Star Wars: Episode VII To Be Shot On 35mm Film

In the Digital Age, the word “Film” has somewhat lost its meaning. A lot of movies these days are films in name only, sort of the way an album of MP3s is referred to as a record. Perhaps because of it’s nostalgia, a lot of people now use the word film as a way of distinguishing a “good” movie. For example, I don’t think anybody has ever referred to The Smurfs 2 as a film. Just for kicks, let’s try it right now. “Tonight Beatrice and I will be enjoying an evening at the cinema. We shall be seeing a film called The Smurfs 2.” See? That didn’t feel right.

Well, it looks like J.J. Abrams new Star Wars movie is going to be a film not just in name only. Boba Fett Fan Club is reporting that according to Mr. Abrams frequent cinamatographer Dan Mindel, speaking at an event hosted by the American Society of Cinematographers, Episode VII will be shot on good old fashioned 35mm Kodak film.

Though this sounds like an excellent decision, it isn’t a total shocker. Since Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, the big whigs over at the House of Mouse have been going to great lengths to capture the same magic that made the original trilogy so special, like filming in exotic real-world locales, filming in UK studios like Elstree and Pinewood, and getting Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan to consult on the script. And of course the return of Luke, Han and Leia. For the eight people who haven’t seen Star Wars, they were the main characters in the original trilogy.

Regardless of where it’s shot or how it’s shot, we’re all just hoping that it’s a good movie. So hopefully with some great storytelling and attention to detail, Star Wars: Episode VII will be remembered as a great film, both literally and figuratively.

The down side: there’s probably going to be some lens flare.

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Star Wars Episode 7: 5 Stories Disney Should Avoid For The New Films

George Lucas hit the headlines a couple of months ago after announcing he had sold the Star Wars franchise to Disney. This was followed by announcements that a new trilogy was planned in addition to several stand alone films.

There has been a lot of speculation about what stories will feature in the new trilogy and with the Expanded Universe comprising of hundreds of novels, comics and games, there isn’t exactly a shortage of material. However there are a few bleak ones that Disney might want to avoid.

Here are five candidates that shouldn’t be considered for feature films any time soon…

5. Darksaber

Darksaber is a novel that takes place eight years after Return of the Jedi. It featured a character named Durga the Hutt trying to obtain the secret plans for the Death Star. Using these plans he could then have the super weapons original designer, Bevel Lemlisk, create a new weapon for him so that he could hold planets to ransom. Han and Leia, along with Luke and a few others, set out to find bevel and destroy the weapon while it is still under construction.

Why it might not make a great film:

The two main foes from this particular book are not blockbuster movie villains. Durga is essentially a fatter Jabba the Hutt. Instead of taking pleasure cruises in the desert, collecting frozen pilots and dressing princesses in demeaning outfits, Durga actually wants to do some old fashion crime. While Jabba was an interesting character he was never meant to be the main villain, unfortunately the same applies to a bigger and badder version of him.

Bevel on the other hand is an architect and engineer. Sure, he designs really big guns but he’s not quite up to Darth Vader levels of villainy. The Darksaber super weapon he designs in the story is essentially the Death Star but without all the superfluous office space and garbage dumps. Perhaps Bevel was sick of the complaints about weaknesses in the external structure and decided that he would just go for the giant laser.

The plot isn’t the most imaginative either as it involves the same protagonists from the original trilogy attempting to destroy a super weapon which has the capability to destroy planets (sound familiar?).

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Star Wars: 10 Things We Want From The New Trilogy

I was born a few months after Star Wars was released, and the trilogy it kicked off became the cultural yardstick of my childhood. Every new fantasy character, toy, plot, vehicle, creature, weapon, soundtrack, video game, and superpower that appeared on my radar was evaluated in relation to The Saga. It was impossible to experience anything like skiing or riding a trail bike through a forest without pretending I was piloting a T-47 on Hoth, or speeder bike on Endor. I attached a 12 inch Boba Fett action figure to a monofilament zip line in my backyard because the bounty hunter’s micro-flights in Jedi merely whet my appetite.

I still have fifty or so original Kenner action figures, including a Tauntaun with a parting rubber stomach for gut-thawing Hoth Luke. I expanded my Dagobah playset with acres of mission brown papier-m ch , and my dad painstakingly built a Millennium Falcon kit the size of a family pizza with a brilliant light strip in the rear powered by six D batteries, with which I frequently made the jump into hyperspace, and most likely destroyed in a fiery collision with an asteroid (dog). I still have an X-wing, and I’m still jealous of a childhood friend who had a Bespin Twin-Pod Cloud Car. I have one of the pilots with those epic clam shell helmets, just not the car!

Needless to say, the Star Wars universe was a big deal to me. With a kid’s imagination, I practically had one foot inside it, and I’d do anything I could to slide it a bit further into that galaxy far, far away, cocooning myself inside its stories and imagery. So when I caught wind of a rumour (post-Empire Strikes Back, when I was about six), that Star Wars was but one episode of a nine act saga (potentially explaining the mysteriously non-sequential episode numbers), and that each of these acts had been crammed into a book (I pictured as a bespoke medieval Bible), I simply had to feast of its secrets.

For comparison’s sake, I had a full-blown hissy fit when a local grocery store sold out of the R2-D2 popsicle advertised on its popsicle chart. My mother was very cagey about it, though. The kindest thing would have been to put me out of my misery. But either because she genuinely believed something one of her loopy pals at aerobics had passed on from their teenage son, or because she’s a black belt fantasist, she allowed me to believe that it was real enough, just incredibly rare. Illicit even. Like The Necronomicon. Or Eddie Murphy Raw.

All these years later, it’s amusing to consider that this tall tale will come true … more or less; that nine canon Star Wars stories will exist. But more than that, exciting, albeit a ‘once bitten, twice shy’ kind: The Prequels. Gah! I don’t think anyone felt more let down by them than those of us who loved the original films as children, and were rendered delirious by the prospect of being transported back to those formative experiences of wonder and joy.

Fortunately, our fantasies weren’t crushed by Trilogy II. That George Lucas could match, let alone add to, his original masterpieces, certainly, but there’s never been a question as to whether Star Wars has the potential to live on. And with its artistically ailing creator more or less out of the way, we have, once again, a new hope! So, what are the ten things that Trilogy III simply must provide us with in order to redeem The Saga and bring balance to The Force?

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