In what feels like the ultimate anti-hype move, the title for “Star Wars Episode VII” was revealed today in a single tweet steering fans to the official website, where a single slide contains all the new information.
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has completed principal photography.
That's a fairly safe title, but honestly, I don't need clever or cool from a title. Based on everything we know so far about the film, “The Force Awakens” sounds like it's pretty dead-on in terms of explaining what's going on.
What I find most interesting about the leaks and the rumors so far is that it seems like the Jedi did not make a resurgence after the end of “Return Of The Jedi.” One would think that the moment the Empire had been defeated, they'd start training new Jedi, but that does not appear to be the case.
Taken just on a story level, the decision makes some sense. After all, the people who manipulated things in the first place to kick off the Clone Wars were all Force users, either Jedi or fallen Jedi, and so much of what happened was because of Jedi business spilling over onto everyone else. I'm not sure anyone would particularly want to see the return of the Jedi as a major force in the galaxy.
We've heard now that much of the film hinges on two new characters, played by Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, who are searching for Luke Skywalker so they can return his lightsaber to him. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that at least one of them turns out to be a very powerful Force user who becomes aware of their own potential over the course of the journey.
I love the power move of treating such a major announcement as a casual thing. Disney could have thrown a major media event today with fireworks and costumed characters and noise and they could have shown us this same slide at the end of a lot of hype and hot air, and we all would have run it as news, but it seems like they're aware just how easy it would be to make this kind of thing into too big a deal. Downplaying it, handling it this way, they'll still get all the coverage, and they avoid any danger of being guilty of overhype now.
There's plenty of time for that between now and the release of the film on December 18, 2015.