9. Big CGI Sequences
J.J. Abrams' feature film catalogue contains a lot of explosions. And given that the
Star Wars saga contains some of the largest explosions ever committed to celluloid (the Death Star is as big as a moon, people!), there's no doubt that there's a kind of stylistic fit between franchise and director here. But it's not just explosions that will mark
Episode VII - it'll be the massively-rendered CGI sequences that we saw so frequently through the likes of
Star Trek and
Super 8. Though
Star Wars certainly felt more comfortable in the days of practical SFX, it would be silly to suggest that Abrams keep the CGI down to a minimum. To be fair, he's actually rather talented in terms of the way he's utilized CGI in his movies so far: the explosive sequences in
Star Trek were, for the most part, genuinely thrilling. Let's just hope he evokes to build some
actual practical sets, because we all love practical sets, don't we?