J.J. Abrams Talks About His Approach To Star Wars: Episode VII
This article is more than 2 years old
With the upcoming release of Star Trek Into Darkness in a few short weeks, J.J. Abrams has been busy promoting the new Star Trek sequel film. In a new interview with BBC News, Abrams talks about why he initially turned down the Star Wars: Episode VII job. He didn’t want to be a director known for rebooting film franchises. His feature film debut in 2006 was the third installment of the Mission: Impossible film series, and then he followed it up with the Star Trek reboot in 2009, and now with Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015. In the end, Abrams had to listen to his “gut” and take the Star Wars directing job when Disney and Lucasfilm offered him the position. Abrams says,
“And then Star Wars came along. It was one of those things where Star Wars felt like one of those once in a lifetime opportunities that forced me to stop and reconsider whatever the rulebook was.”
Abrams also elaborates on how he’ll approach Episode VII when he starts working on the film. Abrams doesn’t want his “geeky fan-boy” side to emerge while he’s directing a Star Wars movie, but he also doesn’t want to make Episode VII look and feel like Star Trek Into Darkness. Abrams continues:
‘It’s just about about approaching it from as authentic a place as possible, and not trying to apply what you believe or think, as much as trying to filter everything and get at it from the core of the characters. [It should be] what you deeply want to see, never what you assume the fans might like.’ He proceeded, ‘To me they are such wildly disparate universes — the back story, the tone, the mood, certainly the history [and] the characters — that I’m in no way worried.’
Over the next two years, it will be interesting to see what Abrams will bring to the Star Wars universe. We know he’ll have George Lucas as a source of support and advice, but can J.J. Abrams successfully send Star Wars back into the pop-culture stratosphere after the disappointing prequels?
Star Trek Into Darkness will hit theaters everywhere on May 17th, in 3D and IMAX, while Star Wars: Episode VII will be released sometime during the summer of 2015.
