Star Wars fever is at what I would call, a minimum right now, at least compared to what it will soon be once we get a longer trailer, a trailer expected to play in front of Avengers: Age of Ultron in May. Once that arrives and more pictures, posters and plot details begin to emerge it might become nearly insufferable to even browse around the web in any capacity, at least in terms of movie conversation. For now, however, it’s sort of nice. Some sites are obviously Star Wars-obsessed, searching for any little nugget of information pertaining to Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens they can get their hands on. Or debating even the smallest bit of information available to them, such as the trident lightsaber featured in that first trailer.
Well, director J.J. Abrams addresses just that and a little more while returning star Mark Hamill has offered a small hint of just exactly what direction this franchise is heading and how much it will be dwelling on the past.
In a brief interview with Collider, Abrams addressed the fan fervor over the trident lightsaber (pictured above), saying the design “was not done without a lot of conversation and it’s fun to see people have the conversation that we had, but in reverse.” I wonder how “fun” it really is, or is it just annoying?
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Abrams also addresses the film’s IMAX release, revealing there’s actually only one sequence that was shot on IMAX film stock. “[I]t’s a good sequence,” he says, but if you ask me this is a bit of a disappointment.
Finally, over at Hero Complex they interviewed Mark Hamill who will be reprising his role as Luke Skywalker in the new film and with regards to his return to the franchise he says, “I would have been completely OK with it not including us, but I do think having the original cast members there gives it a sense of continuity and scope. But mind you, it’s really about the new generation, it’s not about us.”
That’s interesting and good to know. For a while there I felt it seemed like the old cast would be a rather major portion of the story. Hopefully they’re just around to offer a complimentary segue into the new trilogy of films and Abrams and gang can put everything that’s come before in the rearview. After all, we are talking about an entire galaxy far, far away, there has to be more characters to deal with than the limited number George Lucas chose to focus on for six feature films.
As far as the future is concerned, it’s Rian Johnson (Looper) that will be handling Star Wars: Episode VIII with Abrams returning as executive producer, surely moving on to revive whatever old sci-fi franchise the Hollywood studios are looking to dust off. Hell, maybe he’ll be done with Star Wars in time to return for Star Trek 3 and Paramount won’t even need Justin Lin.
