Imagine for a moment the peculiar experience of finding yourself in the Arabian desert, telling C3PO what to do.
Such was the case for J.J. Abrams, who, despite his own trepidation, stepped into George Lucas’ space opera with the monumental task of meeting the Death Star-size expectations that await “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
For Abrams, 49, who grew up as a “Star Wars” fan, part of the challenge was coming face to face for the first time with a fantasy world he knew and loved.
“That was a constant in the production of the movie — moments where we would all look around and realize what we were doing and gasp a little bit and then dive back in,” Abrams says in an interview. “When you’re on the set of the Millennium Falcon or staring into the eyes of C3PO giving direction, it’s pretty easy to have that fanatic part of you bubble up. But our job was to be there to tell this story, not to be a fanboy.”
For those fanboys and fangirls (many of whom are now men and women), no upcoming movie is more anticipated than “The Force Awakens” (opening Dec. 18). The rollout began months ago, whetting the voracious appetites of “Star Wars” fans with an tantalizing bits of footage, still pictures and trailers.
Enthusiasm, which likely waned after the release of the previous disappointing trilogy, is again reaching lightspeed, thanks to promising new elements (such as the rolling droid BB-8), the return of original cast members and the involvement of Abrams, already the trusted hero of another film-franchise galaxy, “Star Trek.”
The director is the new hope of the “Star Wars” franchise (now a Walt Disney Co. property), as it prepares a meteor storm of sequels and spinoffs from “Star Wars” Episode VII. Billions of dollars are at stake but the VII is expected to surpass $500 million in worldwide box office in its opening weekend alone.
The filmmaker’s involvement nearly didn’t happen. Intending to focus on original material, Abrams initially balked at inheriting “Star Wars,” but was persuaded by producer Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm.
“She and I were talking about what this world would be, this universe, nearly 40 years after Episode VI, and the idea that these characters would have lived on. And yet there would have been this new generation that may not know at who all these characters were, or (who) had heard of them but not necessarily believed that they were real,” says Abrams. “It felt like such fertile ground.”
That means Episode VII will have mix of familiar faces (Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca) as well as new ones (among them Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Max von Sydow), linking “The Force Awakens” to the original films.
VII has been made with extreme secrecy, and “Star Wars” devotees have been watching closely looking for every tiny clue they can get. They have dissected each frame revealed so far, checking elements ranging from the physics of a briefly glimpsed lightsaber to the interior design of a TIE fighter. Working under the watchful eyes of those passionate fans, says Abrams, has been a bit like making a film inside a pressure cooker.
“It is, on the one hand, incredibly and understandably stressful because you’ve got the anticipation and expectation that comes with this world that George created,” he says. “And on the other hand, it’s something that I would never complain about or look at as a negative, because it is excitement and anticipation and passion for this world that got me excited, not just to be involved with this movie, but be involved with moviemaking.”
The Force, of course, is mystical, invisible power, but much of the “Star Wars” galaxy is visible and tactile — the melancholy horizon of Tatooine, the lush forest of the Ewok planet Endor, the spilled innards of a Tauntuan. It’s qualities such as these that gave Lucas’ films an exotic, hand-crafted realism.
Understanding this sense of realism, Abrams has endeavored to marry CGI tools with old-school effects and real sets in VII. That strategy, he predicts, will pay off in capturing the spirit of “Star Wars.”
“I can’t think of something that we did that doesn’t look and feel more authentic, (or) that I wish we had done differently,” says Abrams. “Wherever possible, whenever possible, we tried to do things as much in camera as we could.
“That meant that a lot of artists … were building things, not with pixels, but with wood and paint and foam, and actually constructing sets that we could have done in post (production with CGI). It gave the actors the actual location, the actual sunlight or stage light — something to bounce off of, and (gave) the movie a feeling of being in an actual location, not an artificial one.”
Though that meant some hot days spent in the Abu Dhabi sun and occasional difficulties with the studio sets (production was shut down, for instance, after a hydraulic door fell on Ford, fracturing his leg), Abrams considers such complications worth it.
“It was really nice to not have to also worry about, ‘Will that ship look good on camera?’ because we actually had it, we were actually filming it,” he adds.
That approach was a way to keep the fantasy grounded, and it typifies the entire production — a melding of new and old, fantastical and authentic.
Yet as much as Abrams tried to keep his inner fanboy at bay, he did experience one “marvel” — watching Fisher, Hamill and Ford slide back into their iconic characters.
The director says, “What was incredible, from my point of view, was how apparently easily they flipped back into these roles. I knew for a fact, for example, that Harrison Ford was going to be in this movie. But I couldn’t be certain that Han Solo would be. … It wasn’t until we got on set that I got my answer. It was a remarkable thing to see how effortlessly Harrison Ford became Han Solo again.”
