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

Perhaps one of the most overrated directors in my lifetime.

 

I think there are few more overrated directors out there.

 

I’d like to hear who else. Peter Jackson is up there on that list for me, but he at least has a vision that sticks with you. JJ’s films just don’t adhere. They’re like Teflon.

 

Can we add Zack Snyder to the list?

 

Christopher Nolan is my vote for overrated as well as Rian Johnson (and also JJ).

 

No, he’s just terrible. And most don’t overrate him.

No.

 

When it comes to fans of everything a director does, I’ve seen mannnnny hardcore Snyder and Nolan fans. Not nearly as many JJ or Jackson fans.

 

That’s not true of Jackson. His fans are legion. Even though I don’t enjoy his style, one can’t deny that he has a fandom of his own.

 

Abrams might be overrated, but TROS is his most underrated.

 

Does JJ even have any hardcore fans? Beyond Jojo obviously.

Like Michael Bay i think he is a director you know will give you a fun ride, but don't expect anything with much depth.

JJ is not really a director people are rallying around to direct their favorite franchises. While studios obviously see JJ as someone who can get the job done and make it look good.

 

I don't think TLJ made it so TROS was gonna end up trash either way. TROS ended up how it was without TLJ's help.

 

Every director has a fan club of one size or another. But Jackson generally is known for the LotR trilogy, not a particular style that a hardcore fanbase follows him for. I'd say most folk who love that trilogy aren't devoted fans of the director's other movies in the way that, say, Nolan's fans are. I can definitely say that a lot of folk who adored LotR downright hated his Hobbit films, in fact, which are arguably his most famous works outside of LotR.

 

That implies the main issue with TROS was that they didn't go didn't go a particular direction that you would have preferred. Or that JJ was stuck with Rians vision so its not his fault is TROS wasn't great. But in terms of potential. JJ had a perfectly fine template to have told a good story with. Infact alot of the ideas in TROS were also potentially fine. They were just not written or executed well.

 

I don't agree. As I think the template he was left with wasn't interesting or much of anything, leaving the next movie with the burden to establish a dynamic, develop it and pay it off in one movie for basically all the characters, after it hadn't even really even been done much with. I think, no matter what, the next movie would've had to have a soft reboot purely to make the story and characters function. I think that's basically what Trevarrow's draft did and what JJ's movie ended up doing. To varying degrees of success and failure.

 

You can make 1 movie and make a good movie. Sure its nice if you have a foundation if required/ But honestly there is no excuse for sloppy writing. Which was the issue with TROS. And If they had to soft-reboot, then that gives more freedom than not to make 1 good movie.

And i have always said this and il say it again, There were alot of right decisions and ideas made with TROS. Not all, there were certainly some weird ones. But a fair amount of those decisions were not hurt by TLJ.

For example i stand by the idea we didn't need the sequence of Poe, Rey and Finn storming that star destroyer in TROS. it added nothing they couldn't have done somewhere else and was just a quickfire action piece with no stakes. Which took away from other things they could have concentrated on.

 

While I don't agree with there being "lots" of right decisions in TROS, I think the bolded is spot on. I think it's absolutely true that whoever was making IX was going to find themselves in a very difficult situation trying to make the story work in large part because of how TLJ wrote many aspects of the story into a corner. Some level of "soft rebooting" or "retconning" the ST story was IMO very understandable.

Once you accept that some ret-cons were necessary while also acknowledging that this is part 9 of 9 and part 3 of 3, then it comes down to choosing which specific elements of TFA/TLJ you're gonna continue, ret-con, or jettison altogether. And I think the bolded is a good point, because as bad as it is that TLJ left the story with very few places to go, it's also true that this dynamic means you can make IX about basically whatever you want, within reason ofc.

And that's exactly what they did. They made an incredibly out-of-nowhere story revolving around Palpatine, Rey's relation with him, and this "final order" stuff. And so I'd say that they made incredibly bad choices among what weak options were available and could have been salvaged. MANY of these choices & their implementation bear zero relation to TLJ and are entirely within the scope of TROS as a single film.

Basically, you can acknowledge the weak foundation TLJ left without making blanket excuses for why TROS is such a bad movie on all fronts. You can also acknowledge that TLJ ignored much of potential story ideas setup by TFA while acknowledging TROS did the same, causing us to end up with a significantly worse trilogy overall than if they hadn't decided to just blow it all up in the final entry.

At least with TLJ we got a well crafted film even if the narrative is trash. In TROS both are trash IMO.

EDIT: To be fair, I do agree with this post and the general assertion that it's the context at LFL in the fallout from TLJ that doomed TROS, not necessarily TLJ as a film all on its own. I agree more production time & a more clear-eyed vision from LFL could have maybe salvaged IX. (I think they should have retconned the parents, made Rey a Skywalker, had Kylo still be the main villain, and re-centered Rey AND FINN VS. Kylo as the main conflict)

 

There was a storming a Star Destroyer scene? So memorable that I didn’t remember it.

 

Although she managed to get off the planet anyway without the medallion, since it got blown up 5 minutes afterwards, which really makes you think... about how shoddily the script was constructed

 

I was thinking of the end, with the space horses, I forgot "let's try and redo ANH one more time." Everything having to do with Zori was a mess - redoing Poe as Han 2.0 for a start. And why do you hire Keri Russell and not show her face?

 

What do you mean? We see her eyes!
But yeah, Poe should've remained Poe.