Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

I'm just crossing my fingers and waiting for the day some executive realizes that the way to fix Star Trek is: Contract Vince Gilligan as showrunner / head writer for a new series. Hire Patrick Stewart to make occasional appearances as Admiral Picard.
Forget the '09 timeline ever happened. Done.
If his work on X-Files, Breaking Bad, etc. is any indication, he'd be wonderfully enthusiastic about it and strike the right mix of character drama, intellectual intrigue and inventive cinematography to bring Trek back to it's moral and intellectual 'speculative fiction' roots without seeming stale or old-fashioned.
For that matter, forget the idea of blockbuster Trek movies (unless an undeniably good pitch pops up) and emulate Doctor Who with long special episodes that get simulcast theater releases. They've made a mint off them without blockbuster budget, and they work better for an enthusiastic niche audience.

 

It's tricky, because I think sometimes it is one person with at least 51% or more of the responsibility for bringing out the best in people (True Detective with Pizzolatto, and frankly Vince Gilligan)... but regardless, Star Wars is too big of a pie for that, so Gilligan's certainly right in that scenario.

Heh... I mean, honestly, with a production this big, it's not so much a question of how many people are adding it up into something great; it's more about how good they are at suppressing the huge amounts of people who might be unknowingly worsening it.

 

The auteur theory in totality might be nonsense, but I find it hard to argue that films like Ninotchka, 3 Godfathers and Shadow of a Doubt don't ooze the personality and predilections of their respective directors.

And Skyfall for instance, against all odds, feels very much like a Sam Mendes film.

 

but does Lucas allow for such questioning?

 

IMO the problems with STID are about the script rather than the directing. Especially Lindelof ( good riddance! ) and the Khan thing.

 

That's the whole problem again, right there: I argued for ages in the EVII forums (or at least it felt that way) that not liking the ST reboot wouldn't necessarily mean anything about your opinion of Abrams, because it wasn't as if he created the whole thing by himself.

 

I think some of that might be case by case, though; the setup of "starship battle near the moon, disabled ship crashes right down to Earth" for example might actually have made more sense in the script, but after that it's up to the director which visual element is put where. And a strong director, which is what we want to believe talented directors of great films are, might have a go at tweaking a bad script instead of just eating it up at the producer's/studio's orders. And this is on my mind especially if nixing the script for a huge franchise blockbuster was the first thing Abrams wanted to do with what came out of an award-winning author's pen.

I'd be surprised if Abrams wasn't and isn't aware that entertainment plus... well, simpleness (I admit, I wanted to write dumbness at first) equals money. It wasn't the script's mandate to give Star Trek a Fast & Furious/R&B music video look-and-feel (writers do not have that kind of power), and here we are giving the next installment to a F&F director.

First of all, I think it's extremely nice of Gilligan to make this about nationalities again. Next, I think it's simplified to say "oh, the auteur can't be the deciding factor of the movie because there's other people". As if the theory talked about 100 percent complete control. What the auteur theory does is identify a filmmaker as someone who's leading the production of a movie from script to direction to final cut. Not doing everything (which would include playing every role). The auteur decides; if someone suggests "how about lighting like that" an auteur can still say "great idea!" without having compromised telling his story in the film medium. And notable directors have their own 'voice' or style for the most part, especially if they're writing their own material. In some cases it becomes easily identifiable when a studio put one of those directors into the blockbuster segment (especially is these directors want to earn more money) and part of what made them special is lost in the process.

 

Grey1: That sounds like a bit of a jumbled point to me.

Beyond a bit of cultural prejudice---Justin Lin is a straight-up nerd, as confirmed by a lot of his comments surrounding the Community episodes he directed---I think you're honestly sort of driving the point home that it is a fairly random system. Yes, directors can leave a footprint, but that doesn't mean they always will. It's really as simple as JJ not being a Star Trek fan; he had power, but that's like electing someone president of a country they've never been to.

