ST JJ Abrams to direct Episode VII

One of my favourite shots in TFA is what I would call a classic Spielberg shot. It's when the X-wings come down to attack SKB.

We have a wide shot of them flying in formation towards the oscillator.


That pulls back into an extremely long geography shot.


That pans across so that we're inside a control room on SKB.


We then move from a full shot of Hux that transitions into a medium.


And then we move from that angle to an over the shoulder shot to the interior of the control room where we have a triangle of FO minions.


And then the camera comes back to a close up of Hux.


In summary, we have an establishing shot, a positioning shot, a reaction shot, an exposition shot, and then a character shot in a single take. It's really quite good.

 

I think the direction is great throughout. I've seen people who hate JJ's direction and say it's jarring compared to George's stuff. I'd always say JJ is much closer to Spielberg in how he moves the camera anyway.

 

Well this is back up for whatever reason.

JJ gave us the kind of movie that Star Trek (which got him the gig) told us he would.

Lots of excitement and adventure and really likeable characters.

A terrific popcorn movie but without the depth of story or character that marks the Lucas films and is also reflected in Rogue One.

Like I've said a terrific restatement of Episodes I-VI.

Thing is we already have them but it works well for the audience who needs an intro and reminder.

 

I'm not sure where else to post this, and I realize I'm two years late on this, but the irony of production designer Rick Carter's infamous comment "We truly are out in a desert. A real desert," is that he won an Oscar for his production design on Avatar, one of the most CGI heavy films ever.

This isn't meant as a dig at Carter, though. The guy is pretty unimpeachable as a film industry professional. I just found that comment humorous in the context of his own body of work.

 

He really didn't do anything that wasn't in everyone's media notes or even something they were contractually bound to say though.

His was just particularly odder than most.

 

I don't get it. What's humorous about the quote or the fact that Avatar is CGI?

 

It's that Carter's quotes ties into the TFA promotional mantra of practical effects and real locations, while he himself was previously awarded for another film that was largely achieved in CGI. I don't interpret the quote as malicious or disingenuous, just funny given that he worked on Avatar.

 

Also, I suspect that CG artists like being challenged. Working on a film in which a completely new alien landscape is designed and realised is a challenge. Maybe people like him are delighted when a filmmaker doesnt simply go CG for something easy to realise in CGsuch as a desert, and they instead prioritise the scale and feel of being on location

 

The thing is of course is that it wasn't a jab at the reality of their production but at the fantasy version which a comment like that alludes to.

Could be that he was talking in the larger context of movies and it merely got lost in the morass of the rest of the marketing.

It was a particularly bizarre one that it stood out.

 

Even in the larger context John Carter had on-location shooting in desert environments a mere three years before TFA. Just an odd thing to highlight. But that's how marketing rolls much of the time. Also I'm starting to roll my eyes at the "OMG Star Wars stuff!" previews. Yes, Star Wars sets have props and costumes. Amazing!!!

 

Had Rick Carter himself been in a real desert recently before TFA? Is he making a distinction between an Arabian desert and other desert environments.

Is there evidence that pointing out you've filmed in a real desert to the media adds profits to the film. Or that CGI films, like Avatar, suffer at the box office for this reason? Clearly not.

Isn't the humour being derived from this based on assumptions that don't actually hold up logically?

 

No. Pointing out that they filmed in a real desert is simply a signal of the artistic direction of the film/ series. They're going for more realism in the look. Plain and simple. It wasn't about a calculation that this would lead to more profits. It was just about signaling that these films would look different than most CGI blockbusters. Just setting expectations.

He could have used a different example, as all Star Wars films with deserts filmed in real ones. But it was a two-second clip, and he may have been taken out of context.

 

Except that it isn't either plain or simple. It promotes the false idea that when Star Wars was initially done this "realism" was something desired. What was desired was to be as "alien" as they could within more exotic (ie not regular settings that most Americans would experience on a regular basis). Obviously they couldn't do much at all back then so it was desert, jungle, forest, snow etc for the limited location work.

Then as they could have the Death Stars, asteroid fields, Cloud City, Jabba's palace etc.

Depends which ones being talked about. From a modern perspective it was not unlike LOTR movies but not like MCU movies which of course are on modern day Earth and in cities.

So they are creating their own sub category of modern day CGI blockbusters but as with TFA and R1 it's not that far off from many others. In Star Wars terms the biggest difference is that they have been using locations far more than the original Lucas movies did or had any interest in doing. Why that is in a day and age when it's more irrelevant than ever to do so I don't know.

The obvious I guess is that if you want to keep going to forest and green planets all the time go shoot in a forest which is why TFA was packed with them.

 

Yeah, I know. You omitted the portion of my post where I note that "real desert" was a bad example...

 

I don't think it means anything except that being in a real desert like the Arabian one is worth remarking on.

 

Is JJ still co/executive producing VIII, or somehow involved with it???? I thought I remembered him saying he was involved at one point..

 

He's an Executive Producer through IX.

My far out guess, is he'll be directing and writing Episode X several years from now.

 

I guess that depends on what year 'X' is released, I think JJ will be taking several years, or even decades off from SW to work on his other projects. But I reckon he'll be back eventually.

Edit: I think he mentioned having read the script for the Han Solo movie at some point around the release of TFA as well. Although that might have been done in a less formal capacity than his involvement with VII and IX.

 

So TFA is secretly about forgiving GL for the prequels? I've read some weird stuff, but this probably takes the cake.
http://www.cracked.com/article_24581_6-personal-secrets-filmmakers-hid-in-famous-movies.html

 

It's not worth giving even a moment's thought to that nonsense.

 

I'm surprised that Cracked story didn't mention the opening line "this will make things right" like a lot of critics mentioned when the movie opened.
I keep thinking J.J. Abrams will return to the Lost universe.