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

If TROS was full ass, I'm terrified of what half ass would actually be.

No. I think JJ just wanted to get out the door with his ass in hand. Palpatine returns, somehow is not someone even remotely trying. It's someone throwing garbage at the screen, and then running away, assuming the fandom wouldn't care. JJ has a deeply pessimistic view of his audience. He thinks we're shallow. And stupid.

 

Nah, JJ is just a shallow, mediocre filmmaker. Always has been.

 

Abrams has got away with mediocrity for too long, and I think many people (certainly within the industry) now see him for what he is. He’s damaged a couple of franchises now, and there’s a bit of concern as to what his gaze will fall on next.

 

I enjoy most of his movies and honestly TFA was outstanding as a reboot where Rey, Finn, Kylo, Poe and Hux were wonderful new characters. He was called back to clean up the mess of an arrogant guy who mistreated the values of the franchise and who is still not done with explaining his crap. In addition having a studio doing a trilogy without a plan is not his fault either. I was glad when I heard he is coming back. Honestly some choices he made in TROS could have been different (the whole Emperor stuff + Rey Palpatine) but in the end his work has hundred times more star wars vibe than Johnsons wooden space chase that fails the tone, the story and the character arcs. I am pretty sure that if he had done the whole trilogy it would have been fantastic. It's not that TROS has on RT 86% because all fans felt that the movie was crap. It's because he hits the tone and the SW vibe. If you like the story or not is a matter of personal taste in the end

 

Abrams is a Hollywood shill. Uncreative, exploitative, vapid and will only leave a stain on SW, and any other franchise he leeches onto. He was the worst possible filmmaker to bring into Star Wars, when what Star Wars required was a visionary and true cinematic filmmaker.

 

Nah, that's Rian Johnson.

I'll take Abrams TACO BELL type films over Johnson's POOP ON A PLATE, BUT DECORATIVE type films any day of the week.

Disney needed an immediate return on their investment. A "visionary" was never gonna happen.

 

My opinion is that they are both awful in different ways. I knew JJ was going to be bad news when he was announced - I saw Star Trek 09. For the first half hour, I held on and thought "this is better than I thought" but around the Falcon appearing and that whole terrible sequence and then "people who knew him best" and ending with Han not taking a map to Luke to Leia, I knew it was done for. I should have walked out when Han was killed but I was trapped in the middle of an aisle and came with a friend - ironically, the on who really got me into SW and didn't have a problem with TFA and loved TLJ. We just don't talk about that. Go figure.

TLJ is awful for other reasons. What's that Tolstoy line about every happy family being the same but unhappy families are different? I had no expectations of Rian Johnson since I'd never seen any of his work. After TLJ and the resulting media tour, I will never see any of his work.

 

TLJ is not at all illustrative of RJ's other work, though, while TFA is definitely representative of JJ's.

RJ's Knives Out, Looper and Brick are films I really enjoy. TLJ is an anomalous failure (well, perhaps also Brothers Bloom, which was a Wes Anderson ripoff).

 

Yes - I certainly agree with that.

 

I actually liked his first Star Trek film. But I definitely didn't agree with the sentiment that quickly popped up about how that movie was everything Star Wars should strive to be.

 

This is very hard to argue with. Well said.

 

I never had a problem with JJ's film skills. Actually, for being one of my least favorite entries, TFA is the easiest to sit thru.
Where JJ lost almost all his points for me was the story telling.
He took the easy way and did ANH again.
Even TPM, which took a lot from ANH, still ended up being a very different feel of a story.
This is where everyone should have sat down, and instead of asking,
"How do we make a bunch of money off this Star Wars movie?".
They should have asked,
"How do we not only make a great return on this Star Wars movie, but also continue a story that's six entries long, and make it into a trilogy?".

 

JJ is just mainstream mediocrity personified.

 

Yep. Only reason he has his career is because of family connections.

