Okay, So I’m Warming Up to Star Wars VII

 *I’ve jammed my whirly-bird hat on my head again, so watch out.*

Back in November of last year, J.J. Abrams unleashed his first teaser trailer of the new Star Wars movie (now less than two months from debuting) on the world.  Being a Star Wars geek (not hardcore, mind you, but I am a big fan of the original trilogy), I announced to my 1 ½ readers (just in case there's one or more ☺) my cautious optimism, my desire not to get caught up in the hype, and my silence unless I had anything more to say on the run-up.  I had actually planned to stay silent until I finally had a chance to see the movie, but, after watching the latest trailer, I have decided the time has come for me to break my nearly yearlong silence sooner than planned. J

This Monday last, a new 2:15 (+/-) trailer was shown during the half time of ESPN’s telecast of the Monday Night Football game between the Eagles and the Giants—from the reviews of the game I heard the next day, something needed to done to keep people watching the telecast; but I digress.  Isaac had been asked by one of the sets of missionaries who serve in our ward to join them at a teaching appointment and he needed a ride to get there: fair enough, I said I would take him.  As the appointed time approached, however, I checked the game and noticed only 2 minutes remained before halftime.  My hope was that I would get Isaac to the appointment and return home in time to watch the trailer and record it for Isaac ... that was the plan.  It figures this would be the day I arrived at the house where the meeting was taking place before the missionaries did!  I had to wait several minutes for them to arrive in order to kick Isaac out of the car and race back home (I’m kidding, but in the back of my mind …).  I tried my very best to drive under control (with varying degrees of success) to get back to the house to see the trailer, but by the time I got back into the living room and changed the channel from the baseball game to the football halftime, I got to see the last 20 to 30 seconds of the trailer—shazbot!  And no, I don’t have a DVR, I have not indulged in this technology, thank you very much—technological dinosaur, remember?  If I was living in 1977, I would have had to wait until the trailer started showing up as a TV commercial—thankfully, this is 2015 and I live in a world with Internet.   After grousing for several minutes over the fact that I'd missed the trailer, I was inspired to click over to starwars.com and found it already posted to their website (cue “Hallelujah Chorus” J).

Now that I've had several days to ruminate and watch the trailer several times, what are my impressions (like you care, but it's my blog and I'm going to tell you anyway J)?  I guess the reason I’m writing this particular post (when I wasn’t planning to) is that my overall feeling about this project has improved from "cautiously optimistic" to "optimistic."  That may not seem like much movement, but for me, it's a huge step.  In my previous post, I made it clear that after the debacle that was the prequel trilogy I am gun shy about the next group of three movies.  I'm still in no mood to allow myself to get sucked into the hype.  I haven’t read many articles about Episode VII, but good grief, the ones I have indulged in hold enough rumors and speculation to fill several giant warehouses!  Luke Skywalker doesn’t appear on the poster and that means he’s gone to the Dark Side (which, might be an interesting development if done correctly)!  Apparently some people are still freaking out over a black man (Finn, I guess the character is called) being a storm trooper and are losing their minds even more now that he’s been shown holding a blue lightsaber (what's the big deal; I think the potential is interesting).  I've also read how people are parsing each released trailer, picking through each and every nuance in a desperate attempt to glean plot information (whatever floats your boat, I suppose), and someone has already taken the three trailers and pasted them together into a 3:30 mega-trailer (okay, actually, it’s quite good, see it here).  At the time of this new trailer’s release, advance tickets could also be purchased and the website Fandango crashed.  I've already decided that I'm probably going to wait at least week after the movie is released before attempting to see it because of this feeding frenzy; it will be the same movie whether I see it opening night or a week or two later.  I didn't see the original Star Wars (now called Episode IV) until a year after it's release (it was still playing in an Orem, Utah theater—go figure).  I’m not going to lose my mind if I can’t watch the movie the day of its debut.

Now that I’ve slipped off the subject for a moment, let me pull back to my reasons for writing J and expand upon one of the aspects (among many) of the prequel movies that didn't sit well with me: the overall presentation appeared … for lack of a better word: digital.  Everything on the screen (some of the characters included, of course) seemed to be computer generated.  As an example, I recall watching a feature of the making of Attack of the Clones and for one of the concluding battles with the Jedi and the droid army I saw the main actors, the "human" ones, standing in the middle of a sound stage with sand on the floor and blue screen all around them.  While the scene was impressive in its visual scope on the screen, it was mostly fake in that it was digital.  So many aspects of the movies were computer generated, that the overall effect for me was an antiseptic feel to the worlds the movies were presenting.  Yes, I understand setting for these movies are places supposedly beyond anything we earthlings have ever conceived of visiting, but it doesn't help when the scenes practically scream at you that they're not real.  The original movies were grounded in reality--meaning real settings.  For instance, the Luke's landspeeder is, in some instances, a special effect, but its surrounded by the Tansinian desert.  In the prequels, it got to the point for me that even when ships or other background objects where supposed to be “dirty,” the dirt was computer generated and I couldn’t help but notice.  This may seem strange, but I don’t know how else to describe it.  How can these actors truly "act" when they are standing in the middle of a sound stage with blue walls all around them.  During battle scenes, they had their fight choreography to lean on, but when it came to dialoge, there was not way to truly "act," or at least react.  It was as if they were told, “Okay, you’re going to need to duck here,” or “Now you need to react this way,” and the actions appeared stilted instead of fluid.  One thing I've noticed about J.J. Abrams over the years is that he will use locations and sound stage.  Live action when possible with the additions of special effects when needed.  I noticed in the trailer a grimy, dirty feel to the scenes.  The battles had a visceral quality that I immediately reacted to and I felt more like I was watching scenes from the original trilogy movies instead of the prequels.

Maybe no one will believe this, but I just stumbled across this (the YouTube version has people swearing at each other in the "comments" section, so I linked to the starwars.com verson instead) which confirms what I just mentioned above (nice to have "Luke" and "Chewie" backing me up).  Anyway, beside potential non-digitalness (not a word, but I'm sticking with it) of the scenes in the film, my overall positive gut feelings have raised my level of anticipation.  I'm still keeping my expectations low because I don't want to be disappointed, but I am feeling better about what I could potentially experience at the theater.  I imagine we will soon start getting TV commercials for the movie.  These may offer a few new scenes or they may rehash what has already been offered.  While there really is no way to glean any major plot lines of the story from what has been shown, the Finn character does appear to be headed toward being trained as a Jedi.  Both Finn and Rey (the scavenger hunter with the big long stick device and the soccer ball droid companion) end up on the Millennium Falcon for some reason.  There are several battles with the group wanting to reassemble to the Empire.  Other than that, I'm trying to remain as blissfully ignorant of what the movie will offer me as I can to allow my theater experience dictate to dictate my reaction.  I'm sure I'll have something to say (good, bad, indifferent) once I've finally watched the movie.  Until then, I return to radio silence about this movie. ☺