Why JJ Abrams Doesn't Understand Star Wars

The trailer for Star Wars VII was played before The Avengers: Age of Ultron, so I saw it (it was the short teaser trailer). So now I have to deal with what I saw, even though I didn't want to.

The Power of Setting

I noticed something almost immediately about the trailer. It didn't feel like Star Wars. It didn't match the tone of the original trilogy. Sure it has better effects. Sure it has a Stormtrooper of color. Sure it has a quillioned lightsaber. But none of those things were the problem. 

The problem has to do with JJ not understanding (or rejecting) the genre of the original trilogy (I'm going to ignore the prequels for this post). 

The setting of a movie is more than just where the characters interact. The setting of a movie is the entire tone of the film. It's the lighting (I hope there aren't all of the lens flares in SW7), the camera angles, and even the wipes between scenes. 

Cheesey Wipes

The heading for this section makes me think of a terrible cleaning product or a terrible food product. But don't let that distract you. A big part of the setting in the original Star Wars was the scene wipes (the transitions from one scene to the next). There were wipes from one side of the screen to the other, from top to bottom, from the middle out, and the clock wipe that might be my favorite. 

It looks a little bit like George Lucas got a new version of PowerPoint and was playing with all the transitions. It looks cheesey. It looks like a Space Opera (which, for the record, is what George was trying to make). 

But when you look at JJ's trailer (which you shouldn't do, unless you're subjected to it before a movie in the theater) you see mostly black screens between the scenes (and a few smash-cuts where there's no transition at all). It's a modern, blockbuster, action-movie style of trailer. It's not Space Opera. It's not Star Wars. 

Why I Care (and Why You Should Care)

I care because I really love Star Wars. I care because I want these movies to be amazing. I care because the tone and genre of the movies has been so much a part of what sets them apart from all the rest of the space-action movies that have existed since 1977. 

I also care because the way in which a story is told is almost as important as the story that's being told. If Schindler's List had been shot in the style of film noir, it wouldn't have had the same impact that it did. If The Princess Bride had been shot with the wide, sweeping vistas of Lawrence of Arabia the film wouldn't have become a classic. 

As I tell stories I try to match the tone to the subject. I've written mythological stories that have an almost biblical tone to the words. I've written action stories that drop jokes and explosions with equal abandon. As I sit down to write each story I think about the tone, the choice of words, the amount and type of description, and even the transition between scenes. 

I think JJ might make great movies, but from the very little I've seen so far, I don't think he's making Space Opera, which is at the heart of Star Wars. 

He doesn't get the tone of the original (or he doesn't care). What we get may be fun, it may have lightsabers and wookies, and it most certainly will have my butt in a seat on opening day. But I don't think it will be the same Space Opera that we all fell in love with nearly forty years ago. 

Why I Won't Watch the Star Wars VII Trailer and You Shouldn't Either

Today (April 16, 2015), the second teaser trailer was released for Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens.

I'm not going to watch it. I didn't watch the first one. I won't watch any more that come out.*

Trailer Failure

Trailers ought to exist to help people decide to watch a movie. They ought to entice people to put their money down, sit in a chair, and enjoy a cinematic experience. But what most trailers have become is a hype machine (yes, there's a difference between hype and marketing).

I'll watch trailers for movies that I've never heard of to help me decide if I want to watch them. But I won't watch a movie I've never heard of in a first-run theater. My first-run movies are rare gems. Usually I don't watch more than about 5 per year. I'll watch second-run movies (at the cheap theater for $3) with less knowledge of the film and/or by watching the trailer. The total investment is quite a bit less, so I'm willing to take more of a risk. If the movie isn't interesting enough to get me out of my house, I'll watch it on Netflix or Redbox.

Hype vs. Marketing

Marketing is the age-old (or a couple of centuries old) practice of trying to convince people that they need to spend their disposable income on your product. You don't really need to market essentials. They pretty much sell themselves. You just need to market luxuries (including upgrades to essentials like fancy homes or gourmet food). 

Hype, on the other hand, is the intentional generation of communal emotions. It's the effort to get society to react to something. Marketing wants to motivate individuals to make a purchase. Hype wants to motivate groups to have an emotion. 

Hype is, by definition, irrational and manipulative. It is a snake consuming itself. The hype machine, when it works, creates a frenzy of people dressing up, standing in line for days, and posting frame-by-frame interpretations of a trailer on the internet.

Hype can occur naturally. It happened around the original Star Wars trilogy without massive changes to the movie marketing system. But once the marketers got a taste of the hype, they wanted more of it. They wanted to manufacture it. They wanted to control people's emotions rather than encourage them.

Story vs. Marketing

I tell stories for a living. There is a part of my soul that dreams about one of my stories generating the kind of hype that Star Wars has. But there's another part of me that wants my stories to be free of that kind of pressure. 

The story of the original trilogy was compelling. It connected with people in a powerful way that made them want to tell their friends about it. It painted a vision of a world that people wanted to inhabit. The story, the world, and the characters generated the hype of the original trilogy. The marketing was in making the best possible space opera and telling the most interesting story. 

I won't generate Star-Wars-level hype by manipulating people's emotions or trying to have the most exciting blurb for my next book. I'll generate the hype is my stories are so amazing that people want to live in the world I create. I'll generate hype if I create characters that connect with people in meaningful, compelling ways. 

Enjoy what You Love

I don't think you should watch the trailer for Star Wars VII. Of course, I'm assuming that you've already committed to watching it (I'll be there on opening day). 

Eschewing the hype machine doesn't mean you have to stop loving things. It doesn't mean you have to stop geeking out over your favorite entertainment. It doesn't mean that you have to stop enjoying all of the things that you enjoy. What I'm asking is that you enjoy things because you enjoy them, not because of a hype-machine that is trying to generate group-think. 

Enjoy what you love because it's good. Enjoy it because it makes you happy. Enjoy it because it's creates a compelling world that you want to live in. 

Not because a trailer came out -- eight months before the movie -- trying to make you wet your pants in fan-joy. 

But what do I know, I'm just an author. 

*Note: If I'm in the theater to watch another movie and the trailer comes on I won't close my eyes, I'm just saying that I'm not going to actively pursue watching the trailer.