I let the dust settle a bit on the teaser trailer for Star Wars – The Force Awakens that had fanboys and haters all geeked out over the weekend. I have watched the offering from the new Sith Lord of the Star Wars Universe and, as you might expect, if you read my previous thoughts on J.J. Abrams’ misuse of lens flares, I was going to be hard to impress. I was and still am. J.J. has his work cut out for him if this trailer is a sample of things to come.
Star Wars means more to me as a movie fan. I was never much of a Star Trek fan because Shatner’s overacting was obvious even to my kidself and Kirk was too much of an asshole that even Spock’s ears couldn’t save it for me – but I did like the phaser beams. (Maybe the effects are what today’s filmmakers are taking from their childhood memories). But Star Wars had a different feel to it. The universe of Luke Skywalker and company wasn’t antiseptic the way Star Trek seemed to be: the ships were dirty, the people seemed to be more than character cut-outs (although the stormtroopers could vie with the red shirts as to who were more useless and expendable), and the world just seemed to be more than a Hollywood casting call for stuntpeople and actors in hokey makeup. Star Trek, in all its incarnations started off as “exploring new worlds” and eventually devolved into some form of militaristic crapola while Star Wars made no such pretensions.
But the thing that made Star Wars such a financial success was ultimately the siren’s song of Lucas’ undoing: merchandising. It became rather apparent during the Return of the Jedi days that some things (cough, cough, Ewoks, cough, cough) existed only as things to be merchandised because they sucked as story elements. Star Wars has always been susceptible to the putting in “fanboy-cool” things that are really bad ideas, AT-AT’s, for example. As “cool” as the sheer size and threatening nature of those things may be, if you can fly, why would you design something so ridiculously inept? The Star Wars franchise has a lot of this type of faulty thinking running throughout it and I shudder to think what horrors are to come because of “cool” and merchandising.
The funny thing is that a fan video was put out that fooled some media outlets into believing it was the real release. After seeing the real thing, the similarities are a bit disconcerting. Maybe there have been too many productions, such as Troops, focusing on the stormtroopers in a Cops parody, that are made with enough professionalism in shooting and editing that someone can wade through the myriad of material available and cobble together a respectable fake because the real release looks like a fan film! The moment John Boyega popped up into frame, the feeling of yuk hit me because it looked amateurish, unpolished. And then there was Daisy Ridley riding what looked like a part from an old television set with an ability to suspend and propel itself even more improbable than Luke’s landspeeder or the pod racers. I won’t even comment on the rolling ball thing. A lightsaber springs to life in the dark – with a laser handguard? Folks who are deeply into Stars Wars lore probably have a name for these devices, but I have one, too: crap.
I did like the shot of the X-Wings flying over the water just to capture the sense of speed, but overall, the thing could have been spliced together from previous films and video game cut-scenes and held up just as well. Of course, in an obvious attempt to utilize the 3-D technology, the Millennium Falcon spins and whirls through the air because who can make a movie nowadays without bilking the public through the eyesore of 3-D? Afterwards, a couple of TIE fighters narrowly miss the Falcon and take a few shots which begs the question, if the TIE fighters were gunning for the Falcon anyway, why weren’t they shooting at it when it was helpless in its ridiculous aerobatics demonstration? Ah, but there I go infusing some sense into the discussion.
I guess the point of all this is that, sure, the teaser “teased” people and the hype builds – just as it did with the prequels. We don’t need to go through that again!
There’s been an awakening. Have you felt it?
The dark side… and the light.
Even for a trailer, that’s pretty stinky writing. I’m not looking for more of the original, I just want something good and a hell of a lot better than the prequels!
And then there are the lens flares… oh, god… the lens flares…
