James Cameron has seen “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” but it seems he’s torn between loyalty to two friends. He’s good buds with George Lucas, but also respects J.J. Abrams, with “Star Wars” coming between everybody like a child in the midst of a custody battle. So when asked on his feelings about ‘The Force Awakens,’ Cameron mostly side-stepped making any direct criticism, though it seems safe to say he had some issues with Abrams essentially making a greatest hits movie, instead of pushing the narrative and creative envelope further.
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“Well, George Lucas is a friend of mine and he and I were having a good conversation the other day about it. I don’t want to say too much about the film cause I also have a lot of respect for J.J. Abrams, and I want to see where they’re taking it next, to see what they’re doing with it,” he told Hannah Litchfield [via Collider], diplomatically, in a recent interview (which you can watch in full below), before adding a hint toward his concerns.
“I have to say that I felt that George’s group of six films had more innovative visual imagination, and this film was more of a retrenchment to things you had seen before and characters you had seen before, and it took a few baby steps forward with new characters. So for me the jury’s out, I wanna see where they go with it,” Cameron continued.
So, a bit of minor burn there on ‘The Force Awakens.’ But with $2 billion in the bank, neither Disney nor Abrams are likely sweating Cameron’s comments, and Abrams has already explained why ‘The Force Awakens’ leaned heavily toward the familiar, rather than embracing the new. But let’s hope Rian Johnson‘s ‘Episode VIII’ takes the leap forward that many hoped ‘The Force Awakens’ would’ve taken from the jump.
Meanwhile, in related “Star Wars” news, while the internet freaked out when Mark Hamill seemed to suggest he was done with the franchise after ‘Episode VIII,’ he’s clarified those remarks rather succinctly on Twitter.
I meant "out of work" because #Ep8 is wrapping soon, OK? #DontOverThinkEVERYTHING #ParsingHamill #WaitForVIII https://t.co/5CIJ5Gqo99
— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) June 27, 2016
And in news that might make James Cameron happy, Kathleen Kennedy has suggested that “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” may forego having an opening crawl, though it’s just an idea at the moment.
“The crawl and some of those elements live so specifically within the ‘saga’ films that we are having a lot of discussion about what will define the [stand-alone] Star Wars Stories separate and apart from the saga films. So we’re right in the middle of talking about that,” she told Entertainment Weekly.