With only around a year and a half before the release of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Unbearable Lightness Of Wedge, the J.J. Abrams sequel has finally ceased to be a theoretical fantasy and become a hard, spaceships-and-aliens reality. Abrams’ Bad Robot Twitter feed released the below photo marking the film’s official start of principal photography today at England’s Pinewood Studios, and giving fans their first glimpse at what they can expect from the sequel—and as always, confirming their worst fears in the process. Let’s look at the evidence.
It’s only the first day, and yet the production has already skipped ahead to scene 36—suggesting that scenes 1 through 35 are being dispensed with in a prologue crawl that unfurls across nearly a half-hour of screen time. No doubt this text will cover the 30 years of events since Return Of The Jedi, as Abrams opts for a “tell, don’t show” approach to exposition.
The “AL40” lens (likely the Panavision Primo AL40) suggests the entire film will be shot in close focus, filling the frame with actors’ faces in such a way that it completely blocks the vast, open reaches of outer space. Why even make an outer space movie if you’re just going to show faces? Such concerns obviously do not bother J.J. Abrams.
The N6 filter is widely known among cinematographers as the top choice for filtering nostalgia, confirming the new Star Wars will have no emotional connection to the original trilogy. By a factor of six.
Finally, note the sand on the clapboard, suggesting this Star Wars movie will have sand in it. Star Wars fans don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere, ruining your Star Wars movies. And it’s only the first day. Just imagine how much more sand will accumulate between now and December 18, 2015.