THE FORCE - PART III

If you missed them, here's Part I and here's Part II. All caught up? Good. Let's move on.

Here’s the thing: I don’t mind JJ Abrams. He seems like a nice guy, he’s undeniably talented and I say good for him. He's done an excellent job of getting a ton of projects up and running on both TV and film. Also, he kind of made Keri Russell, who I will love forever, into a household name, so I can never, ever be angry at him for anything.

But having said all that, I don’t give a shit about any “original” film project that Abrams has in development. He’s the perfect work-for-hire guy. He’s kind of obsessed with modeling his career after Steven Spielberg and SUPER 8 was a pretty heavy-handed homage to him (that was still good up until the end). That movie and his Spielberg adoration helped quite a bit, because it turns out that Spielberg had kind of a lot to do with Disney handing the STAR WARS franchise to a guy that just spent the last 5 years in bed with the “enemy” STAR TREK.

Movies are at a weird place right now. Companies need things to make money so they're very picky about who they give big budgets to. A lot of the big directors on studio short-lists have been pretty good about the “one for them, one for me” blueprint. Christopher Nolan might be the best at it. He keeps making BATMAN movies and agreed to produce SUPERMAN and consult on JUSTICE LEAGUE because, if he does, Warner Brothers will pretty much give him however much money he asks for to make any other movie he wants. It works out for everyone.

Darren Aronofsky is kind of the same way, but just never actually follows through. He signs on to direct things like THE WOLVERINE, uses that as leverage to get financing for something that he actually wants to make, then drops out of the former. It’s smart and I’m okay with it. He's done it 4 or 5 times already.

I want fresh new movies from Nolan, Aronofsky, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo Del Toro, Paul Thomas Anderson and guys like that. These are guys that have clear visions of what kind of movies they want to make and have the clout to get them done.

JJ Abrams is in a group with Peter Jackson. I’m fine with them being work-for-hire guys forever. I'm okay if Peter Jackson keeps making HOBBIT movies forever. He's good at those, so more power to him. I've seen them all one time and will never watch them again. But kudos to him for getting them going.

These guys will turn in solid, enjoyable movies every time out. But there won’t be much of a risk to them.

Low-risk is exactly what Disney is looking for with a new STAR WARS trilogy. I think deep down, even if they won’t admit it, they know how bad the prequels were and are afraid of that happening again. This is kind of their last chance to give the STAR WARS franchise a little credibility. It’ll always be profitable (maybe not 4 billion dollars worth) because there will always be people looking to buy Boba Fett t-shirts and Storm Trooper hoodies, but they want people to be excited about it again.

JJ Abrams can do that. He’ll make a solid, entertaining STAR WARS movie that will be devoid of any chances and adhere to a strict company line. The execs at Disney likely have a bullet list of things they want to see and don't want to see, that was put together from hours of research done by interns scouring the Internet. They will hand that list to Abrams and say “make sure these are all followed.”

He’ll say, “Okay,” work with what he has and still manage to make a solid movie. Will it be great? Who knows? I do know that it will be entertaining.

I’ll see it. There’s no denying that. But I’m not over the moon about it. I got that way once. Then I spent the next three years trying to convince myself EPISODE I wasn’t a pile of garbage.

The real problem here is two-fold.

First, Disney announced last week that they’d be releasing one STAR WARS movie per year for the next six years. EPISODES 7, 8 and 9 will come in 2015, 2017, 2019 respectively and the even years will be filled with one-shot movies set elsewhere in the universe. This is a little like putting the cart before the horse, in my opinion, but I'm not a movie studio executive. I'm a guy with a blog.

Those one-shot movies mean that you should look forward to a Young Han Solo movie in which he acquires the Millennium Falcon. That's an easy one. A stand-alone BOBA FETT film in which the mystique that was already stripped away with EPISODE II is ruined further and run into the ground. Again, pretty easy. And a young, CGI Yoda flipping around with a lightsaber. I hope I'm wrong, but those are probably the safest - and most boring - bets for the first three outside the trilogy.

Maybe eventually they’ll start doing something cool with those, but it won’t be any time soon.

Again, I will be seeing all of these movies, but I’m not exactly thrilled for them. There’s a small part of me holding out hope that something here may surprise me. It’s faint though.

Second, as was the case with the original reports, each movie will be 100% spoiled at least a year before it comes out. Every movie site on the Internet is going to run round-the-clock stories and every image, every scene, every tiny detail will be put online as soon as possible. Sites will spend time piecing together each thing until they have the entire plot online. This will happen. It’s one of the main reasons I’ve stopped visiting a lot of sites. I want to enjoy movies again. I don’t want them to tell me every little detail 8 months before I can see the movie. A lot of people do want that though, so that’s what’s going to happen. It’s kind of a bummer.

There are a few bright sides to this whole thing, though.

One, is that we’re getting new STAR WARS movies. No matter what I've written previously, deep down I'm looking forward to it. I just want them to be good. My fingers are crossed.