I just don't get why people would rather believe that someone is chewing something up just to get their own scent all over it as opposed to the idea that a product was simply cranked out by a heartless system and nobody fostered it; the latter is far more plausible. I mean, hell, that's what's happening to the DCU; at Marvel you have auteur filmmakers coming into meetings and saying, "Oh man, I'd really like to work on a ______ movie" and they get paired with a staff writer from the get-go, but DC is cranking up projects without even having directors attached, thus minimizing the potential for personal belief in their projects.

It's a fluid, immeasurable concept... but it's still sort of measurable.

 

Him being a fan or not really does not make a huge difference in jmo.
Meyer was not a Trek fan yet his Trek films are all great and also 3 different films.

JJ films were basically the same plot (Albiet with major holes) ie the revere plot.

Also his buddies are Orci and Lindelof you can't tell me he was not aware of what they were writing.

 

I honestly don't know about Community except for the fact that there's some nerd factor to it, so I can't judge that. And Lin isn't introduced to people like me as a director of some TV show episodes with nerd cred, but as a F&F director. And while it may be the best of both worlds for Abrams' Trek to continue the F&F style while getting a nerd cred boost (that's what Orci/Kurtzman kind of delivered in the old team, since they went public as Trekkies) and Lin might be the best choice to have a coherent trilogy-style movie series without producing a sell-all-out-to-the-masses non-Trek thing... the point I was ranting about is exactly that they seem to stay in the F&F area, which isn't all that interesting for me. If they'd really gotten Wright or Cornish to do it, it would obviously have become a somewhat different kind of movie (also, one centered around Simon Pegg), and that would have been more interesting to me. But whatever, maybe Lin will surprise me by hyping me for the next movie even though I don't plan on watching it (that's what Terminator always does to me - I basically have no interest in the franchise, but every new movie manages to appear as if they really created a worthwhile fictional universe for the thing).

That was one point. The other would be the auteur factor. Yeah, you can create a kind of auteur scale with which you can define if something is auteur or not; but personally I think the criteria are somewhat fluid, or somewhat exclusive, so that it's more like a set of yes-no-questions. And even then most of it might be personal judgment. And I'm not sure if you're pointing that out, but of course an 'auteur' filmmaker can make a pretty non-auteur movie once in a while and then switch back.

That's because the criteria are more about what the directro-artist is doing; not so much about "he's better and he's true because he writes his own material". Yeah, that might be better than some studio exec script in the hands of a guy who's mostly famous for staying in budget. But it can turn out to be a PANTSy movie either way. Or a great movie. "Auteur" is a description of the mindset, and any school of "only auteur movies are true, good movies" is obviously an eye-roll worthy collection of snobs; but that's another topic, like the question if Hollywood is only making horribly stupid sell-out movies. It's a marker for your reception of the piece, and of the acknowledgement that the artist-director behind it can be judged in a different way.

I think the best part about this is that the prequels would actually kind of count as auteur movies, but since there's so much money and evil special effects involved and film experts don't like the films, they probably don't get cited very often, and mostly in an ironic way that's meant to send either the movies or the theory up.

Praenomen Cognomen, I know that you're an expert on film, and possibly one who's currently spending more time on the topic instead of still surfing on the last waves of his studies a few years back like me, so I'd actually be pretty happy if we can delve further into this field from time to time.

 

Oh, I have a lot of holes in my knowledge, having learned from the ol' institute of "snobby local two-screen theater" which may be why auteur theory remains so romantic for me in some situations and nerve-racking in others... but I think the prequels are the single greatest argument against auteur theory even existing in major movies, for sure.

But I dunno; like I said, there's certainly a lot at work and you can never really know, but I think one of the answers lies in fett 4's point: it's still possible for someone who doesn't care about the subject matter to make a great one (I'd say even on a blockbuster scale---I'd think of Kenneth Branagh making a pretty good movie out of Thor), but that's least likely to come out of a certain sort of studio shill. The question is whether JJ's fandom makes him act out in the right ways. I'm not saying JJ is a wholly blameless figure, by any means... just that his sins are far more likely to be sins of omission, not commission.

It's not a matter of guaranteeing good results so much as guaranteeing good intentions. The ultimate point I'd make about JJ is: Worry if you must, but he's a guy who wants to make movies... in the grand scheme, that's better than him being an accountant. When accountants make movies, you get this.

