ST JJ Abrams to direct Episode VII

Perhaps I am in the minority of today's movie goers, but one thing I really really miss from older blockbusters is that they somehow managed to be super well done, wildly entertaining, incredibly witty, fun for everyone in the family, maybe romantic, and also include some real depth at the same time. Off the top of my head, the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, and even Independence Day are good examples of this.

However, it seems people these days are just as happy paying for movies without anything very profound, and since movie makers love money, they hire people like JJ Abrams. I didn't really know who JJ Abrams was before I watched TFA last year, but after I was unsettled about TFA I looked up who directed it, saw other movies he made, and I realized a common thread.

JJ Abrams is really good at taking something already done and updating it to appeal to a larger, less caring audience. That may sound very negative, but honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. I just wish they hadn't done it with Star Wars. After TFA last year I honestly thought I would have to say goodbye to the Star Wars I loved and grew up with. This year I walked into RO really bracing myself for it all over again, but was pleasantly surprised.

Really hoping episode VIII will turn things around for me.

 

Independence Day has as much depth as a flat surface. Puddles can't even form in that film.

The Force Awakens is not a film that comes to mind when thinking of modern blockbusters lacking in depth, particularly in regards to characters and emotions. I felt it was a large leap ahead of Rogue One in that respect.

 

Dp

 

Deleted. Independence day, really?

 

Independence Day was a bad example.

I didn't really relate to any of the characters in TFA and I'll do my best to give brief, objective reasons.

Rey- Didn't have to work or sacrifice at all to get stronger and win. Probably why so many millennials liked the movie. (Savage, sorry)
Finn- Either I'm racist or he's a terrible actor. You decide.
Kylo- We were given no good reason as to why he turned to the dark side in the first place. Childish character. Very little reason to fear him.
Han and Leia- Divorced? Really?
Leia- Her 'may the force be with you' felt really forced.
Kylo and Han- Their relationship was completely unexplored. Couldn't believe they killed Han without putting more into it.

What over arcing themes were present in TFA? What am I supposed to take home with me?

I don't want to pitch the two movies against each other too much but in Rogue 1-

I thought Jen's dad's plight and dedication to his daughter was moving. He gave his life for the chance she would have some type of life. Stardust additions were nice. His hologram message? Wow.
Jen, despite all the reason to resent her dad, was willing to give her life for his life's work. Very non millennial of her.
The robot guy extremist did a good job of introducing why Jen should care.
The complexity of the rebellion and what some people were forced to do, and their resilience to make sure it was all 'for something' was quite good.
The hope theme was actually well executed. Thought it was cheesy in the trailers but they pulled it off. Nice connection with ANH too.
Great freaking droid. Felt terrible when he died.
The Asian dude's force abilities were much better done than Rey's.
A lot of quality bad guys.

What reached out to you in TFA? Please convince me, I WANT TFA to be good.

 

I like both TFA and RO but to me RO is the much more superficial and modern compared to TFA. In the end it all is a question of taste and subjective pov though.

 

Sorry, given the reasons that you cited, I don't think you do.

 

I felt like they were fairly objective besides my poke at millennials (which is very tasteful being that I'm one myself). But sorry if I came off too savage.

 

None of your points were objective.

 

