A Lesson From Count Dooku

First I want to stress that I love Star Wars. I first saw Star Wars when I was a boy in the ninety-nineties. I watched the original trilogy on VHS cassettes with my younger brother. It was our mom who rented the cassettes from a local video rental store. Some years later I went to the cinema to see the Special Edition of The Empire Strikes Back. And I remember how eager I was to see the new trilogy at the turn of the old Millennium and at the beginning of the new one.

Star Wars became an essential part of my coming of age and Star Wars are related to some of my nicest memories from my teenage years. I am not the one who agrees with what Queen sing in their Bicycle Race: “and I don’t like Star Wars” (although Queen has also been my favourite band for a damn long time). This December, I will be there too.

But what I have witnessed during last days shocked me a lot. The release of the second teaser trailer became a monstrous event. Sure, teasers and trailers are an inseparable part of Hollywood marketing. They are supposed to tease you and to lure you. There are good trailers and bad ones. There are trailers serving more like baits making you desire the upcoming movie, which later turns out to be shite. There are good trailers honestly advertising what you can expect. There are honest trailers; and many more...

But frankly, do you need to stage a whole event (streaming it online on Youtube) before airing a teaser? What sense does it make? Will it make the movie better? Or the teaser? I do not doubt J. J. Abrams has hired a pro marketing team other directors can be jealous of. There is something disturbing anyway. The story has it that in the 1977, George Lucas was very unsure about the audience response. As Wikipedia says: 

“Fearing that Star Wars would fail, Lucas had made plans to be in Hawaii with his wife Marcia. Having forgotten that the film would open that day, he spent most of Wednesday in a sound studio in Los Angeles.” 

Is this not the very opposite what we have been witnessing lately? While Lucas’s story teaches us a lesson in humility, J. J. Abrams’s current attitude is complacent, arrogant and conceited. A friend of mine says that Star Wars will be magnificent, because it is Star Wars and because J. J. Abrams is a great director. I put aside the first argument and focus on the second one. Yeah, J. J. might have directed some successful movies worth your time. But we should not forget that he was behind the TV series LOST. Fuelled with suspense throughout its six seasons, the show turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments in the history of television.

WUMO might not be far from truth!
Source: http://kindofnormal.com/wumo/2015/02/04

I do not dare to guess whether Force Awakens will be a life changing experience. Maybe, maybe not. But a failure of Episode VII would be twice as ironic - in historical sense as well in the sense of the Star Wars universe. Not only would it turn out to be the biggest heist in the history of cinema so far, it would run against the Star Wars universe itself. Do you remember what Count Dooku said to Anakin...?