The Force Awakens

I've seen two trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. A few meandering thoughts:

i) I saw Star Wars in 1977, when I was 17. That's a nostalgic time of life. That's the right age to see it.

Lucas is not a storyteller. He had one story in him, and he said it all in the first installment. Even then, he was stretching the material. 

At the time, I was aware of the fact that it had a very thin story. But it worked on its own level. A very enjoyable film of its kind, despite the painfully corny attempts at humor. 

ii) The Empire Strikes Back was a great film of its kind. Had a truly epic feel. It was so good because Lucas delegated the story to gifted screenwriters.

Mind you, it still has its limitations. Yoda is the cliche Tibetan monk who mentors a young protege in Kung Fu wisdom. 

But it was easily the best film of the franchise. 

iii) Return of the Jedi was filler to pad out the trilogy. Like a string of outtakes.

The prequels were hopeless because Lucas reprised the role of screenwriter. He's not a storyteller. He misses on nearly all counts: plot, dialogue, characterization, ideas.  

The only thing he's good at is setting. He has a very creative imagination for exotic settings. But he has nothing to put in his settings.

It would be nice to see that visual talent devoted to good material, like Dante's Inferno, The Martian Chronicles, or some Cordwainer-Smith stories. 

It would also work for Lewis's The Space Trilogy, although nudity in Perelandra would be distracting and unavoidable. 

iv) Except for the first two original Star Wars movies, it wouldn't be hard for Abrams to top Lucas. However, the rebooted series has a mostly British cast. That will give it a very different vibe than the original.

Of course, the first had Alex Guinness and Peter Cushing. But they had a different type of role. Guinness was the éminence grise while Cushing as the classy villain. 

But the action roles, representing youthful idealism and youthful exuberance, were played by Americans. Recasting those roles with Brits changes it. It ceases to be a space Western that exemplifies the American mythos. 

I've read that due to the rapidly expanding Chinese market for films, American films are increasingly cast with international actors. Mind you, during the "golden age" of Hollywood, many American films had British or European actors. So that's nothing new. 

v) There's been some discussion about a black actor in the lead. That depends on whether he's a token minority or an actor with real charisma. We will have to wait and see. 

To judge by the trailers, the lead actress is an ingenue fashion model miscast as a superheroine. There are actresses who can be quite convincing as tough female characters. But nowadays we're usually treated to a girlish token female in a traditional male action role. It's annoying. 

In fairness, it's not as if Mark Hamill was Laurence Olivier. He was passable. Had a youthful gee-whiz quality that made him adequate for the role. But he never had the starpower to parlay his newfound fame into a career. Likewise, Carrie Fisher was another mediocrity.

There are films that carry the actor and actors that carry the film. Clearly, Hamill was in the former category. 

Harrison Ford was the only young actor with the chops to have a successful career in film, although that basically stalled after The Fugitive. 

Of the original cast, Guinness is irreplaceable, although he had a fairly brief role in the pilot film, and was marginalized in this two sequels. I'm sorry he died so soon in the first film.