Rey: Okay, I really want to address the Millennial crack real quick. You're right, Rey really is a relatable character for Millennials. She lives in the godforsaken aftermath of a world the generations before her left her. She literally lives in the repurposed rubble of a war they fought. She scavenges that rubble for the sole sake of surviving. She's self-sufficient. She has creative solutions to problems. And while she might not technically be an orphan (we have no idea who her parents are or if they're alive), she might as well be one, and from a very young age. The fact that she's even alive is remarkable, and a testament to her strength from the start of the film. She doesn't really become stronger at the end so much as she augments her pre-existing strength with the Force. That strength is there because she needed it to survive; all her life, she earned the right to live through hard work. She also has a naive belief that the future will be better, but by the end of the film she realizes that it'll only be better if she fights to make it that way. There's spoiled rich kids in any generation, but they're not the norm from my experience. Compare this to Luke, who lived on his aunt and uncle's farm, whose biggest problem was having to do his chores when he wanted to see his friends, whose family owns a landspeeder and a T-16 (that he uses to shoot animals like a punk), who has his lightsaber handed to him by a father figure, who has to be told what to do at nearly every twist and turn. No wonder Gen Xer's like him so much (Savage, sorry).
Finn: I don't want to pull the racist card, but since you brought it up yourself I'm willing to say it's more likely than him being a bad actor, considering the widespread praise his performance has been given.
Kylo: Probably something they're going to get into in VIII and IX. Unlike the OT, they have the benefit of knowing they get a trilogy's worth of films here. And to be fair, we weren't given any strong motive for Vader's turn in ANH. "Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force." And... that's it. Even in TESB and RotJ, when we find out he's Luke's father, we never really get the reason for why he turned evil, what about it was so enticing to him. We needed three more film for that explanation. I feel comfortable waiting one or two for Kylo's. And what terrified me about Kylo was his volatility, how unpredictable he was, paired with the fact that he clearly knew what he was doing was wrong, but did it anyway because he felt he was too far gone. So far gone that, in an attempt to fool himself into thinking he was on the right path, he killed his own father, which going off of the look on his face he regretted immediately. He's an interesting character filled with emotional intensity and conflict, and I really want to see where they take him going forward.
Han and Leia divorced: Are they? Are they just estranged? All we know is they're separated, but I mean... it happens. Especially when something as traumatic as your son murdering a bunch of his fellow students and joining a Fascist Space Youth brigade happens.
Leia: I don't see how this prevents you from connecting with the character, but I mean, like... you do you. I was fine with the delivery, but that's me.
Kylo and Han: I'll agree I wish we got more of it, but a lot of their relationship was spelled out in their exchange on the bridge. That scene does a lot of emotional heavy lifting.
Themes: There's two major ones off the top of my head. The first is previous generations will always leave some sort of mess behind for the following generation to deal with. You've done it, I'll do it, my kids and grandkids will do it, and this will continue until we're all dead. It's a byproduct of being imperfect humans who make mistakes, and it's visually personified by the OT-era rubble strewn about Jakku. Rey literally lives in the refuse of the world that's been left her, as I stated above. However, the flipside of this is the majority of us will always want a better world, and there are those who will do what they can to see it fulfilled. This involves making choices. The first we see is Finn, who refuses to kill for the First Order. From his initial perspective, the First Order will kill with or without him, and he chooses without. Throughout the film he struggles to find the courage to fight an enemy he's been a part of since birth, but by the end he's found a cause he's willing to risk his life for. It took immense bravery for him to stand against Kylo Ren when he's seen firsthand what he's capable of. Rey has to choose to leave her old life behind, one that will never get any better, in order to pursue one that can be. This life has both companionship and meaning, in that she too is fighting for a better world. Kylo Ren, on the other hand, is flat out handed the choice to come home and leave his darkness behind, and he rejects it. It's a choice he has to live with, and I don't see a redemption arc for the character. I think he'll have to live and die by these choices.

I'm only going to address a few of your Rogue One points, because I like the film and have no intent to make it appear as if I'm lambasting it by holding it against a film I like more.
The hologram message was the only point the film itself moved me. I was moved by Leia at the end, but that's more nostalgia than anything.
I don't... I still don't get your Millennial crack. Rey also took up a destiny that by all means might get her killed, and she did so becasue because it was the right thing to do, not because it was easy. She struggled with the choice, yeah, but Jyn had been running from the fight against the Empire for years, so they're kind of in the same boat.
Yeah, I did like the "This needs to be for something or we've committed atrocities for nothing," but that connected me to the Rebellion as a whole, rather than to specific people. Cassian, a bit? He was my favorite character in the film, but I still feel I didn't know him as well as I knew Rey or Finn at the end of TFA, or Luke, Han, and Leia at the end of ANH.
The "Asian dude" (racist, I'm seeing it now) didn't have Force abilities, per se. He was more like Daredevil than a proper Jedi, and they more or less stated as much. I actually found his melee takedowns of the stormtroopers harder to buy than anything Rey did in TFA, but that's just me.
And as much as I liked Krennic, he came across as a bit neutered when placed next to Tarkin (pre-existing villain digitally resurrected in a way that feels a bit icky) and Vader (pre-existing villain). I liked him, I enjoyed when he was on screen, but I felt he paled in comparison to Kylo, who I felt was one of TFA's fresher additions to the universe.

