Kevin Smith just returned from his London, England, set visit of J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII and couldn’t resist the urge to spill some geeked-out details during a Q-and-A session at the Neuchatel International Film Festival in Switzerland.
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Though Smith signed an NDA and couldn’t reveal specifics about what he saw, he did share, “So we go to set, and they’re actually shooting — and this is what I can’t tell you, what they were shooting — but what I saw, I absolutely loved. It was tactile. It wasn’t a series of f***ing green and blue screens in which later on digital characters would be added. It was there. It was happening.”
Smith applauds Abrams, who is directing the flick, for “building a tactical world, a world you can touch. And he’s [Abrams] replicating it with all the love of somebody that has the world’s greatest collection of Star Wars figures.”
Abrams has already tackled the Star Trek franchise, rebooting the series with his own flair. Now, adding Star Wars to his résumé, fans are hopeful the sci-fi director can bring his fresh spin to continue the story. Smith’s excited words about the project only fuel our excitement for the film.
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“I saw uniforms. I saw artillery that I haven’t seen since I was a kid,” Smith gushed. “I saw them shooting an actual sequence in a set that is real. I walked across the set. There were explosions. And it looked like a shot right out of a f***ing Star Wars movie.”
This isn’t the first time we’re hearing just how “tactile” Abrams world is while filming. Harrison Ford broke his leg when the Millennium Falcon fell on him last month. OK, sure he got hurt, but can you imagine having that story to tell? No big deal. On the downside, Disney announced Star Wars: Episode VII production would be suspended for two weeks. Ford has a two-month recovery period, according to Rolling Stone.
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“It’s like Field of Dreams,” Smith noted of his set visit. “And if J.J. builds it, we’re all going to come hard because it’s amazing. It looks fantastic. So anyone out there wondering if he’s going to pull it off: He’s pulling it off. He showed me cut scenes. He showed me sequences, images, pictures. I cried, and I hugged that guy. And I’m sure as I was crying and hugging on him that he was thinking ‘time is money’ because they’re making a movie. But he got it. He was very flattered. And I was like, ‘Honestly dude, you’re doing it. You’re making my childhood real again. You’re doing our Star Wars.’ What I saw blew me away.”
The studio has promised that filming will wrap this fall, with a release date for the film set for December 2015.
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