When I was a kid, my parents introduced me to the original “Star Wars” trilogy. From that moment on, those three classic films were on a loop in my house. I bought buckets – seriously, buckets – full of action figures and spaceships, imagined baseball bats were lightsabers, and started sketching out my own characters to fit into that galaxy far, far away.
When the prequels came out, “Star Wars” fever went into overdrive. “The Phantom Menace” was my first experience in a movie theater and immediately after the showing, I raced to buy the toys. I then gobbled up every minutia of information and conspiracy theories about the next two episodes, trying to find out anything I could. In short, “Star Wars” is one of the major pillars of my life as a fan and aspiring storyteller.
Bradley Burgess
So, when I say that I am not excited for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” it”s a sign of the end times.
I know, it”s awful for me to not care about arguably the most anticipated movie of the last decade, but hear me out. When Disney bought Lucasfilm and announced more “Star Wars” movies, I was incredibly skeptical. “Star Wars” is one of those things that doesn”t need an update. It”s like trying to remake “Ferris Bueller”s Day Off” or “Back to the Future.” Stupid idea, right? I had hopes for the new franchise, but when they hired JJ Abrams, I laughed out loud. He makes great movies, but hiring a “Star Trek” director to helm “Star Wars” is simply sacrilege.
Then the trailers came out and everyone lost their minds “¦ except me. The trailers for “The Force Awakens” have done nothing for me for one simple reason: they haven”t shown us anything worth geeking out over. One shot of the Millennium Falcon flying does not get my blood boiling. The trailers are so vague and so minimal that I can”t get excited about them. I get not spoiling anything, but there”s no big money shot that we can drool over.
Watch the first trailer for “The Phantom Menace” and check out how much awesomeness they crammed into two minutes. Compare that to the new trailers and there”s no comparison.
But wait – other movies have showed very little in their marketing and no one”s complained. Take “Cloverfield,” for example. That trailer told you nothing about the film and everyone, including myself, freaked out about it. But here”s the thing: “Cloverfield” gets away with showing us very little because that was part of the vocabulary of the film. We were supposed to know nothing about the film, because that”s what the characters in the movie knew. It doesn”t make sense to market a big budget sci-fi epic with only two or three key images. You should be showing the epic space battles and lightsaber fights, not random shots of stormtroopers in a shuttle.
But the fans are not only overreacting to these teases, they”re blowing them so out of proportion that it”s getting annoying. Every website on Earth is stuffed with conspiracy theories and character ideas from a grand two minutes of total footage.
The more people talk about this film, the less I want to see it. I will, don”t get me wrong, maybe a few weeks after the hype dies down, but as it stands, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is becoming more overblown than the volcanoes of Mustafar.
Bradley Burgess can be reached at [email protected]