t on-screen.
c) There’s also a fan edit of The Hobbit trilogy (call the Tolkien Edit) that cuts out everything that isn’t in the novel. It’s pretty dang awesome (though it’s still about 4 hours long).
Moonraker sucks, too.
Considering all the problems he’s been having with the local government and his liberal neighbours about land use at Skywalker Ranch, he might be rethinking his positions on limited government.
Yabbut, that’s one case where the novel wasn’t much better.
I do know the answers. I’m that good.
(Kudos on getting 1 out of 7.)
OK, this discussion would only be more awesome if we were sitting around a bonfire, w/ a cold/hot beverage of our choice in our hands, and at least one person brags about knowing Darth was Luke’s father befor Empire Strikes Back was released, because he bought the Marvel Comics comic book of Empire that was available about a week before Empire came out. (Yes ladies, that person is me. But sorry, I’m happily married)
And just to take this a step further, the word “Ewok” was never ever heard on screen. The only reason everyone who saw Return of the Jedi knew they were called Ewoks: merchandising.
So y’all hate Abrams’ Star Trek reboot? I enjoy the first two films (but I’m not a drooling fanboy of the TV series).
George Lucas is out of the picture. Disney stripped him of creative authority. Cheer up, guys. There’s hope.
And speaking of merchandising, Jon may think he’s a TruFan, but did he have these posters on his wall? I did! (Trivia: anyone know the products these posters were tied to?)
Ugh. That was me, too. I read the novelization before seeing the movie and knew that big reveal ahead of time.
The weird thing was, somehow I had it in my mind that it wasn’t true — that Vader was lying about that. So while everyone else in the theater was all “GASP! NO!!!!!” my response was “Yeah, but . . . he just made that up to mess with Luke’s head. Right?”
Although Jon’s original intent seems to have been to make meta or ironic commentary about the merger of the Star Wars (Trek) universes because of J.J. Abrams’s involvement in both “reboots,” the comments have devolved into a nerdery.
Which is fine by me. I’ve learned a lot about Ewoks. Lileks’ comment is mind-blowing (serious). I loved Ewoks when I was a kid (born in 1980). As an adult, I can see them for what they are: a cynical commercial play to sell toys and a complete corruption of the story by transforming the formidable stormtroopers (as they were portrayed in Empire Strikes Back, crushing a fairly well-equipped and defended rebel base on Hoth) into the keystone cops of soul-crushing evil foot soldiers, losing a battle to three-foot tall primitive mammalians armed with spears, who have not yet developed the written word or indoor plumbing, and appear to be the sort of creature that survived the last significant meteor strike on Endor because they were small enough to survive on a diet of moss and tree branches and could house themselves in damp caves.
But, in 1986, I thought Ewoks were great, and if my parents didn’t buy me the complete set of those tiny plastic bears, I would have cried my little eyes out for days.
Kearny-Fuchida.
Nailed it.
-E
Dude, you just blew my mind!
I’m not a huge fan of Star Trek: Into Darkness, but I really like Abrams’ first Star Trek reboot. I also enjoyed Super 8 and Mission Impossible 3 is my favorite of that franchise. Abrams has his flaws, but he’s a much better director than Lucas and I feel pretty confident Episode 7 will be a good (possibly great) movie.
On a related note, the first details of DICE’s Star Wars: Battlefront reboot are leaking out. I’ll post the trailer here when it is available later today.
I was born after all the Original Trilogy was out and grew up watching them from a pretty early age. I think the significance of “I am your father” just gradually dawned on me, so I never got to experience the Mind-blown moment many did watching that film. I wish I could wipe my memory and watch the OT again and really experience it.