Poll: How Excited Are You for ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ (If At All)?

Last week, J.J. Abrams and the producers of the upcoming ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ revealed a cast photo that officially confirmed both familiar and new faces who will appear in the space opera sequel. Are you pumped up with excitement for the saga to return to theater screens, or are you skeptical that this one could possibly be any good?

Finally returning to the franchise are Original Trilogy stars Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Kenny Baker (R2-D2) and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca). Even Harrison Ford is back, after decades of distancing himself from anything to do with ‘Star Wars’. Strangely missing is Billy Dee Williams, but his recent stint on ‘Dancing with the Stars’ strikes me as a good indication that Lando may show up as well.

New additions include Adam Driver (‘Girls’), John Boyega (‘Attack the Block’), Oscar Isaac (‘Inside Llewyn Davis’), Daisy Ridley (‘Mr. Selfridge’), Andy Serkis (pretty much any movie that has ever had a motion-capture character) and the legendary Max von Sydow. No details are yet available about what roles any of these actors will play, but it stands to reason that Serkis will probably do a motion-capture alien, and von Sydow would make a good Sith lord.

After the cast announcement was first made, some quarters of the internet erupted in a tizzy of manufactured controversy about gender inequality, because the photo only showed three women (Fisher, Ridley and new Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy) sitting amongst a big group of guys – as if there will be no other actors in the entire movie beyond those in the photo. Also, why exactly is ‘Star Wars’ suddenly the poster child for this issue, and not… oh, I don’t know… 90% of all movies made every year in world cinema? Why is this suddenly a huge problem now, and with this movie?

In any case, despite some curiosity about how the old characters can be worked into the new story, my interest in anything ‘Star Wars’ has been on the wane for years, and I just can’t build up much enthusiasm for this project. I’ve lost confidence in J.J. Abrams and his shallow style-over-substance approach to filmmaking after the dud ‘Star Trek into Darkness‘. As much as I’m glad to see George Lucas removed from the captain’s chair, I just don’t think that Abrams is the right guy for the job either.

What do you think? Is the Force still strong with ‘Star Wars’, or do you have a bad feeling about this?

Are You Excited for 'Star Wars: Episode VII'?

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25 comments

  1. William Henley

    I chose “I don’t know how to feel”. If this was 15 years ago, and we didn’t have the prequels, I would be thrilled about this. I was excited at first when I heard that Lucas was not directing these and that JJ Abrams was, but then I saw Into Darkness.

    I’ll go to see this, but as of right now, I am more excited for Godzilla or Maleficent than for the new Star Wars movie. Maybe after we get closer to release date and a few trailers start circulating, I may get back into Star Wars fanboy mode.

  2. Timcharger

    Belief in the Force, Josh, you must have.

    Judge me by one photo, do you?

    Pessimism leads to distrust,
    distrust leads hopelessness,
    hopelessness leads to suffering,
    Suffering leads to bad poll results.

    To grow strong in the Force, difficult you must train.
    For your next blog post, carry me in your backpack while writing, you must.

  3. Chris B

    Well, since we have 3 movies that showed how NOT to make a great Star Wars film, and the fact that I find anything Abrams directs compilsively watchable and the return of the original cast…I can’t help but get excited.

  4. eric

    J.J. Abrams did a good job with the first Star Trek film, crashed hard with the second one… so hopefully the first one will be great and he will take a back seat (producer role) on the next ones. I can’t imagine J.J. Abrams as a director on these films, making the time commitment Disney is going to demand for all three to be released in a timely fashion, he has to many irons in the fire. I would love to see Guillermo Del Toro or even better Alfonso Cuaron get in the directors chair for one of the new ones.

    Even better, would be some parallel story lines via other media, ala Matrix, with some darker stories fleshed out by Rodriquez or Aronofsky or Miike…

  5. Zerozep

    I feel like six movies was more then enough, good or bad how much content can you have from the same franchise in cinema form? And there are many other mediums that Star Wars is involved in which I do also enjoy but I feel like plot lines are continually going to be stretched and over convulted to keep this thing going after episode 6. I think I would be much more interested in an old republic story. I will of course however see this lol but just hard to get excited about it. I do enjoy most of Abrams movies even if they do fake that they have substance but are a bit shallow.

  6. Ryan

    I really don’t care about Star Wars any more. I’ll always love the OT, but I’m just not the obsessed fan that I used to be.
    If it gets good reviews, I’ll check it out….if not, I’ll happily skip it.

  7. Robert Stokes

    There have been enough extended universe novels written that material shouldn’t be an issue. I just wish they would have done this years ago with the original cast using Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy storyline. Reading those novels was the closest I’ve felt to the OT.

    That said, I think it’ll be fun. I think JJ has seen enough of how not to make a SW movie and Super 8 makes realize JJ can make a good flick. Heck, even as messy and cliche as Into Darkness was, I still enjoyed it and so did my 8 year old (at the time). I think we have to realize we were all much younger when we first saw the original trilogy and remember it fondly because of that.

  8. The big difference between the last Star Trek movie and this new Star Wars one is that Lawrence Kasdan is writing the screenplay, NOT Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman. That alone gets me excited that this will turn out pretty well.

    • Chris B

      I dunno…I just watched “The Big Chill” for the first time and eesh….then again…I’m not a hippie-turned-yuppie so perhaps I just didn’t connect with the source material like one is supposed to.

      • Chris B

        I think Dreamcatcher is one of the worst fucking movies ever made by a major studio…it’s gonna be in te top 5 at least. I’m shocked that it didn’t get ripped on way more, everything fails in that movie, there’s not a single thing that works.

      • EM

        The Lawrence Kasdan who rewrote The Empire Strikes Back? or the Lawrence Kasdan who wrote Return of the Jedi?

    • The original trilogy had to get captured into a digital format before it could be altered, so rest assured, there *has* to be a master copy sitting on a file server somewhere. If Disney sees money with it, they’ll do it.

      • Josh Zyber
        Author

        Unfortunately, George Lucas actually had the original film negatives for all three movies altered to conform to the 1997 Special Edition changes. After that, the SE versions of the movies were scanned only at 1080p resolution. Those scans from 1997 are the basis for all subsequent changes and revisions, including the versions that appear now on Blu-ray.

        In order to properly restore the original trilogy, Disney will need to deconstruct the Special Editions and piece the movies back together again. It can be done. (For all his faults, one of George Lucas’ saving graces is that he’s a hoarder and saved every stray film trim.) However, it will be time consuming and expensive work. Ultimately, I’m sure that the studio will see the value in doing it, but it doesn’t seem to be anyone’s immediate priority.

        Disney primarily bought Lucasfilm in order to produce new Star Wars content under its own banner, and has not shown much interest in doing anything with the old, existing Star Wars content, which is still entangled in distribution and licensing contracts with outside entities that Disney doesn’t want to share profits with.

  9. It will make Millions (or Billions counting all 3) regardless. There’s as much love:hate for Abrams as is Michael Bay but people will still buy into it. I think this go round though we can THANK someone for NOT involving Lucas. He had a great vision way back when, then he found religion and butchered everything we know to be sacred, including Han woosing out.
    Will they call this trilogy the Sequel trilogy?

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