Two, and probably most importantly, is that to build good faith, I think (hope) Disney will release a DVD set of the original trilogy. The ORIGINAL trilogy. The three movies as they were when they were released in 1977, 1980 and 1983. Not the ones that George Lucas has been fucking with and adding shit to for the past 15 years. There are enough of those out there and I haven't bought any of them. I just want the original three movies, with their original awesome cover art and all the warts that came with them. I want Greedo shooting first. I want the storm trooper bumping his head. I don’t want to see Jabba the Hutt until RETURN OF THE JEDI. I want them they way I remember them from my childhood. Is that too much to ask?

I’m optimistic about the future of a franchise that I loved as a kid, but not incredibly excited. This could all change the second I see a trailer for EPISODE VII, and I hope it does. I want to be excited. I want to feel like a kid again.

And if it’s terrible, well, we’ll always have Patton Oswalt’s pitch for the new trilogy. That’s almost good enough for me.

THE FORCE - PT. II

If you missed Part I of THE FORCE, click here to catch up.

On October 30, 2012, the Internet exploded.

That was the day that Disney announced it had purchased the rights to all things STAR WARS from George Lucas for something like 4 billion dollars. There had been rumors of that happening for a while, but everyone kind of chalked it up to just that—rumors. STAR WARS was Lucas' baby. There was no way he would ever part with it.

Then he did.

That same day, Disney announced that they had been secretly working on EPISODES 7, 8 and 9 as well as a few stand-alone movies set inside the STAR WARS universe. There were plans to release a new trilogy and go from there. Every movie site online turned into what FOX News, CNN and MSNBC resembles on an election night. They had "experts" weighing in, they threw out any and all rumors they could dig up, they were undercutting and backbiting everyone else to get "scoops" and publishing endless lists that might as well have been titled "10 Things You Need To Know About Some Movies That Aren't Coming Out For Like 3 Years That We Have No Actual Information About But This Site Makes Money Based On Web Traffic And STAR WARS Will Get Us Page Views."

It was really, really annoying. More so than the Internet usually is, because this was STAR WARS and the Internet loves STAR WARS. Almost as much as it loves cat gifs. Almost.

The speculation as to who would be in charge of the new trilogy began, and every single day there was a new name attached to the project. Eventually, it came out that Michael Arndt had been assigned the task of writing the project and had already handed in an 80-page outline. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher had been approached about reprising their roles as Luke and Leia, and it was on.

Once there was a writer, a director couldn't be far behind. The announcement of Arndt, immediately scrapped one of the most widely speculated candidates—Brad Bird. Bird had been working with Damon Lindelof on a secret project for Disney that no one knew anything about. When the news of Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm broke, everyone just thought that was what it would turn out to be. Bird and Lindelof both denied it, and then Arndt was announced and things kind of died down around there.

The list didn't end with those two, though. Matthew Vaughn, director of LAYER CAKE and X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, was another speculation. Word is that he was approached, but wanted to do his own story that included Chloe Moretz as a young, violent Jedi. Disney said no, he went away.

Jon Favreau, who had also been slowly developing a film for Disney was also high on the list, and the one everyone assumed was going to get it. Spielberg had already turned it down, and JJ Abrams had been right behind him with the denial. Favreau seemed the likely candidate. Zack Snyder, Rian Johnson, Darren Aronofsky, Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron were also names that were thrown out—but those are the names that get thrown out pretty much any time there's a franchise that people want to see succeed.

Another name on that list that was a little bit out of place, but well deserved was Ben Affleck. ARGO was doing well and once it started getting nominated and winning awards, his name got attached to more and more things. Hell, he was even approached by Warner Brothers to see if he'd direct the upcoming JUSTICE LEAGUE movie. Not only that, but they wanted him to pull double duty and play the new god damn Batman in it, too.

Think about that for a minute. Affleck, Chucky from GOOD WILL HUNTING, only a few years removed from shit like PAYCHECK, REINDEER GAMES, JERSEY GIRL and "Bennifer" was being courted to revive the STAR WARS franchise and get the long-suffering DC Comics super team off the ground.

Talk about a fucking comeback.

Anyway, none of those panned out and last month it turned out JJ Abrams had been full of shit when he was quoted in Entertainment Weekly saying that he didn't want the job and just wanted to be a fan in the theater. He'd gotten the job and STAR TREK fans went nuts. Half of them were grateful to be rid of him because he hid the Enterprise underwater in the new trailer and the other half were pissed that STAR WARS had beaten their beloved TREK once again.

It was official. JJ Abrams and Michael Arndt were hard at work on a new set of trilogies that pick up sometime after the end of RETURN OF THE JEDI and move on from there.

All the speculation on who would get the job was over and every movie blogger and movie writer was able to finally move on to other topics. No, that's not true. They all just moved on to trying to decipher the entire plot and every last beat of the story to ruin for the rest of you.

