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on June 12, 2026
"There's a directorial flourish and then there's self-parody — and Abrams promises he's easing up on his signature stylistic tic of shining lights directly into anamorphic lenses to create flares. He could explain it away in the Star Trek films ("the future is so bright!") but admits he has no excuse for Super 8. He recalled how one shot in Star Trek Into Darkness was so overrun by lens flare his wife shouted that she couldn't see Alice Eve. He made an effort to tone it down for The Force Awakens, and when he spotted his lighting crew bringing large spotlights onto the set he would joke "these aren't the flares you're looking f
Additionally, Stephen Colbert also asked Abrams about his penchant for lens flares. It's no secret that Abrams is notorious about including (sometimes unnecessarily) a number of big, bright, and distracting lens flares in all of his movies. It's actually a popular Internet meme anytime Abrams announces a new project. The director is well aware of the number of lens flares he used in the past, but affirms that he reduced the filmmaking flourish for The Force Awakens . From Jordan Hoff
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It's hard to believe Jurassic Park was originally not going to use CG dinosaurs, but Steven Spielberg spent months working with stop motion guru Phil Tippett to create his dinosaurs with the same technique used to bring the Imperial Walkers and Tauntauns to life in The Empire Strikes Back . When the director asked ILM to show him what a computerized dinosaur could look like, the decision was clear. When Tippett learned he'd been beaten out by newer tech, he told the director that "he'd just became extinct." Luckily, that wasn't the case - but Spielberg made sure to put that very wording into the movie as one of Ian Malcolm's li
No other actor embodies the age of American Westerns like John Wayne, with his role as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers considered one of his finest roles. The film opens inside a West Texas homestead, revealing a stunning landscape as Ethan first returns home after leaving years earlier to fight in the Civil War. When his brother’s family is killed not long after, and their two daughters kidnapped, Ethan sets off to find them no matter how long it may take. The youngest daughter Debbie is finally tracked down years later, and Ethan personally delivers brings her back home. Although it’s technically a different home, she is welcomed with open arms, and the future, for once, looks bright. With no place for an aging soldier inside, Ethan is left to walk into the wild all by himself. The shot is a perfect mirror of the one which started the film, and director John Ford’s iconic closing image is just one of the reasons The Searchers would go on to be seen by many as a masterpiece, and one of the greatest films ever m
Aside from pop culture references, the Wachowskis also managed to include one massive hint that most fans probably never noticed. When Neo finally confronts the Architect of the Matrix in the first sequel, he learns that the creator of the system has been following him his entire life (or lives) - and the first movie already offered proof. When Neo is first captured by enemy Agents, a bank of surveillance monitors shows him being interrogated. The exact same monitors the Architect is surrounded by in the next movie. Critics may claim the directors never planned on more than one film to start, but some of the bigger ideas were clearly there right from the st
From the moment Avatar hit theaters, it was clear that James Cameron had filled the movie with tons of political messages. From deforestation, over-aggressive military, to the destruction of Native peoples and the discovery of the New World - you name it. It didn't take long for people to notice that there was one country in particular that the director was singling out. When the movie's villain, Col. Quaritch, is explaining the risks of the planet to his new recruits, it's hard to miss the stripes of the American flag shining behind him - once you see it, it's not even that sub
James Cameron's 3D blockbuster smash may have taken audiences to an alien world, but it begins at home, in a futuristic Earth. Actually, Avatar begins in a dream sequence, with the movie’s hero Jake Sully explaining that his sleep has become filled with visions of flying ever since he was wounded in combat, opening his eyes every morning to find he's still confined to a wheelchair. His adventure on the planet Pandora piloting an artificially-grown human/Na-vi hybrid allows him to do more than fly, successfully defending the planet from his own side’s forces. The final shots of the movie mirror the beginning directly, showing Jake once again opening his eyes – this time, to a new body, a new people, and a new purpose. To take things further, the end credits are run over the exact same shots of flying as Jake's first dr