We are now a matter of days from the return of Star Wars to the cinema screen. From the global jawdrop on the evening of October the 30th, 2012 to our screening tomorrow night we’ve followed an incredible journey home for one of cinema’s most cherished visions.
UPDATE: We’ve seen it! Read our non-spoiler review right here!
We have been living under a storm of speculation, with casting rumours, fictional plots being deliberated and dissected, and frames of trailers and leaked footage poured over with a Spaceballs-sized comb. It is a heady mix of a closely guarded production and a fierce atmosphere of anticipation.
The absence of Luke Skywalker from the marketing materials has prompted the question which has endured the most – where is he? But there are other questions which are more pertinent. Not questions about plot details, or character designs, but questions we have all been asking for three years, if not out loud.
These questions are more about the future of Star Wars as a much-loved film series. Will their mystery box gamble pay off? How dangerous is the nostalgia factor? They are questions which will certainly be answered when The Force Awakens is released, and questions we should pay close attention to.
Let’s begin…
1. Were they right to hold out on the Luke reveal?
Unarguably the key figure from the Original Trilogy, Luke Skywalker’s rise to Jedi Knight gave the first three film a sense of magnetic propulsion. The ending for him, in the glow of celebration eyeing three Jedi ghosts in the forests of Endor was light years away from his beginnings on the moisture farms of Tattooine. But what happened next? All that power, and the mantle as the last trained Jedi in the galaxy – what would become of him?
It was the question which convinced JJ Abrams to sign up for The Force Awakens. And it would resonate throughout every tease, trailer and TV spot – what happened to the last Jedi? Mark Hamill was announced, with the other members of the Big Three, as a member of the Episode VII cast early on. There were appearances on panels – and then nothing. He’s not part of the current press tour, has given few interviews and until he appears on the cinema screen we will remain in the dark about the saga’s most potent character. And none of this was a mistake. Everything has proceeded exactly as Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy have foreseen.
The deliberate absence of Skywalker created even more hype. With every new reveal the question became more urgent; it’s the most basic form of marketing. Nabokov spoke of a wise reader reading books ‘not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine’ and when I saw the one leaked image of Luke Skywalker from Episode VII it gave me more of a chill than anything else.
When the reveal comes it will end over thirty years of speculation, and it has the potential to be one of the most iconic entrances in cinema since Harry Lime stepped from a Viennese doorway.
2. Is there enough here for another two films, and to kickstart a film a year?
This is the big gamble for Disney. Until (and if) The Force Awakens is a hit we’re still standing with one foot in Prequel territory and no amount of goodwill and Han shooting first will be enough to regain our trust. While the mythical ‘twelve film saga’ (or sometimes nine) has provided the basis for the films so far we’re in vast new waters here, and The Force Awakens is our first port of call.
As the year-long 24-hour promotion by way of Twitter and sites such as this one proves there is huge appetite for more Star Wars. Disney are not spending $4billion on a chance – they have a distinct plan. Such a plan is driving the Marvel Cinematic Universe and we’ll see a similar model applied to The Force Awakens and beyond.
Setting their first anthology film just prior to the original Star Wars film is a clever move; Rogue One needs to succeed as a proof of concept. Iron Man 2 was a far worse movie than its predecessor but it didn’t harm Iron Man 3. Tony Stark is like Toy Story – stick them on a cinema screen and they work – this is surely the hope is for anything related to Star Wars.
But with Thor: The Dark World and Avengers: Age of Ultron tempering the automatically positive reaction to the MCU the danger of Star Wars apathy will make Lucasfilm wary. There will eventually be a lacklustre Star Wars film, but it certainly can’t be the first two under the Disney model.
3. Has their marketing strategy of ‘drip-drip then dam-breaking’ worked?
This is the most anticipated film of all time, and for a long time we knew almost nothing about it.
I remember downloading the very first Phantom Menace trailer over a 28.8K modem moments after it was released. It took four hours and the video file was the size of a postage stamp but it revealed almost all of the main characters, and most of the plot. For years it was common for the novelisations of films to be released before the actual films themselves. Many keen fans learned of Luke Skywalker’s heritage in the pages of a book – unimaginable today. Thankfully things have improved over the years.
We’re now in an era of the ten-second trailer tease so when the first Teaser for The Force Awakens was revealed to the world it was a cultural event, with cinemas playing the ninety-eight second trailer over and over to paying audiences. The most bejewelled Mystery Box of them all was prised open a little.
After that we waited until Star Wars Celebration, five months later, for another glimpse. We would wait another five months for our first proper trailer – only two months before the film was to be released. That’s almost unheard of for a film of this size. But since then we’ve been inundated with dozens of sneak peeks and promotional images.
We’ve seen a slew of TV spots, tie-in exclusives with Lucasfilm’s new sister companies, and a total of forty-eight promotions, each with moments of the elusive new footage. The Mystery Box has now become a veritable Lost Ark, spilling secrets while the spoiler-averse close their eyes and the rest of us melt in the marketing fury. It’s everywhere you look, and we are a frenzy-whipped audience.
With the internet dissecting each new split second of footage for clues to the tightly-guarded plot, Lucasfilm and Abrams have got this just right. Expect this to be the new model for all future films in the series.
