The Only Thing Wrong with the New Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer, Yup, the latest trailer for The Force Awakens, released as the centrepiece of Star Wars Celebration Day, is mighty fine. So fine, in fact, that it’s easy to miss its worryingly sharp, stylistic edge.
Opening on a slow panning shot of Jakku’s desert landscape – not just a homage to Tatooine, but also to Star Wars’ Ol’Western heritage (a genre typified by slow, methodical direction, more on which later) – the wrecked hull of an Imperial Star Destroyer creeps into frame. Shortly after, Oscar Isaac’s “best frickin’ pilot in the galaxy” Poe Dameron rolls and spins an X-Wing over a river. So far, so thrilling and faithful. Nearer the end of the trailer, though, the Millennium Falcon flies inside that wrecked Star Destroyer, TIE Fighters hot on his tail. And that’s where the problem lies.
The camera crash zooms on the Falcom just as it enters one of the Destroyer’s gaping thrusters. That half-second jolt is a signature; a calling card. J.J. Abrams’ calling card.OStar Wars The Force Awakens (7)n the director’s passport, next to his middle names ‘lens flare’ and ‘shaky cam’, lies ‘crash zoom’. It’s an unfortunate moniker to have, a mean piece of nominative determinism by his parents, but Abrams persists nonetheless. These middle names are all techniques he uses to manufacture authenticity, stylistic quirks that reveal the lens itself (separating viewer one notch from film immersion – a reminder that your viewpoint is a camera, not your own eye).
To use them is to pinch from the documentary genre. They’re devices for live sport, nature documentaries or for news coverage of disgraced former NFL stars being pursued down highways; i.e. it is used for immediacy, when you don’t have time to edit the imperfect reframing out. Their messiness is synonymous with reality, and that’s what Abrams has his thick-rim spectacled eyes on.
Using them has consequences. Unnecessary attention is drawn to the film not being real. In some movies, where this conflict is either addressed or muddied (think the horror found footage genre, or, to use an example directly from Abrams’ oeuvre, Cloverfield), the stories give these techniques purpose. When a film’s narrative has no reason to be diegetically shot, however, its inauthenticity is exposed.
But as fun as Razzamatz vs Substance is to debate, it isn’t actually the ‘one thing wrong’. To focus on such aesthetic gripes would be to miss the bigger motion picture.
The one thing wrong with the latest Force Awakens trailer is that it confirms J.J. Abrams is not shooting in the Star Wars house style.
Nobody ever suspected he would, given the shaky-cam, lens-flare way he filmed Star Trek, but the Falcon’s crash zoom is the first time it’s been confirmed. Now we know for sure that the next Star Wars film will look like Lost, Mission Impossible 3, Super 8. The next Star Wars film will look like a J.J. Abrams film.It opens up an interesting debate, that of ‘Auteur vs Franchise Style’ (or, to give it a more DC-friendly name, ‘Auteur v Franchise Style: Dusk of Aesthetics’). It’s one very familiar to television shows, where multiple directors work together to achieve a uniform appearance; and also increasingly prevalent in cinema, as shared Universes become more and more popular. Just look at Edgar Wright’s departure from Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man. In the end, he was too bold for the house style.
When you think of Star Wars, carefully paced, John Ford-style direction won’t be your first nostalgic memory. It probably won’t even be your tenth or eleventh. It’ll be Darth Vader facing up to years of unpaid childcare costs. It’ll be Han shooting/not shooting/shooting first. It’ll be Princess Leia’s donut hair. It’ll be the character moments. But then you’ll start to remember the action. The lightsaber fights, the asteroid field chases. Importantly, what you won’t think of is shaky cameras, lens flares or crash zooms.
Chewie, we’re home. But who installed those blinding light fixtures?
The camera crash zooms on the Falcom just as it enters one of the Destroyer’s gaping thrusters. That half-second jolt is a signature; a calling card. J.J. Abrams’ calling card.OStar Wars The Force Awakens (7)n the director’s passport, next to his middle names ‘lens flare’ and ‘shaky cam’, lies ‘crash zoom’. It’s an unfortunate moniker to have, a mean piece of nominative determinism by his parents, but Abrams persists nonetheless. These middle names are all techniques he uses to manufacture authenticity, stylistic quirks that reveal the lens itself (separating viewer one notch from film immersion – a reminder that your viewpoint is a camera, not your own eye).
To use them is to pinch from the documentary genre. They’re devices for live sport, nature documentaries or for news coverage of disgraced former NFL stars being pursued down highways; i.e. it is used for immediacy, when you don’t have time to edit the imperfect reframing out. Their messiness is synonymous with reality, and that’s what Abrams has his thick-rim spectacled eyes on.
Using them has consequences. Unnecessary attention is drawn to the film not being real. In some movies, where this conflict is either addressed or muddied (think the horror found footage genre, or, to use an example directly from Abrams’ oeuvre, Cloverfield), the stories give these techniques purpose. When a film’s narrative has no reason to be diegetically shot, however, its inauthenticity is exposed.
But as fun as Razzamatz vs Substance is to debate, it isn’t actually the ‘one thing wrong’. To focus on such aesthetic gripes would be to miss the bigger motion picture.
The one thing wrong with the latest Force Awakens trailer is that it confirms J.J. Abrams is not shooting in the Star Wars house style.
Nobody ever suspected he would, given the shaky-cam, lens-flare way he filmed Star Trek, but the Falcon’s crash zoom is the first time it’s been confirmed. Now we know for sure that the next Star Wars film will look like Lost, Mission Impossible 3, Super 8. The next Star Wars film will look like a J.J. Abrams film.It opens up an interesting debate, that of ‘Auteur vs Franchise Style’ (or, to give it a more DC-friendly name, ‘Auteur v Franchise Style: Dusk of Aesthetics’). It’s one very familiar to television shows, where multiple directors work together to achieve a uniform appearance; and also increasingly prevalent in cinema, as shared Universes become more and more popular. Just look at Edgar Wright’s departure from Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man. In the end, he was too bold for the house style.
When you think of Star Wars, carefully paced, John Ford-style direction won’t be your first nostalgic memory. It probably won’t even be your tenth or eleventh. It’ll be Darth Vader facing up to years of unpaid childcare costs. It’ll be Han shooting/not shooting/shooting first. It’ll be Princess Leia’s donut hair. It’ll be the character moments. But then you’ll start to remember the action. The lightsaber fights, the asteroid field chases. Importantly, what you won’t think of is shaky cameras, lens flares or crash zooms.
Chewie, we’re home. But who installed those blinding light fixtures?
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