Tomorrow, in Part III, we'll look at the actual future of the STAR WARS universe, why I'm totally fine with JJ Abrams at the helm and how if you're already sick of STAR WARS, it's only going to get worse from here on out.

This turned out to be way longer than I originally planned. It's become my own version of the STAR WARS trilogy.

THE FORCE - PT. I

I came up with the loose idea for this post a long, long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away, ha) but never got around to it. I just never thought it was relevant enough to spend as much time as I needed to on it. With all that's happened lately and especially with the most recent development, I figured it was about time to get to it. Also, no one at this boring office job of mine cares what I do as long as it looks like I'm working.

It's bound to be a long, winding, reflective and somewhat silly post, but it's my blog. I can do that. It's what you've come to expect from me.

We're going to talk about STAR WARS and we're going to talk about how if you've never seen any of the movies before, it's too late for you. You can't start now. You missed it. Don't even bother.

STAR WARS came out in the spring of 1977, EMPIRE STRIKES BACK came out in 1980 and RETURN OF THE JEDI followed in 1983. I was too young to catch the first two, but I was 3-years-old when JEDI came out and it was the first movie I ever saw in the theater. It was terrifying. I hid under a stack of coats during the previews and the scroll, but once the Rancor Monster came out, I did too. I watched wide-eyed and enthralled the rest of the way.

After that, STAR WARS kind of became my life. There was no Internet and I didn't have an iPad—hell we didn't even have a Nintendo yet. I was cruelly forced to use my imagination, creativity and hundreds of toys—mostly STAR WARS—to fill my days. I did just that. Every single day. Sometimes they'd fight with my other action figures, but STAR WARS always won. That's just how it went.

When the prequels were announced, I followed it as closely as I could. The Internet was in its infancy, so I was reduced to newspaper clips and driving my 1979 Ford Granada to Barnes & Noble to check out Entertainment Weekly. When the release date came around, I camped out in the parking lot of Century 16 in SLC along with hundreds (literally hundreds) of other people to get tickets for the first showing.

I saw Episode I three times the first day it came out. I skipped out on seeing Vanilla Ice with Earth Crisis to see a movie for a third time in a 24 hour span. It was mostly because I was pretty sure Earth Crisis wasn't actually coming and something like this would happen anyway.

The more I watched EPISODE I, the more I convinced myself that I loved it and it was a great addition to the story. It's not. It's actually really, really bad. It was on TV a few weeks ago and I watched it for a bit and remembered just how awful it is. I got less excited for EPISODE II, which let down my already-lowered expectations and EPISODE III was just awful.

All three of those movies have scenes that are individually great, I'll admit that, but they're few and far between and sandwiched between another 110 minutes of absolute garbage.

If they're your first foray into the STAR WARS universe, and you were kind of young when they came out, I can see how they might be okay. But for someone that had been building the mythology in his head for 15 years like I had, they were just a total letdown. Each one was worse than the one that came before it.

It's almost pointless to get into an argument about them now. You either like them or you don't. I won't try to defend them and I won't listen to a defense of them. If you love the prequels, great. I thought they were fucking awful and the fact that George Lucas keeps tinkering with the originals, making them closer to the prequels is even worse.

This isn't going to devolve into some weird rant against George Lucas or anything. That's what the rest of the Internet is for. You can find feature length movies on the subject. I'm not interested in that, nor do I need to add to it.

Basically what all of that amounts to is that the prequels made it impossible for me to care about STAR WARS in a passionate way ever again.

A few weeks ago, the topic of STAR WARS came up and a friend of mine said she'd never seen any of them. That was echoed by a few more friends, too. I was kind of stunned, but also a little bit relieved.

"I think you're better off having never seen them," I said.

"Really? Everyone else tells me that I have to watch them."

"Nope. If they weren't a part of your childhood, you can't start them now. They'll just be too silly to process."

This is a statement that I stand behind 100%.

If you've never seen any of the STAR WARS movies, you shouldn't watch them. That time has come and gone, my friend. The story is still great and the mythology of STAR WARS, EMPIRE and JEDI is still great fun, but they haven't aged well.

They were too much a product of their time. The special effects and action sequences pale in comparison to what have become the standard and it'll just look like a low budget fan film. Which, really when you break it down, is exactly what George Lucas made in the mid-70s.

Had you seen them when you were younger, you would have understood literally thousands of pop culture jokes made throughout the 90s, but those are all in the past, too. I still read and see things—current things—with STAR WARS jokes in them and most of them aren't funny anymore. It just kind of depresses me. Just let it go.

However, I'll still laugh at any and all STAR WARS jokes before I laugh at a single LORD OF THE RINGS joke.

This seems like a good breaking point. For now.

In Part II, we'll talk about the Disney acquisition, JJ Abrams and the future of STAR WARS.

In Part III, we'll look at the actual future of the STAR WARS universe, why I'm totally fine with JJ Abrams at the helm and how if you're already sick of STAR WARS, it's only going to get worse from here on out.

But what do you think? If someone has never seen STAR WARS, should they try to catch up or just let it go?