 

Savage indeed! Good... good... let the hate flow through you!

However, as a millennial myself I didn't identify with Rey. You say she earned the right to survive. I say she was placed there intentionally for protection knowing she would be relatively safe. We will find out in a later episode. What we CAN see in this episode is that her ability with the force was far too quickly developed, even if she received training early on. If we find out in a future movie she hasn't received any previous training than her force development will really be even more unbelievable than it already is.

There are a lot of people criticizing his performance. Him being out of breath, too jerky, and over acting are valid criticisms and mentioned commonly. I see that I mentioned that the actor for Saw Gerrera did a good job but you either missed it or didn't want to acknowledge it. At the end of the day we are all just as racist as the next guy, but my racism is not the common factor here, it's the acting.

I really hope they do because in TFA there was little reason for him to turn to the dark side and as I said he was very childish and the bad ass villain impression we were fed in the trailers flopped hard in the movie. This is also a common complaint. Not just me.

True.

I wanted to see a similar Princess Leia as the Leia that was saying goodbye to Han before he was put in carbonate. Didn't feel it, but you're right this one point is pretty subjective.

Yep

I say you have to dig pretty far to pull those out but you are doing your best to defend TFA and that's the best the movie is giving you so I understand. One theme that the movie also suggested unintentionally, which bothers me a lot, is that balance of the force isn't all its cracked up to be after all.

Right. It wasn't a crack. I was saying it was non millennial. Forget that I associated anything with millennials at all. I like to see strong motive and development and Jen's character did just that.

Agreed. I didn't feel like I knew him that well either. However, you don't have to know everything about a character to identify with him or what he's doing. That's what they did well with him.

You say you don't want to pull the race card, I say you are biting at the bit. Please notice that before I mentioned the 'Asian dude', I also mentioned Jen's dad, the robot guy extremist, the great freaking droid, and the quality bad guys. Notice how I didn't give any of them a name besides Jen? That's because I was running short on time this morning and didn't want to check the spelling for all the names. Three letter words are as much as I can take without needing spell check. Millennial here.

If the fact that I mentioned his race as a description bothers you, I do apologize, really. But I encourage you as well to seek out your local political activist or university professor and ask them if describing somebody by their race is indeed the mark of a racist or not. If you don't want to do that I understand, but next time you want to try and discredit someone's otherwise valid criticisms by attacking their perceived lack of political correctness, please make sure you do so more thoroughly. You missed that I also referred to the 'Asian' as a 'dude', making me both a racist and a sexist. Much better fuel for a keyboard warrior such as yourself. Even so, I like you. You're cute.

Back on topic. Chirrut was able to sense Jen's necklace and later could feel the force moving darkly around Cassian when he was intending to kill. He wasn't a Jedi but he was more than a dare devil, he was one with the force and the force was with him. If we are comparing Chirrut and Rey, Chirrut obviously has a much much better knowledge of what the force is, compared to Rey who has never heard of it, and his fighting ability shows form, practice, and experience. Rey's fight shows none of those things. Also, Chirrut wasn't fighting two thugs, he was fighting a small pack of armed storm troopers and didn't need to bite a single one of them.

Sorry but objectively speaking, if Chirrut was given a light saber and had to go up against an injured Kylo, I would give him a much better chance at winning than Rey, although I still think he should lose. You brought up a good point, though, I will use this in the future as a good comparison.

I don't really feel like I need to respond to anything else from this post.

 

You're the person who left open only two possibilities; that you were racist or John Boyega is a bad actor. That means that you leave people who think he is a good actor with only the possibility that you are racist.

