But what for Disney is profitable recycling is for Hollywood at large a challenge to the entirely-too-low standards of the blockbuster in the digital age.

Today the word “blockbuster” invokes visions of CGI-ridden films—Transformers, superhero movies, and the like—skating on brand recognition rather than on novel characters or storytelling. Which, in turn, makes Star Wars a particularly compelling touchstone. A big part of its appeal lay in how it created a scum-caked, tactile landscape of diverse planets and people. This was a franchise where the robots were humans encased in metallic costumes, not computer-generated death-machines that transform into Porsches. The speeders and snow-walkers and lightspeed-equipped ships all were models assembled by human hands, not digital rendering. It was a blockbuster with soul, in the sense that its most impressive effects had a direct line to an engineer, puppeteer, or actor.

So it’s fitting that Star Wars Episode VII’s marketing has been combining its commercialism with deeper cause, with the the @bad_robot Twitter account Ice Bucket-challenging storm trooper legions and sneaking peeks of fully-constructed X-Wing fighters (sprinkled with realistic-looking space-dust!) into videos for the UNICEF initiative “A Force for Change.”

The clearly metaphorical title is a convenient encapsulation of the new series, which appears to be leveraging blockbuster-reboot power to champion the original series’ values. Whether the old-school filmmaking techniques will indeed translate into more compelling story and characters remains to be seen—in an age without the infrastructure to support exclusively live-action filmmaking, Abrams and Johnson face an upward climb not unlike Lucas’s prequel-era digital quest. Conceivably, they may be spending too much time and energy on the DIY trimmings.

But at least it’s getting fans pumped for a return to the ................./-

But what for Disney is profitable recycling is for Hollywood at large a challenge to the entirely-too-low standards of the blockbuster in the digital age.

Today the word “blockbuster” invokes visions of CGI-ridden films—Transformers, superhero movies, and the like—skating on brand recognition rather than on novel characters or storytelling. Which, in turn, makes Star Wars a particularly compelling touchstone. A big part of its appeal lay in how it created a scum-caked, tactile landscape of diverse planets and people. This was a franchise where the robots were humans encased in metallic costumes, not computer-generated death-machines that transform into Porsches. The speeders and snow-walkers and lightspeed-equipped ships all were models assembled by human hands, not digital rendering. It was a blockbuster with soul, in the sense that its most impressive effects had a direct line to an engineer, puppeteer, or actor.

So it’s fitting that Star Wars Episode VII’s marketing has been combining its commercialism with deeper cause, with the the @bad_robot Twitter account Ice Bucket-challenging storm trooper legions and sneaking peeks of fully-constructed X-Wing fighters (sprinkled with realistic-looking space-dust!) into videos for the UNICEF initiative “A Force for Change.”

The clearly metaphorical title is a convenient encapsulation of the new series, which appears to be leveraging blockbuster-reboot power to champion the original series’ values. Whether the old-school filmmaking techniques will indeed translate into more compelling story and characters remains to be seen—in an age without the infrastructure to support exclusively live-action filmmaking, Abrams and Johnson face an upward climb not unlike Lucas’s prequel-era digital quest. Conceivably, they may be spending too much time and energy on the DIY trimmings.

But at least it’s getting fans pumped for a return to the ................./-