The filmmaking process for every Star Wars movie in the modern era has its traditions, and none refuse to die more irritatingly than the part where professional paparazzi, busybody neighbors, and travel-happy geeks pool together their collective talents and impatience, set up base camps all around the official closed sets, take pictures of everything that moves, and hope they catch a glimpse of something that’ll ruin the entire movie for everyone.
These photos are usually out of focus, distantly shot, wildly off-center, totally out of context, filled with restless inaction, and/or bereft of the CG work and color timing that’ll make the up-close, unadorned reality look watchable and actually interesting on the big screen a year later. Many movie sites treat such unauthorized, amateurish, slapdash, eminently deletable results as useful content. Every time without fail, enough fans and enough clicks reinforce their theory. Goody.
Now that Star Wars Episode VII finally hired a cast to act out its hopefully finished script and has allegedly begun shooting, it’s only a matter of minutes before we begin seeing photos of stunt doubles in Jedi robes, puppeteers catching a cigarette break outside a rear entrance, or empty yogurt cups that some muckraking blogger scavenged from Carrie Fisher’s trash. We, the public, will be expected to treat these offerings as Movie News.
So why not go with the flow? We here at Midlife Crisis Crossover gave in to peer pressure, did some digging without due diligence, and came across a stash of photos that we’re 30% certain were recently, surreptitiously snapped on location in London while J.J. Abrams and his spoiler sentries weren’t looking. Seems like a reasonable ploy. They have to sleep sometime, right? So we’re kinda sure these are legit. By the time we’re all done overanalyzing them, we can skip watching Episode VII altogether and move on to overanalyzing blurry set pics from The Justice League Movie instead.
From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Greatest Star Wars Episode VII Leaked Set Photos:
10. Peter Mayhew, a.k.a. Chewbacca, hanging out between takes with his manager. Or the head of his entourage. Or the guy who’s playing his son Lumpy, which would mean Abrams’ team has decided The Star Wars Holiday Special should be canonized by unpopular demand. Maybe now it’ll see a long-overdue Blu-ray release that will include much-needed extras such as a commentary by all the actors taking turns explaining exactly what the heck.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 