zombie84 said:
Irvin Kershner turned down directing Empire Strikes Back. Lucas had to twist his arm to get him to do it; they had to have a second meeting where Lucas basically begged him to make the film. It turned out...pretty good, to put it lightly. To make things worse, the film he did right before Empire, Eyes of Laura Mars, sucked. Even Kershner apologized for it. And the rest of his films up until then were fairly obscure. I've seen "Hoodlum Priest," but have you? If the internet was around in 1978 we'd all be crucifying him.
A lot of people are looking for things to nail Abrams on but honestly none of us has any idea how well he will work out. I give him the benefit of the doubt until I see the movie, as he is not a bad director by any means.
I think it's quite amusing that after all these years, people are still waiting for that new "The Empire Strikes Back" but it's never going to happen, without lens flares or not ( "The Phantom Menace" had quite a good portion of artificial lens flares IIRC, so JJ will fit nicely)
To draw parallels with how things went down when the legendary sequel was made in the past to how things are proceeding now is quite pointless. The differences are quite big, not in the MO and not what you Zombie tried to say, the times and in what climate this new film is made in, is a very different scenario from Empire 30 years ago.
Is this a movie, that really needs to be made? Is this a story, that really needs to be told? Why are these new movies made? Is there someone with the passion behind this? Dollars of course!! Of course it's dollars, back when Empire was made it was all about money as well and more importantly the building of a new movie facility and planned franchise, it just happened to be a genuine interest on all fronts to make a great follow-up to one of the biggest surprise hits in movie history behind it. The last gasps of the golden 70's US independent era behind this kind of a blockbuster, it will never happen again.
Will be interesting to see how they are marketing these new movies, I recall Episode I was promoted basicallly as a sequel to The Empire Strikes Back from all the trailers I saw, which means 10 to 30 year olds are the primary demographic, it ultimately proved to be aimed at 3 to 10 year olds.
I know that I sound bitter, but it's because I am bitter, Star Wars have been reduced to a fuzzy old little DVNR'ed LD transfer, that's all we have left today of this little legendary film. THANK YOU LUCASFILM!!! :)