The changing of the guard has occurred. Director Rian Johnson has taken the reigns from J.J Abrams and started filming Episode VIII today in London.
And we got this amazing little tease courtesy of the fine folks at Lucasfilm. Check it out:
There are two precious new shots which offer a slightly different take on the final moments in The Force Awakens.
It may be brief, but think about this: We now have an officially released teaser for Episode VIII before we get one for Rogue One. And VIII is released a full year later.
As Star Wars, the new ongoing frnachize, proceeds, we’re going to get more and more ‘firsts.’ Directors will try new stylistic things; we’ll get the first break in linear storytelling (a flashback or somesuch), just as we got the first ‘documentary/shaky-cam’ (as I objected to in the TFA trailer, but I think was actually in AOTC during the end battle), and the first electric-guitar in the soundtrack (also AOTC… ugh!). Star Wars has a set formula- and it’s a personal matter of taste how much you can push that formula before you end up with something that ‘isn’t’ Star Wars. Each director’s vision will differ from one’s own; if it’s more conservative, no problem- but if it’s liberal than yours, Star Wars will eventually venture into territory that ‘doesn’t feel Star Wars’ to you (for me, for instance, all three of the above-cited examples would qualify; to someone else, all three might be totally acceptable within the Star Wars format). It’s an inevitable consequence of the new unchecked expansion.
…All of that philosophical preamble to say: have we just witnessed another one here? Is the intercutting of alt angles of TFA’s angles just an editing trick, using unused footage from TFA, to make it *look* like that’s what they’re shooting, while they’re really just using the same location for a training scene or some such set a few months later… OR, are they breaking Star Wars precedent by following up on TFA’s ending promise, and actually showing us the moments after that film ended- becoming the first Star Wars film to pick directly up where the last left off?
That would be unprecedented, as we’ve always had a time jump- and, barring other events that have involved villains conspiring and doing nefarious things elsewhere in the galaxy during the same time that the climax of TFA was happening, it would result in a pretty weak opening crawl. (No new news to catch us up on, after all. 🙂 ) It would also mean that while we might see Finn wake up and Kylo’s new training, unless there was a significant time jump AFTER that scene, we ought to be without both characters for the majority of the movie, while Rey’s training would still be pending. (Of course, it would be easy to do the Luke/Rey scene, THEN jump to several months later with all three leads recovered/trained to start the next story… it would just seem narratively odd to not just start the story there for the sake of one much-anticipated conversation scene). Alternatively, we could get said conversation- but as a flashback or dream (as suggested above) while the primary story does follow a time jump.
Obviously, it’s too early for anything but wild speculation. It’s just interesting to consider the possibilities that this teaser suggests in how such an opening as the editors *imply* (whether truly or falsely) with it would affect the traditional Star Wars storytelling style, for good or bad.
And we’ll know for sure in just a few short years. 🙂