Didn’t Lucas do a recut of Phantom Menace that lost the Midichlorian stuff?
Lucas did not since his movie is just fine and his script was great. However, many folks have recut Phantom Menace to reduce Jar Jar and midichlorians. The Phantom Edit was the first one, but there have been countless others.
Luke couldn’t wait to get away from Tatooine. His relatives were killed there. Why go back? The only thing Tatooine has going for it is it’s an outlaw planet where the empire doesn’t have much influence. It can’t be the only outlaw/undeveloped planet in the galaxy though.
Maybe to finally get those power converters he’s had his eyes on.
That, and its cantinas are bar-none in the galaxy.
No, they regularly bar droids there.
Gah!
To be fair though, Luke wanted to get off Tatooine because he so badly wanted to join the rebellion. All his teenage angst seemed to be mostly hinged on that. Now he’s had his fun, and seen the Galaxy…
It’s still his home. And who knows, maybe moisture farming is a most lucrative vocation for an old Jedi master?
And lens flares. Lots of lens flares.
I was… underwhelmed. The rolling droid looked dumb. The lightsaber looked cool for the half-second before you thought at all about it. The rest could have been clips right out of any decent SW video game or fan film. Nothing made me drop my jaw, which is all I really want from SW.
Still hopeful (and maybe it’s good that the trailer didn’t have me bouncing out of my seat, so I won’t be disappointed with the final product).
For my 2 cents on the EU thing, from what I’ve seen, it pretty much follows Sturgeon’s Law. 90% of it is utter crap. If they could fish out the 10% that’s worthwhile and use that for the basis of the new movies, great. But I’d rather dump it and try to write something new and good, rather than give the rest of it the air of canon by incorporating some of it.
I was going to make a thread about how I think Abrams is better for Star Wars than he is for Star Trek. But I’m not real solid on my thesis.
Regardless, I don’t think Part VII will “overwhelm”, but it will be judged better than any of the prequels. And I’m enjoying seeing the fresh directorial hand on the franchise.
Speaking of J.J.'s propensity to use a ton of lens flares, I don’t think this film will really have them as much as Star Trek did.
For one, it was a stylistic choice to use them gratuitously for those movies, and another, he likes to invoke the anamorphic lens flare which became a strong signature in a lot of 80s Spielberg films. This sort of lens flare is very pronounced, long, bluish, streaky and produces a lot of artifacts, not like the one seen when the Falcon flies across the sun in this teaser.
So, It looks like he’s sticking to more traditional cinematography.
I’m hopeful it will be good but I have to admit the first few shots in the teaser (I was linked to it via a Facebook post) - the stormtrooper popping up like he’d snuck off behind a sanddune to take a dump and been surprised when his unit drove away without him and the rolling droid made me think I’d been linked to a fake.
I totally thought it was a parody at first with that storm trooper popping up into frame at first. Something about his expression in the context of an empty, unthreatening desert made it seem silly.
But overall, I’m stoked. The X-wing and Millennium shots were exciting to see.
Tangentially, I’m going to guess that that cantina came up with that rule because the droid from Star Wars Rebels went there. In an otherwise generally pretty good show, he’s the one consistently bad element. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t wipe its memory and if that didn’t fix it, sell it to Jawas.
The reviewer at the AV Club has a theory that it’s actually an Imperial plant/spy, doing its best to sabotage everything the rebels do.
Actually he wanted to join the Imperial Academy. He had only just heard about the Rebellion from Biggs earlier that week.
Did you notice the sound of an Imperial probe droid in the background? The implication is that the black stormtrooper was in the empty unthreatening desert and definitely felt threatened.
Not to be cynical, but after 30 years of Star Wars, Star Trek, The Matrix, The Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter, Transformers, Avatar, The Avengers, The Guardians of the Galaxy, The Hobbit, I’m not sure what is going to “drop people’s jaws” in a 2 minute teaser trailer.
Although seeing the Millennium Falcon in action again was pretty cool.
You know, he’s probably gonna die there.
A fair point, but plenty of recent trailers (some for the very movies you listed) had at least one “wow!” moment for me. “You shall not pass!”, “You were the chosen one!”, Hulk throwing a car at Ultron and then punching it, the Enterprise crashing into water, Agents jumping from speeding car to speeding car chasing Neo… Not all of those trailers panned out into good movies, but if I’d never seen Star Wars before, this trailer wouldn’t have a single moment that would inspire me to start now.
This isn’t a trailer, it’s a teaser.
Nobody likes a tease.