*vrooooom* *vroooooom* (lightsabre noises)

Yes, the truth is finally out. The veil drawn back. The secret has been revealed.

JJ stands for Jar Jar.

By now I'm sure you've all heard the announcement that Star Trek supremo JJ Abrams is jumping (star)ship to direct the latest adventures of intergalactic rabbit Binks and his merry band. So what are we to make of the news?

I'm a massive Star Wars fan. It was probably the first film that fired my imagination as a child. I remember getting up before school when I was about eight to re-watch The Empire Strikes Back for the hundredth time. Yep, I was a pretty cool eight year old.

So naturally, I'm excited at the prospect of Star Wars returning to the big screen after an absence of ten years. But then I was excited about the prequels too and we all know what disappointments they turned out to be (though I heard about those through a magazine...ahh the pre-internet days). I must confess that for a long time -- too long perhaps -- I was an apologist for the new trilogy, trying to explain away the aching gap between my hopes and the more disappointing reality. As the years have gone by, time has allowed my disappointment to register itself without the fanboy inside me censoring it. I watch the brilliant Red Letter Media reviews and nod along with almost every point (if you haven't watched them, go do it now. They're insightful and fucking hilariously twisted). Nevertheless, despite their evident shortcomings, I still believe there is more merit in the prequels than is sometimes allowed. Yes, the prequels' scripts come across as early drafts in need of a great deal of work, but there are clever and unexpected ideas in there, some brilliant imaginative flourishes. The films are disappointments, but the world is too rich and enjoyable for them to be entirely without worth.

What then of the Disney buy-out and the newly announced sequels? Despite initial surprise and scepticism about the deal (money, money, money), many of my early doubts have been assuaged by the personnel chosen to take the project forward. Most importantly, the writer selected is simply brilliant. Michael Arndt has admired, analysed and even taught Star Wars for decades, as well as writing the wonderful Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3. I cannot think of a better choice. The fact that "consultants" on the film include original trilogy writer Lawrence Kasdan, as well as George Lucas, fills me with hope that finally Star Wars will return to the big screen with a story worthy of the name.

But mystery surrounded the director's chair. Who would get the nod? A young director, like the George Lucas of 1977? Or a left-field but ultimately brilliant choice like The Empire Strikes Back's Irvin Kershner? In the end, you could say Lucasfilm has played it safe. They've gone to a big name. But that by no means makes it a bad choice. Abrams has pedigree in melding exciting sci-fi action with likeable characters and witty direction. He has shown he has the much-needed bottle to take on an established franchise and an army of often cranky fans. But most importantly of all, he makes damned enjoyable films.

I shall follow his progress with great interest. Star Wars is back.

Get in.

Adaptation and the Hobbit

My last post on The Hobbit got me thinking. The process of adaptation is a tricky one, isn't it? While the existence of a novel, say, gives some advantages in terms of "prepared" characters and plot, in other ways adaptation is probably a more difficult task than writing your own material. Those difficulties arguably multiply if the book being adapted is a beloved and/or acclaimed title. For throughout the process of adaptation you must serve two masters -- doing justice to the book to avoid the pitchforks of angry fans, whilst at the same time crafting a film that is effective in the new medium for all viewers.

Those twin masters will occasionally make seemingly contradictory demands. How does the adaptor approach what might be considered narrative failures in the source material? Maintain them for fidelity's sake or correct them for the film's? The ideal of course is to find some middle way that improves the film experience for the majority whilst not pissing off the fan minority. That's no easy task.

Based on the evidence of the first film, in adapting The Hobbit, I think Peter Jackson's team erred too much on the side of respecting the source material. I remember from The Lord of the Rings DVD special features (I am a film geek), how the writers spoke about their more daring departures from the source text in earlier versions of the script and how as each iteration of the film developed, they moved closer to Tolkien. I wonder now whether that process was actually vital to the crafting of those films -- they first and foremost concentrated on writing them as films, before pulling back in places. Having gone through that process on the earlier films however, perhaps this time they didn't feel the need to pursue more radical surgery first.

That's pure supposition of course, but one does feel watching The Hobbit that the book's every comma has been considered for inclusion and that less attention has been given to the overall story experience. But perhaps that is always the danger when it comes to adapting beloved books that have had years to seep into the public conscience.

By contrast less established books do not offer such problems. Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park, for instance, was optioned before it was even released and though a best-seller, it had hardly reached cult untouchable status by the time the film was released. It was in some ways perfect for adaptation, possessing a killer concept and some memorable set-pieces, but not so well-established that the many changes the film had to make would be greatly resisted.

I have read an earlier draft of Jurassic Park which stuck much more rigidly to the book's rather convoluted structure. The presence of this "additional" material however leaves the script feeling rushed as it jolts from plot point to plot point without any sense of the wonder that the novel and finished film conveyed so well. In sticking closely to the book that draft of the script in fact delivered an experience far removed from it.

True fidelity to source material, if that is your aim (some adaptations are more daring in this regard than others), comes in recreating the emotions and experiences felt reading the book, not in transliterating page by page to the screen. The exact mechanics of how those feelings are achieved -- the plot and cast composition etc -- can, and arguably must, change to suit the different media. Ironically enough, when an adaptation fails the audience often blames it on the film's divergence from source material -- I would argue that often the reverse is true, that not enough has been changed.