 

Abrams is a product of a Hollywood system that celebrates the banal and trite. He’s worked his way up from writing really poor films, to directing/producing really poor films. He has been afforded opportunities way above his ability, but Hollywood is probably the least meritocratic industry out there… where talent and craft come second to obedience and the willingness to protect and reflect the vested interests of those that have the power, whom believe ‘art’ is purely transactional.

 

Abrams is one of those directors that Lucas would hire to simply direct his vision of Star Wars. At best, influencing how the characters would interact with one another as well as establishing set locations and framing the shots. But ultimately, the final say would be by Lucas himself and based on behind-the-scenes footage of TESB and ROTJ, he was very involved with the film production.

But the myth of the TESB and ROTJ directors being the "true" brains of the Star Wars OT perpetuated by the media in the early 2000s naturally led to the misguided belief of appointing Abrams as a storyteller in charge of continuing the whole Star Wars saga... without Lucas to serve as executive creative advisor. You know that story of how Lucas casually brought a possible story arc of Luke becoming the new Darth Vader after Vader dies in ROTJ... then immediately shut it down before anyone else even entertain the possibility? Something tells me that Richard Marquand and Lawarence Kasdan would have gone for that story if Lucas wasn't there.

 

I agree re. Lucas' role. I think it would be fair to say that TESB, as it exists today, would not be possible without someone like Kersh as director... However, George Lucas was, and always was, the most fundamental and singularly irreplaceable person behind it all. Lucas (IMO) needed more collaborators to get the very best out of Star Wars, but his exclusion from the ST is probably the single biggest mistake of SW as a whole.

 

No way would George Lucas have chosen someone with as unimaginative a visual style as JJ Abrams, even as just an executor of his vision.

 

Lucas admitted in the audio commentary tracks that he actually directed both ESB and ROTJ.

 

More so ROTJ than TESB… which doesn’t mean that he wasn’t all over TESB, but Kershner was very much the director.

 

Let's get things straight. TLJ was a beautiful looking film. The humour at the beginning was awful, and ruined the character of Hux and made him look like a buffoon. Canto Bight should have been extended and more developed. Finn was wasted. Poe got all his character development. BB8 save the day 3 times with silly antics. Too much. The fact that he left the 3rd lesson on the cutting room floor really sums up this film.

JJ what can I say. What was the knock on him, couldnt land an ending? Well the last 30 minutes was absolutely beautiful. Palpatine coming back would have worked if he looked even more decrepid. The plot was a perfect mess as it made you unsure of what you were getting next. I had been on reddit and knew most of the leaks, but even I was stunned thinking Chewie was dead. Thinking Rey had really killed Kylo. Lump in my throat how Leia turned Kylo. Kylo talking to Han. Luke training Leia.
It was the most action packed and emotional Star Wars since ROTS.

JJ nailed what Star Wars is it's just a shame he didnt direct all three.

 

I think JJ was the worst possible candidate to direct TFA. His approach to setting up things is to make mystery boxes, empty promises that he can't fulfill. He sets up questions he doesn't have the answers to. Someone else should have directed TFA, someone with vision, and a best case scenario would have been Lucas directing, and then passing on the baton to other directors, which he contemplated. To me, TLJ and TRoS work for the most part. With some alterations they could be great even. JJ let loose with TRoS in a way he didn't with TFA. I think the dense action suits the final instalment of a trilogy well. RotS, RotJ and TRoS all have a lot of things going on. JJ's style fit the last film of the trilogy better, and it shines through more in TRoS, because he isn't just ticking boxes for nostalgia bait. The first instalment of the trilogy needed to be something new and bold, like ANH and TPM, that would create a new design philosophy and a bold new direction for the story. Lucas' ST would have probably done this. But I at least appreciate Johnson taking TLJ in unexpected directions, and JJ taking TRoS consequently in other unexpected directions. TFA as the soft reboot is the missing link in the trilogy and the saga. In some ways I can understand them going really safe on the first Disney Star Wars film, because they wanted their money back, and in a way the safeness of it fed into the bolder decisions the sequels would take.

 

I think it and ROTS are the worst-looking Star Wars films, from a cinematography perspective.