Monday Morning Quarterback

By BOP Staff

December 23, 2015

The future? You mean like flying cars? Hotels on the moon? Tang?

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Kim Hollis: What do you think was different about Star Wars: The Force Awakens that made people respond to it more positively than the prequels?

Ben Gruchow: Nostalgia played a huge part in the enthusiasm for the movie both in the lead-up and in the opening weekend. That nostalgia wasn't just tapped in the raw materials of the movie itself; it was in the claim by the producers that they were shooting on film (in diametric opposition to George Lucas trumpeting HD video for the prequels), with as many practical effects and props as they could get away with (in opposition to the prequels' tendency to only build physical sets to the top of actor's heads, and create the remainder digitally). It was no mistake that all of the vehicles highlighted in trailers, posters, and marketing were things like the X-Wing, the TIE Fighter, that crashed Star Destroyer, etc. Just about every non-human participant in each image said, "This is not just Star Wars; this is the Star Wars you grew up with." The most out-of-the-box effect or prop displayed in materials, other than BB-8, was Kylo Ren's crossguard lightsaber, and that got some derision when it first popped up last year.




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The next big thing that Abrams, Disney & co. did to engender the reaction was mesh that nostalgia with a thoroughly informal look to the film itself. They basically ditched the quasi-formal (in some cases, stilted) look and rhythm of all six of the other films in the series, and went with a contemporary, readily-identifiable look and rhythm that basically matched up with what the modern-day effects fantasy looks like: lots of tracking shots, computer-aided "you-are-there" crash-zooms and re-focuses. The other Star Wars films were never what you'd call particularly emotional in their approach, and this one was. Clearly, it was a stylistic move that worked.

Finally, they amped up the one big reason that everyone would've had to see a new Star Wars film, superfan or not: the mystery. Everyone knew what was going to happen in the prequels, and Episodes I-III functioned as an embryonic version of the book-splitting approach we see studios doing now: one movie's worth of story stretched into three separate installments. Nobody knew what was going to happen after Return of the Jedi, and unless you were committed to looking up fan theories and weeding out the less-plausible/less-marketable ones, that was something you were going to go into the movie not knowing anything about...assuming, of course, that you went Thursday night or opening day or opening weekend.


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