Especially when you felt the need to use race as a "thing"; you could have said "either I really didn't like the way Finn's character was developed or John was a bad actor"

That you've since referred to "the Asian dude" and even pulled the "how can I be racist I liked this other black character" does suggest (without using it as a stick with which to beat you) that you may want to rethink how you talk about non-white characters if you want to avoid being thought to have some prejudice or bias

 

Well put.

Sadly, it has become a bit of a natural reflex for people who like Johns performance to at least hint that people who don't must be prejudice. People could bring up an excellent performance of his from another scene, acting techniques that he did really well, or something, anything, but it doesn't happen. ''Either I am a racist or he's a bad actor' is a good attempt at humor, suggesting that I myself may be a racist, but poorly received here so I will make sure to speak with more sensitivity in the future.

In the very same post I accuse one actor of bad acting, I separately admired another actor for his. After me joking that I could be racist is seriously suggested, I return to my original post, reconsider the possibility, and observe two of the actors that fell on the opposite sides of my critique were the same race. Yeah, I'm going to point that out every single time.

I am also going to do my part as a liberal and member of this community to correct people when they accuse people of racism prematurely or to use it as a weapon, because when people do that, the victim(s) can often revert to desperate actions, which is evident in the most recent US election results.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry I suggested I may be a racist and I am sorry I poked fun at my own generation.

Enough is enough though. This is a Star Wars forum after all.

 

If there is misunderstanding, you might want to look
at the way you communicate instead of passive aggressive regret that others don't get it

 

I'm not intimately familiar with JJ as a filmmaker. OK, I've seen his Lost pilot, Mission Impossible III, Star Trek, Super 8 and The Force Awakens, but I've never gotten the sense that I "know" him as an artist. I haven't gotten a taste of his soul, because he hasn't seemed to use his art to express his inner self.
Perhaps that's part of the secret behind his affection for the Mystery Box; that he likes to remain private and just let us get brief glimpses of his soul.

...if it's even his soul that we're glimpsing - because most of his works that I've seen have seemed pretty shallow. Technically brilliant, but intellectually just teasing at... what, really? Is he just teasing at mysteries for mystery's sake? Does he have a point beyond wanting to make us curious? Does he really have a story to tell or does he just want us to think that he does (which, in its way, is actually pretty artsy)?

Either way, I feel that out of the works that I listed above, TFA carries the greatest depth - out of necessity. It's the continuation of a movie series that has already provided depth of immeasurable proportions and it sets up future events that will need to carry that tradition with as much gravitas as their predecessors.
Furthermore, the script of this film was based on ideas provided by Arndt and George Lucas himself. As such, it was bound to contain plot threads deeply rooted in the grand mythos of Star Wars.

If JJ had been asked to create a brand new space fantasy movie from scratch, I doubt that he'd have been able to pull off something this grand, but his brilliance as a director coupled with his mischievous affinity for mysteries, based on the solid foundation of GL's vision, turned out to be a great recipe for success in this instance.

 

I just watched TFA the other day! I forgot how great this film is! I think Disney/Lucasflm hit two Grand slams out of the ballpark with TFA and RO!!!!!!!!!!

 

I am happy with what JJ did. He resurrected the franchise (with Kathleen Kennedy, of course). TFA needed to be safe.

Ep. 8 on the other hand, is going to be something else....

 

I loved TFA and still do. It is an excellent movie on its own merit. But being a strategic thinker I see how big of a success it really was.

Even people who hated on it still were effected by it. I don't know how many times I have seen "TFA was a carbon copy and sucked, but I can't wait to see where they go with Rey or Kylo or Poe in EP 8 and 9" . I just laugh.

The entire purpose of TFA was to transition Star Wars to a new generation. Before TFA it was all about the big 3 (+Chewy) now people are discussing the future of the new cast and how their roles will play out. TFA was a huge success not only at the box office, but in making the new cast the face of Star Wars. Ya we all wanna know what Luke is going to do, but if you think about it, most of the time it is in reference to how he will interact with the new cast. Will he train Rey, fight Snoke, Kylo, etc.

As much as some of you want to sound edgy and diss on TFA you were pulled in by it. Mission accomplished. And you don't even realize it.

 

That's a bit...shallow.

