Academy Award winning
actress Lupita Nyong'o is featured in this latest photograph taken for the
Vanity Fair piece on J.J. Abrams highly anticipated Star Wars: The Force
Awakens.
In addition to the image that reveals the actress working on her CGI
character, the space pirate Maz Kanata, the news outlet also had the chance to
talk with the director and ask him a few pertinent questions about the December
18th release.
First up the director was asked on how he has filled in the gaps
between his installment in the galaxy far, far away and Return of the Jedi.
J.J. Abrams: Well, what’s
cool is we’ve obviously had a lot of time [during the development process] to
talk about what’s happened outside of the borders of the story that you’re
seeing. So there are, of course, references to things, and some are very
oblique so that hopefully the audience can infer what the characters are
referring to. We used to have more references to things that we pulled out
because they almost felt like they were trying too hard to allude to something.
I think that the key is—and whether we’ve accomplished that or not is, of
course, up to the audience—but the key is that references be essential so that
you don’t reference a lot of things that feel like, oh, we’re laying pipe for,
you know, an animated series or further movies. It should feel like things are
being referenced for a reason.
Abrams' was also
asked about how he feels to work on a Star Wars film since he has been a big
fan of the franchise ever since he was a child.
Maybe the weirdest
moment, which came months after production, was the first time I sat down with
John Williams to show him about a half an hour of the movie. I can’t describe
the feeling. All I will say is, just to state the facts of it: I am about to
show John Williams 30 minutes of a Star Wars movie that he has not seen [and] that I directed.
That’s probably as surreal as it gets in my professional life experience.
Finally, the
filmmaker was asked if like in the original trilogy, will there be nods the
cinema history, like for example the two suns in Tatooine, which look like they
were pulled from a John Ford western.
There are a few
specific references that are kind of my own little stupid, secret ones. But
what I realized early on was it was all about point of view—meaning it’s not
like you just objectively throw in a star field or a spaceship or a desert
planet or whatever the thing. The question is, who is that person in that
experience? Why does it matter to them? What are they desperate for or afraid
of? For me, you could reference all the stuff you want, but the experience of
the audience in this is that they’ve got to be sitting with someone who happens
to be on-screen going through these experiences. And then that’s not just a
desert planet; it could be the most desperate place in the world. Or that’s not
just a spaceship flying by; it could be the greatest, most heroic moment of
your life. That, to me, has been the constant struggle: to make sure that none
of these things are treated like either they’re a museum piece and we’re trying
to honor them or they’re gratuitous and thrown in because, well, it’s a Star Warsmovie so you’ve got to put these things in.
Everything has got to be essential to the characters in the film.
Star Wars: The Force
Awakens, opens in theaters December 18, 2015. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is
directed by J.J. Abrams from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan & Abrams, and
features a cast including actors John Boyega (Finn), Daisy Ridley (Rey), Adam
Driver (Kylo Ren), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), Andy Serkis, Academy Award winner
Lupita Nyong’o (Maz Kanata),
Gwendoline Christie (Captain Phasma), Crystal Clarke, Pip Andersen, Domhnall
Gleeson, and Max von Sydow. They will join the original stars of the saga,
Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and
Kenny Baker. The film is being produced by Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, and
Bryan Burk, and John Williams returns as the composer. Star Wars: The Force
Awakens is Episode VII in the Star Wars Saga.
Source - Vanity Fair
0 Comments:
Post a Comment