Star Wars VII Has An Official Title

Movie franchises (and computer operating systems) are a funny thing. Creators try to give them impressive names, but many of us (and especially George Lucas) want to simply serialize them with numbers. Today Lucasfilm (now owned by Disney) has left the impression that episode numbers are no longer a priority when they released the official name for Star Wars VII… (drumroll). As of today, the Lucasfilm lords of the Star Wars universe have declared Star Wars VII will now and forever be known as “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. All of the principle photography is finished and JJ Abrams is happy to be returning back from the UK to Los Angeles where he can become a father to his children again. The movie’s release date is December 18, 2015—certain to be one of the most anticipated films of that year.

Of course the title may imply certain plot elements. I won’t even try to pretend to be a source of intelligent knowledge in this universe. But the online community is already bubbling over in anticipation. To get a feel for what I’m talking about, check this article from The Guardian in the UK.

Don’t know? Don’t care? Well, don’t feel bad if you don’t know your wookies from your ewoks. Daniel Radcliffe, who we would assume is a relatively “plugged in” pop culture guy, admitted on Conan O’Brien’s show today that while visiting the movie’s set in England he happened to mention to JJ that he was a “recent Star Wars fan” and had only watched the films “for the first time this year.” Hey says JJ Abrams looked at him like, “I had grown another head.” (Perhaps JJ was just imagining what Daniel would look like in a latex mask playing an alien in Episode 8.)

As for those serial numbers, I couldn’t agree more with Ben Child at The Guardian: “At least Disney has jettisoned the episodic numbering retrospectively added by George Lucas to all Star Wars films after being introduced in the abominable prequel trilogy. These movies have long enough titles as it is, and anything which distances Abrams’s movie from the horrors of Jar Jar Binks has to be a good thing.”

Amen to that!