Star Wars Ep. VII Megathread: The Force Awakens (1 Viewer)

[Dave Upton]

Good article on J.J's inspiration and plans: http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2013/01/29/director-j-j-abrams-and-his-lifelong-appreciation-of-star-wars/

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by SilverWook
I would hope some sort of distribution deal could be worked out with Fox so the logo and fanfare will remain. It's too iconic to mess with.

Why would Disney do that? Paying $4 billion and then telling a rival business "Hey, here's some relatively free promotion on our box office hit!" makes no sense whatsoever. It'll have the Disney castle logo, or perhaps a Star Wars-ized version of one. That's just the way it will be.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Why would Disney do that? Paying $4 billion and then telling a rival business "Hey, here's some relatively free promotion on our box office hit!" makes no sense whatsoever.

That's more or less exactly what happened when Disney bought Marvel. Disney pays for, promotes and distributes the Marvel movies, yet they all have Paramount's logo on them, not Disney's.

 

[Brandon Conway]

That's because Marvel's 2005 theatrical distribution agreement with Paramount is still in force (though it will end after Iron Man 3 in May http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/disney-paramount-marvel-restructure-marketing-distruibution-deal/).
Lucasfilm has no similar existing agreement with Fox for future Star Wars films.
Presumably there will be no Paramount logo on Thor: The Dark World.

 

[Greg_S_H]

I thought that, too. It will be missed, but Disney won't cut in Fox for 20 seconds that don't really matter. Maybe they can pay to use the Cinescope cue over their own logo.

 

[SilverWook]

Why would Disney do that? Paying $4 billion and then telling a rival business "Hey, here's some relatively free promotion on our box office hit!" makes no sense whatsoever. It'll have the Disney castle logo, or perhaps a Star Wars-ized version of one. That's just the way it will be.

Disney partnered with Paramount on a couple films in the 80's. (Dragonslayer and Popeye) I was naively hoping something like that could happen again to preserve what's part of the Star Wars experience. So sue me.

 

[TravisR]

Bring an iPod and play the Fox Fanfare right before the movie starts.

 

[Sam Favate]

I'm fine with not having the Fox fanfare before the new films, as iconic as it is. It's a new era, we need to adjust to that right off the start. Besides, Disney's logo and fanfare these last few years is pretty cool. Lucasfilm and Disney seem a good fit; kinda always have.

 

[Norm]

You guys are worried about the Fox fanfair. You got to be kidding!

 

[Coressel]

Originally Posted by TravisR
Bring an iPod and play the Fox Fanfare right before the movie starts.

I'm sure some douche rocket will actually do that.

 

[TravisR]

^ No doubt there there will be bootlegs where a fan adds the Fox logo and fanfare on to the front.

 

[SilverWook]

That's called a fan edit.

 

[SilverWook]

I know this isn't real, but I like it...

 

[Brett_M]

As a fan and collector, I am excited for the future of the saga. My only worry is that I will not be able to resist the urge to read every single article that pops up about the plot of Episode VII. I don't think I will be able to go in spoiler-free. I remember how disappointed I was when I saw TPM after reading the novelization beforehand. Maybe that will keep me from ruining it.

 

[TravisR]

^ For the past few years, I haven't watched trailers (outside of a movie theater), I haven't read reviews & I haven't read spoilers (I was never big on that anyway) and it has increased my enjoyment of movie viewing immeasuarbly. I go to the movies enough that the odds are that I'll see the Episode VII trailer and I spend enough time on Star Wars sites that I'm bound to find out something about the plot, who's in it, etc., but I won't be freeze framing and analyzing every shot in the trailer so I think I will actually be surprised when I see the movie rather than sitting there thinking "Oh, there's that shot that I've been staring at on my computer for the last 4 months." Give it a test run this summer by picking a movie that you know you want to see and try to go into it as spoiler-free as possible. Then after seeing the movie, go back and watch the trailer and TV spots, read reviews, plot synopsis, etc. and see how much those things would have revealed.