 

Sad, because Martin Campbell was one of the best journeyman directors there was. Shoulda quit with his Edge of Darkness remake.

He's still the only person outside of Lucas and Spielberg who was able to capture that Curtiz-ian sense of swashbuckling adventure. Even Spielberg couldn't do it, come to think of it, in Hook.

 

Yeah; I love Campbell, and he's always the example I go to when I think of the fact that the director doesn't always make the difference. He proves that it's not about a director's inherent ability to fit into a franchise, because he made arguably the two most definitive Bond films of the modern era. The fact is, it's actually about the lateness of the game and the particular set of methods used by the studio to break that late-game director that make all the difference.

 

Plus he's a bigger fan of Wars than Trek.

 

Evidenced in Star Trek, funnily enough. The best Star Wars film to be made in a long time.

 

Seriously. Especially because if you think about it, Into Darkness in particular is kind of similar to Attack of the Clones (second in trilogy, set in motion by bombing attack, unravel conspiracy within the "good guys" leadership by zooming off to another planet to have a fight on, ambiguous character revealed as villain, giant battle at end including main character being crippled for it and a contemplative side-character suddenly becoming a very active fighter against the revealed villain, ambiguous ending leading up to [possible] war). And I think AOTC is probably the movie Star Wars fans least want copied overall.

 

I'm exclusively referring to the first one, not the second. But they do have the call to adventure, the irreverence, the bickering, the fleetness of foot that the prequels lack.

 

The first one is the only one I've seen and it's an incoherent pile of crap shot annoyingly.

The cast has a nice rapport, though.

 

The cast is the main reason I enjoy the second one, as well. It certainly isn't the script.

 

Gais, I wuved both Abrams Trek films. I'm sorry.

 

Who cares if JJ is a fan or not. Nick Meyers was not a fan of Star Trek yet created the 3 best films of Star Trek that still hold up to this day. OTOH John Logan who did the script for Star Trek Nemesis was meant to be a fan and was also good friends with 2 of the cast (Brent Spinner and Patrick Stewart). yet he created a big mess, trying to re-do Wrath of Khan (ironically JJ pretty much tried to do the same thing his 2 films). Being a fan is not relevant to telling a good story or making a good film.

 

The issue here is not that he is trying to do something new but that he is basically just redoing the original Starwars. There's even a Darth Vader villain for gods sake!
Of course it will still sell well (its StarWars) but I wonder after people have seen it, whether they will bothered to either see it again or buy it on DVD, I am thinking not.
By then though JJ will be gone with his bags of cash (like Star Trek) by the time the proverbial hits the fan, and Kennedy will be trying to wonder how to get people to go see 8 and 9 but of course that won't matter because JJ is a fan !

With the Prequels there are some great ideas just really badly executed or just not done at all. Take Darth Maul as one example, a great idea for a villain yet is also completely different from Vader but what does Lucas do ? kills him off after 5 minutes. Yet there was nothing Count Dookie (who was only in it for 5 mins himself) did in the next 2 films, that could not have been done by Maul.
Ironically I think Lucas kind of thought that himself since it was he that bought him back for the TCW, though that made even less sense.

 

Did you just compare Nero with Darth Vader? That sounds so wrong to my ears. It is not nice to compare such a non-entity of a character with Darth frigging Vader. I know on this boards most gush over the prequels and Sidious, but c'mon.

I don't know why on boards like these so many are opposed to the JJ Trek movies. They made massive money and especially the first one is a massive success critically. I guess it must have something to do with anxiety and posters on the internet not being a statistically siginificant part of the audience. Nu Trek was a success in every sense of the word, and whoever thinks that JJ Abrams can't do a successful SW has probably read too many youtube comments and JJ bashing to see a clear picture. He managed to put Trek, which was in a koma before, back on the map and Into Darkness grossed even more than 2009 did.

 

Where in my post did I gush over the prequels. I haven't, I said there were some good ideas badly executed.

Your also equating making money with whether something is a good film or not.