This past weekend saw the third annual D23 Expo in Anaheim, which is basically a Disney-centric version of the San Diego Comic Convention. Over the weekend you had the usual bits and pieces from Pixar, Disney Animation, Marvel Studios, and some of the upcoming live-action tent poles. For example,
Angelina Jolie made a surprise appearance to plug next summer’s
Maleficent, in which she plays the
Sleeping Beauty villain in a film told from her point of view. But the best news is what we learned about J.J. Abrams’s upcoming summer 2015 tent pole
Star Wars Episode 7. We learned absolutely nothing about
Star Wars Episode 7.
There was no title announcement, no casting confirmations, no teaser posters, nor any major acknowledgment behind ‘Yes, J.J. Abrams is still directing’ and “summer 2015′ is still the goal. Yes much of the Internet is in borderline outcry over the lack of any real solid information for the heavily-anticipated
Star Wars sequel, but I for one am thrilled that Disney didn’t feel the need to divulge anything. No matter if the lack of information is due to development rumblings or possible date changes (if I were Disney, I’d move it to summer 2016 since summer 2015 is jam-packed already, or maybe summer 2017 for
Star Wars‘s 40th anniversary), the important thing is that Disney made a conscientious choice not to feed the beast. After all, the film doesn’t come out for another two years, how much do you really want to know about it already?
How much do you really want to know about it at any point prior to its eventual release date? In this day and age, fans (and the film sites that feed their appetite) all but demand pre-release information well in advance of a release date almost as a divine right. And quite frankly, too many studios and/or filmmakers give it to them. We’re also two years out from
The Avengers: Age of Ultron, but that doesn’t stop
Joss Whedon and company from spilling more random information (what roles certain characters play,
which characters will or won’t be appearing, etc.) almost every single day. This process will only get worse leading up to November’s release of
Thor: The Dark World. In the run-up to Disney’s
John Carter for example, we already had
Willem Dafoe discussing his appearance in a theoretical sequel, meaning that his major supporting character now had exactly zero chance of dying in battle in the initial installment. Universal didn’t even wait until
The Bourne Legacy opened
before stating that they hoped to use both Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz for future installments. So much for suspense…
Before
Thor was even released,
we were told that Loki would be the villain for
The Avengers. The powers-that-be openly discussed which characters would be showing up in
Iron Man 3 and the respective second installments of
Thor and
Captain America prior to
The Avengers. Savvy readers could easily deduce the big
Avengers death merely by noticing who wasn’t referenced as slated for upcoming Marvel movies. So accustomed to we are to knowing nearly everything in advance that Pixar and
Sony SNE -0.79% both took critical heat after the releases of Brave and Hancock respectively for daring to have second and third-act story turns that weren’t explicitly divulged in the marketing. J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek Into Darkness and Super 8, along with Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, teased the idea that they weren’t going to give away the store prior to theatrical release, which in turn created unmet expectations that the films were housing major head-spinning plot twists. The rare major film with genuine head-spinning plot twists was Iron Man 3, which Disney brilliantly kept secret by seemingly revealing other, but ultimately irrelevant, plot turns.
In this day and age, merely unspoiled story beats in a major would-be tent pole apparently counts as a spoiler. Unfortunately par for the course is endless commentary, be it casting rumors, alleged plot twists, and even the filmmakers and studios themselves divulging bits and pieces during the promotional tour for the current film about to be released. So accustomed are we to the constant stream of straight-from-the-source information that we actually expect a steady stream of spoiler-ific content from the moment the film is announced until days before its actual theatrical release. We’re at the point now where Disney’s choice not to divulge anything about the next
Star Wars film caused both
fan outcry and
rumblings of behind-the-scenes turmoil. Once again, the film comes out (at least) two years from now, yet fans and the film news community expected, nay demanded, some kind of genuine information from this weekend’s D23 Expo.
The film may be undergoing development issues, and I’d be surprised if the film actually made its intended summer 2015 release (which wouldn’t be a bad thing since Disney is already set to rule summer 2015 with
Avengers 2,
Pirates of the Caribbean 5, and Pixar’s
Inside Out). But for the moment I think Disney deserves a little credit and our thanks for not playing the game this time around. It’s a
Star Wars film. Everyone who is interested is going to be there at 12:01am no matter how much or how little we know about the film prior to its release. Disney has two long years to reveal or not reveal as much or as little as they choose in the run up to the release date. Here’s hoping that this weekend’s wall of silence was not a momentary fluke or a symptom of development hell, but rather a conscientious decision to hold back any real details for as long as possible.
The current ideology is that fans and the film news sites that cater to them deserve and/or are entitled to know as much as possible about films well in advance of their release, and that the pre-release marketing campaign involves openly divulging such information as a matter of course in order to drum up continuous blog posts and keep your film in the news cycle. It’s an effective strategy, but one that often makes watching the film itself feel outright anticlimactic for those who have followed along through the marketing campaign. Because when it comes to pre-release information, especially for films coming out years in the future, sometimes the best comment is “No comment.”
Also on Forbes:
Star Wars Through The Ages
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Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford
In this image provided by 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, a scene from "Star Wars" movie released by 20th Century-Fox in 1977. From left are: Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill. (AP Photo/20th Century-Fox Film Corporation)
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