I think the key, like everything, is what best serves the story.
I'll never forget the first time I watched ESB with an eye toward cinematography, in college (I had seen it literally countless times growing up but had never really examined it compared to the other two from a filmmaking perspective). The tracking shot on Leia as they close the shield doors on Hoth hit me like a ton of bricks. They used track! The camera is telling the story along with the characters! ANH is all pans and tilts! It packs such a powerful punch and doesn't take you out of the story - it's the first time in the trilogy that we feel Leia's love for Han and Luke so viscerally, and it's Kershner's decision to track - something that literally doesn't happen in all of ANH - that drives it home so well. It's a revelatory moment in the trilogy, emotionally and cinematically, for me.
Even Lucas knew he had to move the camera around for the Death Star battle. I wouldn't call it shaky cam, but it's POV for sure. You feel like one of the Red Squadron, and that's because it's the best way to tell that part of the story.
I agree that if TFA is filled with what looks like rubbernecking iPhone footage, it will be distracting (not to mention it will quickly date itself). But I think it's possible to do without being overbearing and without making us feel like there's a cameraman - I think the LOTR trilogy did a nice job of using handheld to good cinematic effect without resorting to anything that felt documentarian or cheap (his horror shots and Dutch angles are another story). You felt the chaos of battle without ever feeling like you were watching "footage." Hopefully JJ will thread the same needle here.
Because the fact remains, as much as we may not want to admit it, that actual found footage has influenced the way we watch movies. When we see a smash zoom, it puts us, on some level, in the story as a viewer, because we've seen enough home movies and phone videos that our brains immediately and subconsciously tell us "this is real!" And that's a button that can be pushed to good effect in the right hands and in the right moments of a story. The first shot of the Falcon in the original teaser, where the rotation of the camera can't quite keep up with the flight of the Falcon until those TIEs are right on it, is straight-up zoomy shaky cam, but it's a shot that left me breathless when I saw it, and still does. It's not a shot you'd see in ANH, but it is pure, unadulterated Star Wars. If JJ can keep that up without going voyeuristic, I think he'll pull it off.
That said, part of what I love about SW is its love for its influences, and its ability to reference John Ford and Kurosawa in sci-fi, to put us on a strange and exotic planet with life or death stakes but keep the camera on sticks and let the characters tell the story. So it's a fine line to walk for sure.
UGHHH I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL DECEMBER