 

[Jason Charlton]

Originally Posted by TravisR
^ For the past few years, I haven't watched trailers (outside of a movie theater), I haven't read reviews & I haven't read spoilers (I was never big on that anyway) and it has increased my enjoyment of movie viewing immeasuarbly. I go to the movies enough that the odds are that I'll see the Episode VII trailer and I spend enough time on Star Wars sites that I'm bound to find out something about the plot, who's in it, etc., but I won't be freeze framing and analyzing every shot in the trailer so I think I will actually be surprised when I see the movie rather than sitting there thinking "Oh, there's that shot that I've been staring at on my computer for the last 4 months."
Give it a test run this summer by picking a movie that you know you want to see and try to go into it as spoiler-free as possible. Then after seeing the movie, go back and watch the trailer and TV spots, read reviews, plot synopsis, etc. and see how much those things would have revealed.

I take much the same approach (even with TV shows we watch). It's definitely not easy to do in this day and age. My biggest challenge currently is avoiding all spoilers and information for the new Star Trek movie. Thankfully during the SB last night, it only took about 2 seconds for me to recognize the commercial/trailer for the movie and I was able to fast-forward through it (yay, DVR!). So far so good, but it's only going to get harder.

 

[Brett_M]

^ For the past few years, I haven't watched trailers (outside of a movie theater), I haven't read reviews & I haven't read spoilers (I was never big on that anyway) and it has increased my enjoyment of movie viewing immeasuarbly. I go to the movies enough that the odds are that I'll see the Episode VII trailer and I spend enough time on Star Wars sites that I'm bound to find out something about the plot, who's in it, etc., but I won't be freeze framing and analyzing every shot in the trailer so I think I will actually be surprised when I see the movie rather than sitting there thinking "Oh, there's that shot that I've been staring at on my computer for the last 4 months." Give it a test run this summer by picking a movie that you know you want to see and try to go into it as spoiler-free as possible. Then after seeing the movie, go back and watch the trailer and TV spots, read reviews, plot synopsis, etc. and see how much those things would have revealed.

I tried it with The Dark Knight Rises and it worked except for the identity of Ra's Al Ghul's daughter.

 

[Sean Bryan]

I know that in the announcement of Lucasfilm going to Disney it was already said that they plan on doing a new trilogy plus stand alone movies, but Disney has officially confirmed that it plans on doing these stand alone movies. http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/174871-disney-confirms-stand-alone-star-wars-films Ainitcool news had a rumor recently that the first stand alone movie would focus on Yoda. Not sure how well that would work, but it could be interesting.

 

[Sam Favate]

All good news. I'm beginning to get concerned though that with Marvel's 2 or 3 movies per year and what seems to be 1 or 2 Star Wars movies per year that Disney could be flooding the market, or at least, not leaving much room for anything else to come out. If Warner Bros ever gets it's Justice League project off the ground and follows a 2 or 3 film per year model, there will be little room for anything else. We're also talking about massive amounts of production money. Let's say Disney makes 5 Marvel and Star Wars films per year, that's easily over a billion dollars in production and marketing costs - just on these films! Most studios release far more than five films a year. More power to them, and I hope they can pull it off, but this is uncharted territory.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

Why do you think they will be putting out that many movies per year. Episodes 7, 8, and 9 will be over 6 years, that means 3 years between films, not 2 because they don't count the first year as in 2015, 2018, 2021 (Disney: See we released 3 films over 6 years). The stand-alone movies will fill in the some of the gap but there will still be years with no Star Wars movie. I am actually more worried about too few or too much time between Star Wars movies. It seems like the more time between movies, the more time is allowed for and therefore spent coming up with bigger and badder SFX for longer periods of the movie to the detriment of the story. When you don't have much time for SFX then the only thing left is a strong script and acting for most of the movie. Sometimes "rush" is a good thing. As far as a glut of superhero movies, well we have many years where a huge number of westerns were released each year and that didn't seem to be too big of a problem. Some stood out and stood the test of time and others failed immediately. I also think that only the true top tier franchises will get the really big budgets (200+M for Iron Man, Spiderman, Batman, Superman), the rest are going to have to do with a bit less, probably closer to 125M. Hopefully production will rise to the challenge with good compelling stories and sufficient quality SFX rather than just relying on spectacle to cover up bad stories. Also hopefully they will focus on what makes each hero different in a moral / style / personality viewpoint rather than one-upping each other in how much they can blow up on the screen. How can I have a favorite if Iron Man is nothing more than Superman using a powered suit and Batman is nothing more than Iron Man but using "gadgets" for the same results instead of an iron suit?