Heck yeah!

Not a SW fan, not really. I enjoyed them as a kid but it was never really my thing.

That said, that that actually pique anyones interest? Of course they've still got 6-9 months or so of filiming before they wrap, so that could be why it didn't exaclty excite me for a new series. Isn't much to show.

Actually, episode 7 wrapped principal shooting at the start of november.

Post-production is what is left (which includes effects).

I am stuck at 0:47. The T-65 Mk.II. I like it, and I hate it. It looks cool, the paint is sweet..and it looks good from that angle, (which is an angle we always wished we had seen on the originals, (not many shots of the '77 version like that) but the whole split-single wing, half-engine thing just looks....strange? Different?
The fuselage is shorter and angled more, the Protorp tubes are moved aft, the underbelly has been redefined. It looks good, especially moving, and in-atmosphere over water no less..pretty cool. I would love to have a poster size picture of 0:47. I guess I just like my spaceships more symmetrically balanced than J.J. Abrams does. (never liked the 2009 Enterprise).

Just a note, I had the idea for the antennae modification on the Millennium Falcon the day I saw Return of the Jedi in the theater opening day back in the Great 80's. Just made sense. Han would say something like "..we are NOT doing THAT again..."

The action looks cool, and the effects look great (I don't recall seeing any lens flare). I hope the light sabers don't all look like the one they showed, though - it looks more like a torch or something.

It's probably been mentioned in other threads, but the X-Wing design is based on the early concept art from the original movie:

http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/01/31-Dogfight.png

Is that a Sith from House Stark? Darth Eddard?

In case you haven't seen it, the international trailer shows more ships, characters, lightsabers, and Luke Skywalker!

Star Wars: The Force Awakens international trailer

Aaaaaaaand it's also fake as hell.

@Chaz:
Great grabs. Thanks. The new X-Wings look better than I thought they would.

Who in their right mind would think that was a actual trailer?

Pause the video at 1:04.

People really blow that out of proportion. Seems like that was in Firefly too but no complaints. It's just the direction of cgi these days.
If that's the most common complaint about the guy, then he's doing a pretty good job.

Who's complaining? Just noting that there's lensflare in this trailer too, which seems to be JJ's trademark.

It has become this running gag, which is supposed to be blown out of proportion.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/01/jj-abrams-lens-flares_n_4022432.html

That was a good video Chaz, thanks! While I may not like a lot of his story-telling decisions, JJ Abrams does seem like a pretty decent guy.

Movie watchers are a fickle bunch. For example, I don't recall anyone complaining about the "shakey cam" in Saving Private Ryan but now everyone seems to be complaining about it. As for lens flares, you see them in both Alien and in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Both films came out well before the first JJ Trek film.

I think it's more a matter of context and quantity. Lens flare in a few scenes is fine as long as they don't block the view. In the Star Trek movies, it was clearly over-used, and actually interfered with watching the movie. Heck, even JJ's wife thought it was too much.

With the shaky-cam, it made sense in Saving Private Ryan because it was a based on a real event, and was giving a "you are there" feeling to it, since we'd seen actual footage from WWII combat and D-Day specifically, and it connected the movie to that real footage we've seen, giving it a documentary feel.

Shaky-cam was used a lot in BSG, and I thought it looked good at first, but after a while it got old, and made it tough to follow the action sometimes.

Any convention gets old if used too much. That's just the way it goes.



The Jedi Master