I have said all along that TFA is a rollicking fun adventure. I look forward to the further adventures of the characters. At the same time, TFA was largely derivative and offered lot of action at the expense of much substance (to each their own, but there was a lot of superficiality with the potential of a lot of depth to be pulled out in future films).

Just like JJ's original Trek, it was frenetic, fast paced adventure with little room to breathe.

All IMHO of course, but I'm well aware I was "pulled in." But left less than satisfied, considering its potential.

 

yes, but my whole point is that even for people who did not like it many want to know what happens next. They are interest in what the new characters are going to do. IMO TFA would have been a strategic failure if everyone loved it and thought it was the perfect movie but relied on the old cast too much and people really did not move on to the new cast.

I think for Disney the most important thing to get right was to make people move on from the old cast, and that mission was definitely accomplished. In the end where the characters go and what they do in EP 8 and EP 9 will define TFA. Some of those "plot holes" could turn into awesome moments if the answer is satisfactory in the next 2 movies.

I mean a perfect example from ANH is when Obi Wan just lets himself die. If there was no further development of their relationship beyond that it would be lame, but now that we have the full complement of story surrounding it, it has become a profound moment in the movie. The next 3 years will tell if moments like that are created in TFA by revelations in 8 and 9.

 

I wouldn't blame JJ for TFA so much if it wasn't for the fact that he didn't just direct it, he was heavily involved in writing it as well.

If he had only directed it, I'd think he had done a pretty good job considering the story. But since he was involved in that, I can't have much sympathy.

 

Sympathy? I don't have any sympathy for him co-writing and directing a critically successful, audience loved, $2 Billion grossing movie either...

 

I just re-watched a couple scenes with the sound off in several Star Wars films out of curiosity. To avoid the risk of comparisons to others I'll just say this.

The amount of thought JJ put into many aspects of TFA shine through. It's in the little details. The rack focus pull to the saber. The camera moves that tuck in the way Speilberg does. The choreography with the trees being sliced down. The wide shot in the rubble as Poe flies through everybody. Staying with that shot all the way to where his fighter is visible through a window frame of the rubble and rises up. The whip pans when Poe takes out 3 stormtroopers with his cannons to showcase the power and rythymic pace of those blasts. Just even the directing decision to whip to the one, whip to the other guy, and then straight to Han's reaction. The camera work in The Force Awakens is incredible and the story board work and rhythm of the editing are smooth as butter. I also likes when he lets people move into frame who aren't. An obvious example being when Finn rises up and into the shot. Or when he runs into shots. Or when Rey slides down the Sand dune and he decided to hold that shot longer than many would. Same with the one before when she's standing outside of the Star Destroyer. He holds that just long enough. He lets things like that happen and it adds to the diversity of the visuals. He's not just a static guy who shoots for symmetry all the time but he's not a chaotic handheld guy either. He sort of understands all the best techniques and employs them almost like Spielberg a lot of the time in all the right ways. That moving shot around and in on the chest with the saber as she opens it was almost like something Spielberg would have shot in Indiana Jones for a relic. Say what you want about JJ but the man is a film geek to the point of being a true craftsman and his camera decisions and story board execution are absolutely terrific on TFA.

When one watches a really brilliantly conceived action scene with quality acting and terrific visual direction it still flows and makes sense even without the aid of the sound effects, dialogue and John Williams incredible score to lift it all up. The best scenes in Star Wars history hold up this way and TFA surprisingly has it's fair share of beautifully conceived, shot, directed, edited and and well-acted scenes.

I find it interesting that Kathy Kennedy mentioned the same thing of Rian Johnson. She sure does seem to have an eye for directors who move the camera exactly where it's most effective for the moment. Even M. Night, who she nurtured as a director, has a terrific sense of visual space and nails when to go close up and when to go wide. When to move the camera. When not to. I'm curious now to watch some Looper scenes. Edit:I watched the Rainmaker clip. Some nice stuff in that sequence too.

 

When was that?

 

When it's in the snow and Kylo tries to pull it at first. It's not an edit. It's a wide angle shot that pulls the focus between man and object.