Star wars Episode 7: A new lens flare

Darren Levine

Darren Levine

Veteran
Lens flares. yes, they can be pretty, but in my little opinion, what abrams did with the last star trek film was just plain comical. lens flares used to be quite frowned upon, and it's like abrams makes films to spite that. what's even more silly is that abrams actually admitted he got carried away with flares in the first one, and then ended up doing even more in the second film. one reviewer counted 431 flares....

i'm for veto'ing lens flares for star wars. maybe just for space/ship external shots, but keep the damn flares off the damn dialogue!

knew i had a mini rant in me before lunch
 
Honestly.... didn't notice them. When I go re-watch the movie i probably will..but only because I looked for them.
 
On the list of things I'm worried they'll mess up with the new Star Wars movie, lens flares is very low on the list.
 
I have to admit, I'm a bit giddy at anticipating the schadenfreude I'll feel for every hardcore Star Wars fan who told me to "get over" my disgust for what Abrams did to (not for)Star Trek.

Maybe after that, they can hand Firefly over to him, too.
 
You're concerned a Star Wars movie will be ruined by borderline cheesy special effects... Have you actually watched any of the preceding 6 films?
 
David Jimerson said:
I have to admit, I'm a bit giddy at anticipating the schadenfreude I'll feel for every hardcore Star Wars fan who told me to "get over" my disgust for what Abrams did to (not for)Star Trek.
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But we've already had that disgust, over what Lucas himself did to it. And I would dare say the offenses to the original trilogy were far worse, than what Abrams did to "Star Trek."

Heck, all Abrams did to "Star Trek" (and especially "Into Darkness") was make it watchable and fun...

:evil:


Maybe after that, they can hand Firefly over to him, too.
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The way they're going, and the way Whedon appears to be wrapped up in superhero films, I could almost see them doing that. Which, frankly, I could think of worse people to turn a franchise over to. Michael Bay, for one...

To be fair, I'm not all that optimistic about Abrams' Star Wars, because -- as I understand it, he didn't really want it. If I read the early interviews correctly, he's kind of having this shoved on him. Very much like Peter Jackson with The Hobbit, he didn't want to do it, and they made him, and ... well, we got what we got, which was fairly awful. So I expect that Star Wars won't be "all that".

But man, 75% of the way through "Into Darkness" I was thinking "this is sooooo much better than "Wrath of Khan", I think David may actually kill me this time." Then Spock shouted "Khaaaaaaaaaaannnnnn" and Fonzi jumped over the shark and I checked out, but ... up until then, it was pretty fun.
 
(and for clarification -- I quite enjoy some Star Trek; anything with the original, good Kirk in it is really quite good, I've been OD'ing on old reruns of the original series).

But the plodding boring sophistry and overhanded moralizing of The Next Generation or ST:TMP or those type of things, well, blech. Voyager could be fun, and once the Cardassians came around and they got away from the lamest, most boring captain in history (Sisko), even DS9 got to be fun. But Star Trek has always been hit or miss. Original Kirk? Gold. But when the same guy got his hand at directing, we got Star Trek V, which is the absolute bottom of the barrel. Meaning, it's actually UNDER the barrel. Star Trek IV? Magnificent. Janeway? Basically Kirk after a visit to Sweden. ST:WOK? The most overrated, intellectually insulting entry in the entire canon. Still somewhat fun, if you can actually disconnect your logic circuits and ignore just how stupid they expect you to be; I mean, it's supposed to be "suspension of disbelief", not "suspension of reasoning, thinking, and higher neurological functioning"... :)

The new Treks? Mindless fun, but they seem more like a spinoff than an actual re-imagining. They seem more like "Stargate: Atlantis" did as compared to Stargate: SG1", but ... I mean, that only applies if you consider SG1 when it was good, before the "Ori" showed up...
 
Darren Levine said:
Lens flares. yes, they can be pretty, but in my little opinion, what abrams did with the last star trek film was just plain comical. lens flares used to be quite frowned upon, and it's like abrams makes films to spite that. what's even more silly is that abrams actually admitted he got carried away with flares in the first one, and then ended up doing even more in the second film. one reviewer counted 431 flares....

i'm for veto'ing lens flares for star wars. maybe just for space/ship external shots, but keep the damn flares off the damn dialogue!

knew i had a mini rant in me before lunch
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JJ has self admitted to the overuse of the flares and says he only kept them for the sequel of the Trek film because it was an established motif and he tried to tone it down just a little.

I think he will try very hard to separate the Trek and StarWars universes. He kind of needs to
 
Barry_Green said:
But we've already had that disgust, over what Lucas himself did to it.
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Yes, and also, it's not like I watch Star Trek: Into Darkness and think JJ Abrams is without talent. I just thought the talent was mis-applied to Star Trek. Star Wars seems like a more natural fit for his skill set, which is keeping things fast, funny and juiced up with heated emotion. So long as he keeps Kurtzman and Orci or Damon Lindelof away from the script it has a shot at being good. The day I read either of those three is on the project, I'll start ringing the death knell.
 
