George Lucas has got us. He had sworn that there would be more Star Wars and had come to believe. It must be said that he had put the heart, assénant example in 2008, the tone of the irrevocable: “For sure, there will be no episodes VII-IX. I left very clear instructions so that there is no additional film. “Even the most skeptical had bowed seeing the filmmaker of 67 years officially retiring in January 2012, in the pages of New York Times :” I am out of business, my company, all these things. “Tired of carrying his own legacy, annoyed by the virulent criticism of his second trilogy (” Why would I do more when everybody yells at me in time length and explains me how I’m a terrible person? “), the father of Darth Vader closed shop. You had to be a reason, Star Wars is no longer a great piece of history, an eternally cherished memory of the public …
And then, suddenly, everything changed. We October 30, 2012 and Disney has announced the site layout Star Wars Episode VII . In exchange for $ 4.05 billion, George Lucas cedes the reins of its galaxy (Lucasfilm) Mickey. Millions of fans dismayed cry betrayal. How Does the director have accepted these commercial wedding? Why such a turnaround?
Probably because Star Wars does not accept to be buried. He won from the start and has not released its grip. George Lucas could waive thousand times. He could have in 1975, rather winded abandon the development of its “small space thing” and make Apocalypse Now as his friends Francis Ford Coppola in particular, advised him. He could just stop in 1983 after Return of the Jedi , and devote the rest of his career in the “experimental films” of which he speaks constantly. But he did not. “ Star Wars snuck up, grabbed me, threw me across the room and cornered me against the wall,” he confided in 2010. The desire to live in creature prevailed over the will of the creator. And since it no longer had the energy to feed her, he had to find another home.
“When the end of the world will arrive …”
“The first place I thought of, it’s Disney. They are large enough and our two companies fit perfectly because Lucasfilm is a kind of mini-Disney. “The filmmaker has never hidden his admiration for the firm to round ears he visits the attractions every year since it opened park. “My work is inspired by my child experience at Disneyland. I can not even tell you how Disney influenced me, “he declared still in August 2015 at its consecration by Bob Iger, the CEO of the company, in the pantheon of” Disney Legends “. With Star Wars , basically he had “wanted to take the same path as Disney,” one of the great family show. The Star Wars had also been proposed to Mickey that, to his chagrin, refused to produce it (“If Walt was alive, he would have accepted,” he fumed to time).
The contrast is beautiful, the actual inclination. But above all, Lucas has led Disney’s acquisition of two houses he loves: Pixar (originally a subsidiary of Lucasfilm) in 2006 and Marvel in 2009. Each was able to retain identity and autonomy while prospering thanks to the means of its new owner. It is to “the most stable of all the studios,” the only one able, he said, to “protect” his inheritance, that the inventor of Star Wars decides to turn. Because “in the end, he professes, when the end of the world will come and we will all die, the last thing to disappear is Disney.”
Soon, the concern of fans has given way to a much more insistent feeling: excitement. Star Wars comes back! And not once! An entire trilogy is planned from 2015. And that’s not all! Between two episodes of the trilogy release a spin-off, that is to say, a film about a character or a secondary aspect of the story. In other words, we will have our ration Star Wars every year until 2020. Until overdose? At this point, no one dwells on this risk Star Wars we missed and we are willing to trust. – For now – to those who bring us back. All hopes rest on Episode VII. Assist do we, as promised by its title, the Force Wake ? The director has no right to fail. From him depends the entire future of that galaxy far far away.
“Too many for one man star”
No doubt this is why the poor man initially refused the mission. JJ Abrams was just finishing the second of the new Star Trek when Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm (designated by Lucas before departure), asked him to make the first new Star Wars . “This is too much” star “and power to one man. I’d much rather be in the public rather than having to figure out how to make this film, “said first declined to Steven Spielberg protege, scared, and rightly so, by the responsibility. And then, as George Lucas, he could not resist very long. “The idea of what had happened the last thirty years … Where is Han Solo? What happened to Leia? Luke is he alive? These questions are put is to seep into my mind and I found myself overwhelmed by the visceral desire to be part of this world. The logic of why this was not a good idea to accept has been supplanted by emotion. “
The emotion, which is why the return of Star Wars is the largest film event – if not societal – of 2015. “We remember the age when they had Star Wars came out, the first time we showed Star Wars to our children … People were in tears when they talk about Star Wars . How often did you he arrives to talk about a movie with someone and see to tears? “Said Kathleen Kennedy. Millions of people have felt their throat tighten discovering Han Solo and Chewbacca aboard the Millennium Falcon in the trailer of the Force Wake . Thirty-two years have passed, wrinkles and white hair arrived, but Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher renfilent with evident pleasure their costumes Han, Luke and Leia. The setbacks known by one or the other (alcohol, drugs, depression), often suffocating weight of the icons in the shade where they lived, frustration and bitterness sometimes all is forgiven. Star Wars back to basics.
“For the sole purpose of giving pleasure”
To find “authenticity” and “rustic roots” of this “space western”, JJ Abrams has partnered with screenwriter of The Empire attack against , Lawrence Kasdan. They promise a story focused “mainly on the characters”, not on special effects, as has often criticized the second trilogy. “It is very important that the film gives the feeling of being tangible, they might believe that these things are really happening,” insists the director, who was shot on film, on location (in Abu Dhabi and Iceland in particular), and has a point to use as little as possible to digital. Models, puppets and even droids, all (or almost!) Was manufactured to the old. “In fact, the digital was more used to erase things to add,” boasts Abrams. As a final touch on a board that new producers hope to make it perfect, the magician soundtracks, John Williams, just “add paragraphs to a letter being written in many years.”
“It is sort of like a concert you want to hear the new songs, but above all you want to hear the old hits, “says Kathleen Kennedy. “Here, it’s the same: it has reformed the group and we know that people want to find things they like. But they also expect a new experience. “The key word in this experience? Entertainment. Beyond the emotion, beyond the mythology, above all the serious things that feed and justify our desire to plunge into the Star Wars universe there, fundamentally, the desire to have fun.
“I managed my plan if I give one hour of joy to the child who is not yet man or the man who is still a child, “wrote Arthur Conan Doyle introduction of Lost World. This is the essence of Star Wars . At the time, a revolution. In the midst of a decade of pessimistic films, such as The Godfather or Taxi Driver, movies where the heroes ended corrupt, defeated and dead, now they proposed to public a story where the good guys prevail unambiguous and receive a medal at the end! “Strange idea of making a film for the sole purpose of providing fun,” exclaimed Time magazine in 1977. If the idea has lost its strangeness, in our century of Hollywood blockbusters, the innocent optimism were showing the first Star Wars remains rare. At a time when our society multiplies dystopias and other post-apocalyptic scenarios, perhaps we need again of these adventures of princesses and knights, those eternal quests at the border of the world of this cinema in short only able to make us experience this kind of “effervescent giddiness” that George Lucas was looking for and he has transmitted.
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