I know I should be in heaven now with the announcement of the new Star Wars cast, but I haven’t been too excited about the new Star Wars movie. I’m going to see it, of course, but my excitement for this film is like the excitement I had for the reboot of Spider-Man, which is to say not a whole lot of excitement. My lowered expectations comes from the over-hyped expectation I have seen in print and online. To use an old example of mine, it reminds me of the San Diego Comic-Con. Sure, people who have gone for decades have a genuine memory of what the convention was about, but we don’t recognize the hip parties, the crowd of pseudo-fans and the hype pumped out by outlets such as EW, People Magazine and others who treat the convention as the place they have to be.

The picture in black and white of the cast sitting in for a table read to me is an example of trying to be too hip for the room. I’m sure a new fan (someone born after Star Wars was released or too young to have remembered it in a theater) might think the image is some retro cool thing. People like myself who saw Star Wars in the theater and got hooked on it, probably recognize the photographer was going for a look of the grainy black and white test reel of actors who did screen tests from the original film. See, we’ve seen those in all the old making of documentaries from decades ago.

As I look at things, the new Star Wars film gives me pause for excitement. The amount of articles written when not one bit of footage has been shot makes me think this will be overhyped, just like any other big production from Hollywood. Of course many have forgotten it was a few years ago when people speculated about another film from a dormant franchise. Every little casting rumor was met with heated debate. Images posted on line were met with scrutiny. People waited with anticipation when the first bit of footage rolled out and speculated about the plot and who was playing what. The buildup was so high that when the actual movie came out, there were a lot of people disappointed. No, I’m not talking the reboot of Star Trek but the Star Wars prequel.

I’m not hoping the film is bad, but let’s remember Disney paid 4 billion dollars for this series. Don’t think this is going to be a risk taking, push the envelope movie. I would dare say by the time the movie is close to hitting the theaters, a lot of people will be sick of hearing about Star Wars because of the saturated media attention. Like Comic-Con, we may have gotten the wish of being recognized and ‘respected’ but now we are a commodity and have to be shared with the masses. We may have become focus group popular which isn’t very popular at all.