J J Abrams on the sets of The Force Awakens (courtesy jjabramsofficial)
J.J. Abrams
has just accepted an assignment that's a far Wookiee cry from what he delivered just two years ago.
Now that Abrams has been announced as the new director of
Star Wars: Episode IX, fans of the franchise are weighing in, as their opinions of his 2015 film,
The Force Awakens, color their expectations of his 2019
Star Wars project. Yet making too many comparisons between these
Star Wars trilogy bookends is a fraught endeavor.
From geek websites to The Washington Post's own comments thread Tuesday,
The Force Awakens is being strafed anew as a "rehash" - as somehow proof that for
Episode IX, Abrams will simply
reheat a mess of old ingredients. This from a filmmaker who is widely being called the "safe" choice to land the sequel trilogy's big finish.
Let's step back for a moment, though, and remember where
Star Wars was in the fall of 2015.
Just a decade earlier, George Lucas had delivered
Revenge of the Sith (aka
Episode III), wrapping up his Clone Wars prequel trilogy with a film that landed like an acid test for Lucas fans. To this day, the movie gets an audience score of a relatively low 65 percent on Rotten Tomatoes - compared with 89 percent for
The Force Awakens.
Abrams' mission upon new owner Disney's reboot of the
Star Wars galaxy wasn't simply to deliver a compelling movie that could kick off fresh sequels. Abrams was tasked with resuscitating fan interest by reviving the joy that we felt for Lucas's original trilogy.
One weapon that Abrams chose to deploy liberally, of course, was nostalgia. The sandy terrain was littered with feel-good callbacks (what the
South Park creators might call "member berries"). This was the "barn door" approach to winning back fans, as Abrams cast the excavated Millennium Falcon's entry doors as shamelessly wide as possible to get us all back on board the franchise.
Having succeeded at winning that massive fan return - to a $2 billion-plus gross worldwide - Abrams is freed up to take bigger chances. Nostalgia can be burned off like a first-stage rocket, allowing
Episode IX to focus on further elevating its next-gen heroes (especially as the film alters its plans to spotlight the late Carrie Fisher's Leia).
Abrams, too, surely learned valuable space-sequel lessons from his second
Star Trek film,
Into Darkness, which was inventive but also included a studio compromise or two that he later said he regretted. Only wiser, he grows.
Yes, Abrams was a "safer" pick by Kathleen Kennedy, the Lucasfilm president. But that speaks more of their creative harmony (and
Star Wars is no longer an auteur's ride). They are on this journey together, as producers of an enterprise that, while worth billions, is allowing them the growing clout to take chances with the trilogy's finish.
The franchise's main films will likely never afford the creative risks that the
Star Wars one-offs can take. But Abrams - working with writer Chris
Argo Terrio, among others, with Lawrence Kasdan always hovering - is not going to play everything "safe." He just wants to play it smart.
(c) 2017, The Washington Post
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)