Barry_Green said:
...
To be fair, I'm not all that optimistic about Abrams' Star Wars, because -- as I understand it, he didn't really want it. If I read the early interviews correctly, he's kind of having this shoved on him...
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I got the opposite impression. In most of the interviews and BTS material for the 2009 Trek film, Abrams just couldn't stop talking about Star Wars. He was very outspoken about the fact that he loved 'Wars and wasn't a big fan of Star Trek. Judging from his statements, it always seemed, to me at least, that what he really wanted to do was shoot a Star Wars film, but he didn't have the rights, so he made-do with the closest franchise he could get his hands on: Star Trek.

He more-or-less remade the 1977 Star Wars (or Episode IV: A New Hope, as it now retitled) using the 'Trek characters and universe. Rural young man protagonist meets an older mentor figure who tells the protagonist about the dead father he never knew. The protagonist's father was once a great Jedi Knight/Starship Captain* but was killed by the movie's main villain. Said villain wears all black and flies around in a giant doomship that destroys planets. Mentor figure tells young protagonist that he has great potential (despite the two not really knowing each other) and should train to follow in his father's footsteps. Protagonist sets out to do just that. Villain shows he means business when he destroys the home planet of one of the main characters. Etc. Etc. It's Star Wars.

Personally, I think JJ Abrams will do fine at the helm of an official Star Wars film. It's a franchise that he clearly knows and loves. His "Star Trek" is a much better Star Wars film than any of the Prequels are. He only needs to make Episode VII better than the prequels in order to succeed. That doesn't seem like a tall order.

Barry_Green said:
But man, 75% of the way through "Into Darkness" I was thinking "this is sooooo much better than "Wrath of Khan", I think David may actually kill me this time." Then Spock shouted "Khaaaaaaaaaaannnnnn" and Fonzi jumped over the shark and I checked out, but ... up until then, it was pretty fun.
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I wouldn't quite go as far as to say that "Into Darkness" was at any point better than "Wrath of Khan," except in visuals maybe, but otherwise I agree. "Into Darkness" was about 2/3 of a pretty good movie...and then it just went off the rails. Maybe the third film will get it all right.


*for 12 minutes, or however long Pike said.
 
All the camera techniques and effects are just vocabulary in the language of film. We just haven't yet agreed on what the lens flare means.
Is it jibberish or denotes fantasy?
 
Wesley Byram said:
I got the opposite impression. In most of the interviews and BTS material for the 2009 Trek film, Abrams just couldn't stop talking about Star Wars. He was very outspoken about the fact that he loved 'Wars and wasn't a big fan of Star Trek. Judging from his statements, it always seemed, to me at least, that what he really wanted to do was shoot a Star Wars film
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Well, I certainly hope you're right! That would indeed be promising.
 
Barry_Green said:
But the plodding boring sophistry and overhanded moralizing of The Next Generation or ST:TMP or those type of things, well, blech.
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One of my friends actually has The Next Generation as his favorite series of all. I've never understood it, even after embarrassingly detailed conversations on the topic. Take away all of the limitations that force people to problem solve, add in as much technojargon as possible (even for Star Trek), some wholesome family values, get writers to take themselves way too seriously and there you go. You get a cartoon that tries too hard. Out of the new versions Voyager and DS9 win in my mind. They didn't have the outright fun and silliness of the originals, but they made up for it with a sense of grounded realness and a tendency to push people into being people. Not to mention characters, aliens, cultures and things that were substantially more interesting. The idea of having replicators they can't use on Voyager is a good example. Unfortunately, some of that need for wholesome values and lightweight drama tends to drag down some of the stories. I was really excited when Stargate Universe was announced, because I thought they were going to do Voyager but better. Turned out wasn't all scifi but more syfy, where appealing to non-core demographics means teenager drama and poorly done cable sex scenes make up most of the show. DS9 was special with its uniqueness, it could have easily been set outside of the Star Trek universe. Maybe some other space station set near a wormhole of some sort, where various battles take place and some kind of looming threat has to be faced by the residents. Can't think of any off the top of my head...

As for the new ones, I've been pretty impressed so far. Sure, they seem like mindless video games, but I like mindless video games. I think they've been gorgeous so far, extremely well produced. The casting is impressive. Overall, they handed it to the right person. This coming from someone who could never like an Abrams production before these started. And lens flares? I'm a fan. I was using lens flares before they were cool. Maybe he goes a little overboard, not everything needs it, but I'd rather have that than something totally flat for the type of films he keeps making. They work for me, and I'm excited to see what he does with Star Wars. As long as he can move away from the eye-vomit barrage of CGI characters we'll be okay. No promise that he will.

What I am seriously worried about is giving the power of Star Wars and Star Trek to one man. This is something that should never happen, and I was under the impression that we had a series of checks and balances just to prevent such a thing from occurring. Or maybe I didn't pay enough attention in civics class. Regardless, I have no doubt that the first argument between a Trek fan and Star Wars fan to occur after the release will result in a tear in the space-time continuum that can only be resolved by a precise energy pulse emitted from a remodulated warp core. And I don't have any idea how we're going to get to that point in 45 minutes with commercials.
 
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Cassius said:
Take away all of the limitations that force people to problem solve, add in as much technojargon as possible (even for Star Trek), some wholesome family values, get writers to take themselves way too seriously and there you go.
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You'll like this, from one of the Next Generation writers--

 
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