New tricks for old movie franchises

LONDON — When you go to watch a movie next year, be prepared to be propelled back to the future — or perhaps forward to the past, if you will. Yes, the Hollywood studios are putting their money behind headline-grabbing technical innovation and state-of-the-art digital imagery, as always. However, in terms of storytelling, they are relying on the more time-honoured pull of industrial-strength nostalgia.

How far back are they looking at? Well, a long time ago, back to a galaxy far, far away. Yes, it is still another 12 months until Star Wars: The Force Awakens is scheduled to hit cinemas, but fans will say it is never too early for anything Star Wars, what with the ongoing animated series Star Wars Rebels and The Yoda Chronicles.

Bringing most of the original cast back on board will make many of us dewy-eyed for childhoods inspired by the first trilogy — more so than any deja vu moments those upstart prequels, with their ingenue casting, were really able to conjure. The new Star Wars movie is fully outfitted with something old and something new. Keen-eyed Star Wars spotters poring through the movie trailer might point out that the Millennium Falcon has a new rectangular sensor dish — the familiar round one was clipped off during the tunnel run at the battle at Endor, when the Rebels destroyed the second Death Star. But they will probably be happy to see the return of original trilogy stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, and new director J J Abrams, who has pulled off a similar feat with the Star Trek reboot.

However, if you want things borrowed and blue, let’s wait for Avatar 2, due for release almost exactly a year later. The James Cameron film and the other sequels are being digitally shot at industry-standard 4K resolution and with the newly-popular frame rate of 48 per second rather than the usual 24.

Abrams’ film, though, is being shot in a more old-fashioned way, on 70mm IMAX film and will then undergo a conversion to 3D in post-production. It is thereby relying on a sophisticated-looking twinned embrace of the retro and revamped, and it is far from the only 2015 blockbuster that will be doing so.

There is a new Mad Max (played by Tom Hardy), but he’s comfortingly in the hands of the director of the old Mad Max films George Miller. There is also a new Terminator movie, Genisys, whose great white hope after 2009’s disappointing Salvation is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to the role. For film fans who have not yet tired of computer-generated dinosaurs, there is Jurassic World, which promises to pick up where Jurassic Park III left off.

The film-going year would not be complete without at least two Marvel Studios tentpoles. Phase Two of the company’s ongoing plan for global takeover comes to a conclusion with the gang’s-all-here reprise Avengers: Age Of Ultron and the more novel-looking Ant-Man.

A remarkable total of nine films have been confirmed for Phase Three. And while DC Comics is stepping up the competition with its own ambitious Batman V Superman feature, set for 2016, it is hard to conceive a vision of the future, circa 2023, when we will not all in some way be Marvel’s minions. The daily telegraph