By Rudie Obias | 7 years ago



A few months ago, Prescott Harvey, from the creative agency Sincerely, Truman, released a video explaining how J.J. Abrams could restore the Star Wars brand after the dreaded prequel trilogy. The video shared four specific points about what made the original Star Wars trilogy the height of pop culture and science fiction. Harvey made the video as an open letter to J.J. Abrams and started an online petition so the video could be delivered on the 47-year-old director’s desk at Lucasfilm.

According to The Times, J.J. Abrams did watch the video and here’s what he had to say about it. “I would say that [the video conveys] a feeling that we share very much.” Abrams continued to praise Star Wars for being about the unknown and the mysterious. He wants to capture that feeling and tone with the new sequel trilogy. Abrams continued:

“I loved how Star Wars had that sense of a world far beyond the borders of what you can see and have been told,” he said. “It’s one of the things it did so brilliantly. If you watch the first movie, you don’t actually know exactly what the Empire is trying to do. They’re going to rule by fear – but you don’t know what their end game is. The beauty of that movie was that it was an unfamiliar world, and yet you wanted to see it expand and to see where it went.”

It seems that he realizes that the sequel trilogy can’t be anything like the prequel trilogy, in terms of tone, but he knows he has to draw in an audience that only know the prequels. “A lot of kids who saw all the prequels when they were young really do identify with those movies as much as my generation identified with the originals,” he said.

It’s going to be difficult for J.J. Abrams to strike the right tone for the sequel trilogy. He has to find the balance between the original and prequels to satisfy the older generation and the younger. In that way, it feels like he’s a Jedi Knight in training, as he’s trying to find the balance between the light and the dark side of the Force.

Considering all the pressure he’s under to deliver Star Wars: Episode VII on time in 2015, it’s not going to be an easy feat. Not only will Abrams direct the film, but he is now one of Episode VII’s co-screenwriters with Lawrence Kasdan. Hopefully, Lucasfilm isn’t too far behind on pre-production and the next steps of production will go more smoothly.

If you haven’t watched the “4 Rules to Make Star Wars Great Again” video yet, I highly recommend checking it out below. It’s a short, but sweet, look at what made Star Wars so special with general audiences in the 70s and 80s. The video is also very well made, as it lays out what Abrams can do to make Star Wars great again, namely ditch the Midi-chlorians and don’t cast child actors in major roles. Because according to the video, “Star Wars Isn’t Cute.”

Star Wars: Episode VII is expected to open in theaters sometime in 2015.