Thoughts on Episode VII: Learning from the Used Future

Aquitania (1910); Millennium Falcon (1977)

In 1977, George Lucas changed the future in a single movie when he introduced audiences to the "used future." If all Lucas had done was make a 70s SciFi move, almost perfectly lacking in geodesic domes, that would be worth celebrating, but for the first time in the history of cinema Lucas introduced a future with a past. Before Star Wars all spaceships we conceived as totalities. The model was the Modernist Architect Corbusier's great admiration for oceanliners: "“The steamship is the first stage in the realization of a world organized according to the new spirit.” wrote Corbusier. For the Modernists, the ideal to be reached was "visual unity": as if a single hand had designed the entire world at a single sitting. Before Star Wars, all spaceships were Modernist; after Star Wars nothing was Modernist.

Thoughts on Episode VII: Wish Upon A Death Star

Wish upon a Death Star

I am a sculptor. I consider what I do Fine Art, and believe it is a serious undertaking worthy of dedicating one's life to. Although I work to very hard to make what I consider High Art, quality can, and is, found everywhere. It's not just possible for Disney to make a Star Wars sequel that measures up to the original, it is important that they do so. This does not entail choosing an "auteur" with a powerful vision to helm the project, it requires the construction of a creative team.

Thoughts on Episode VII: Attack of the Drones

Darth Vader's Funeral Pyre; Vader's post-pyre helmet

A friend asked me the other day what I thought Episode VII should be about. Before I even knew I had an opinion on it, I was weighing in: "It should begin the morning after Jedi ends, with Luke pulling Vader's helmet from the embers of the funeral pyre." The best way to think about the original Star Wars film is as an artifact of the late 1970s. But the "franchise" is something like a global-family story, one I first learned about when I was six, and have been invested in seeing through ever since. And my response reflected my desire for a really twisted, House of Usher, ending.

Thoughts on Episode VII: SomethingsomethingsomethingDARKSIDEsomethingsomethingsomethingCOMPLETE

Death Star, Return of the Jedi (1983); Ben Fry, All Streets (2010)

I know what the Coruscant of Star Wars: Episode VI should look like. It is not the Coruscant we saw briefly at the end of rejiggered versions of Return of The Jedi, it is something very different. It is a world entirely transformed by the Sith. While the Emperor was defeated in Episode VI, his plan would have been already complete. I know this because I know what the original Star Wars movie was about: It was about George Lucas and his friends.