ST J.J. Abrams (Director Of TFA & TROS) Discussion Thread—Now Finally Discussing: JJ Abrams

TFA?

JJ was hampered in part due to sheer lack of time. So even without studio meddling he couldn’t have created the SW movie of his dreams.

And as it was….TFA was criticized primarily for being a soft reboot. But that’s what Disney wanted - a soft reboot. Personally I don’t think JJ ever saw the assignment as “create your ideal SW fanfiction.” He was making a movie for Disney and wasn’t going to deliver something he though Disney would validly dislike. (And by validly I mean for non-bigoted reasons.)

 

Oh, TROS?

Yes, it’s really obvious from all the bts that had DLF not meddled with TROS it would at least have been coherent. Even just the fact that JJ was visibly upset re the movie, did almost no press for it, etc should make it blatantly obvious that he felt the end result was awful and not what he signed up to make.

I don’t think it ever could have been a masterpiece. But it would have been very markedly better, and better-recieved.

 

Honestly I'm gonna disagree. i think TROS is probably the film id rather watch out of the 3 ST movies. to me, it feels abit more like Star Wars. it tries to work with the lore, like the best parts of the Mandalorian, and just kinda feels more comfortable in the universe. Much better than the previous 2. And alot of the decisions i do agree with. I think alot of the decisions were the correct thing to do. Not all of them. But alot of them.

Problem is that its a messy movie. alot of the issues are that its a messy movie. for example you could have taken out the sequence with them saving Chewbacca and it wouldn't have lost anything. its there to create another plot and action piece that really isn't needed. so it adds to the extra baggage.

And the death star dagger thing... that was JJ's idea. people wanna act like JJ was out of the loop with this movie. people call that a silly scene... it was his idea!

 

It’s also a movie that JJ himself and others who worked on the movie and didn’t consider themselves “artistes” apparently hated.

There are movies *designed* to be big dumb spectacles. I didn’t see the Godzilla v Kong people acying like they wanted nothing to do with their creation. Because they aimed for “big dumb spectacle” and hit it.

TROS was not what its creators wanted it to be. It can’t be said to have been “designed” to be/do anything because the final product wasn’t designed but frankensteined. I don’t think it was what DLF wanted either but studio meddling often results in a product the studio isnt happy with either.

 

All I can hear in my head with this discussion of JJ, RJ, and the studio is Sallah's summation of the team searching for the Map Room in "Raiders" - "they have not one brain among them."

Sort of what Marcia L and Howard K were getting to...no understanding of what makes Star Wars, Star Wars.

 

Its like what i hear alot of people say about The Mandalorian. The Mandalorian is not trying to mimick Star Wars. Its trying to think the way Lucas would. Its inspiring to everything Lucas was inspired by and because of that it delivers something more in tune with what he created. TFA feels like its a remake of Star Wars. TROS does not feel like a remake. Sure its all over the place. Sure elements feel like they were taken from Endgame. but it feels the most like a ST follow up should be. Not a remake. TROS feels more at home with that movie as part of the saga. Even at its most messy. TFA feels de-tached. TLJ feels like a cross between the 2.

So yeah. I think they made alot of the right decisions with TROS. I think they realised very late. But honestly i think it could have been far worse if they had just tried to keep going the direction the last 2 movies set. The Mandalorian has shown how to do it right. Alot of the ST has shown how to try to fix something that wasn't broken.

 

The Mandalorian, the few episodes I've seen, feels like a western. Just as the first half of ANH does. I like it.

 

You're in for a treat.

 

I never got that feeling with "The Mandalorian".

 

Lucas was inspired by alot of film and tv. like Westerns and samurai movies (the ahsoka episode in s2).

 

Sounded to me like Marcia only thought the OT was real SW.

The ST was a mess but I’ll take TFA alone over all of Legends. What “feels like Star Wars” is pretty subjective.

 

I think JJ's movies moreso hit with the stupid plot angle, where I think TLJ hits the stupid characters angle, to me.

 

It's inconceivable and unforgivable that JJ tossed George Lucas's ST treatments in the bin because you would have had a cohesive story line and the directors would have all had to adapt the treatment.

It is also inconceivable and unforgivable if JJ did have an outline for EP8 & 9 and RJ tossed that in the bin!

 

Iger said in his memoir that he tossed George’s treatments…(Though I suspect he took the heat for a decision that was more a Disney committee thing.)

And RJ didn’t have the authority to toss JJ’s outlines. That was a DLF-level decision.

 

Weren't Lucas's treatments all about a micro-universe and the midichlorians controlling everything or something like that?

 

It also involved Maul. his apprentice. Leia involved in rebuilding the republic. Luke doing the jedi side of things. Rebel Stormtroopers trying to keep the empire alive.

George probably was gonna get more into the force too. but i think the reason it got thrown out is probably because it sounds more political than the OT.

 

Seeing how GLs SW storytelling improved with TCW, I think the fears of what he would do with the ST are always misplaced. The story is the foundation.

But the dirty secret is were seeing what GL wanted post ROTJ anyway. Likely another "ST" if we live normal lifetimes. Executive Creative Director will make sure his story goes over all but Lucas's.

 

Didn’t Lucas want Ahsoka to die in TCW?

 

I think TLJ's plots are, mostly, propelled by the actions of stupid characters. While in TFA the stupid plots are kinda basically separate from the character. LIke, I think it makes sense, for the first order to want the map to Luke Skywalker, in theory. However that the plot of this movie, until the movie decides half way through that the movie is about stopping another death star, is about a bunch of people running around trying to get a map for 1 guy and it doesn't even last the whole movie (and not a more normal reason like that plot concluding with finding Luke, but because the plot for no particular reason just stops being relevant and it starts being about something else, with some nonsense about the map not being complete and R2 just jumpstarting because the plot has awakened him after the new death star was awoken, for no reason given by the movie why). The story basically stops and then we have another movie that's about stopping a death star. Not because the characters are stupid, but because the plot is kinda nonsense, imo. And that's not, to me, counting the coincidences I think the movie uses to propel it's plot forward and such.

Now TLJ basically has characters being stupid and that drives the plot, so the plot then becomes either stupid and/or lame as a side effect, to me. I think the space chase, for an example, is a showcase of that. Though, while I think it's a weak plot, I think what makes that more stupid is what happens in it by the characters and such.

 

Not that I recall reading/seeing. Regardless - GL would have made sure each life or death served the story first and built everything off that (marketing, licensing, influences, etc..). Filoni is the same way - and GL is his biggest and closest SW influence. Not hard to see how this plays out.

 

I think George was aware that Ahsoka couldn't live past a certain point in the timeline. while i don't think Filoni could ever bring himself to kill the character, so they found a way to keep her alive and out the way.

 

There was some mention of that however that issue of midichlorians could have been shelved but the structure of GL's ST remains therefore we could have been at piece cause we new the ST had come from the maker cause now the ST seems out of place with the 1-6 GL written and mostly directed films.