Star Wars Is Its “Own Genre” According To Force Awakens Screenwriter
If it was easy to make a Star Wars movie, anyone would do it. But for The Force Awakens, they wanted to ensure it had not only the quality fans want and deserve, but that it felt like the original trilogy in many ways. To do that, they brought in Lawerence Kasdan, who screenwrote both Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. During a Q&A, he noted that Star Wars isn’t just one thing, it’s its own genre.
“Star Wars is its own genre,” Kasdan told Wired in a recent interview. “It’s not really science fiction. It’s really something on its own, fantasy and myth and science fiction and Flash Gordon and Akira Kurosawa all mixed up together…. It can be anything you want it to be.”
He then went on to praise director J.J. Abrams for his work on Force Awakens, all the while noting what he and Abrams wanted from this new Star Wars film.
“You take all of J.J.’s gifts, the dynamism of his camera and his sense of humor and feeling of momentum, his ideas of story, and I feel like we were able to achieve that delight. It’s an unusual feeling even for me. When I look at the movie, I can’t resist it. It just tickles me.
What we wanted from the movie was exactly the same, to return it to a kind of physicality—tangible, real sets, real features, kind of lightly funky even though it’s incredibly sophisticated. The feeling we wanted was from the first trilogy, which was, it’s fun, it’s delightful,
Star Wars: The Force Awakens arrives December 18th.