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

After Star Trek 09 I was only hopeful because Kasdan was writing the script and it was clear that if JJ ditched the lens flares then he had the visual style needed for Star Wars. I can tell you if he had the same writing team from Star Trek I would have been calling it a dumpster fire before the cameras even rolled

 

For me, the worst set was that of the Jedi temple in TLJ. I had really looked forward to seeing it. I thought that it would be something really special and magical and majestic and visually spectacular. As I have said before, I am still not sure exactly what it was supposed to be... a tree? A cave? A combination of the two? Oh, and there was a mosaic. How much money did someone get paid for that underwhelming concept design and set?

 

Felucia is one of the most original, amazing, impressive, visually stunning planets in all of Star Wars.
Playing on that planet in the old Battlefront games was a treat for us.
And the Clone Wars episodes on Felucia were fantastic. I wish we could see that planet again in live action.

 

Felucia was just huge flowers with psychedelic colors. Like an amateur Pink Floyd album color. It looked terrible. Nothing original or visually interesting about it. Not surprising as it was Ryan Church’s bad video game aesthetic. I hope it’s erased from canon, and from my memory. And from the universe, both real and fictional.

That said, the ST planets were very underwhelming on a visual level. Just total mediocrity. At least Lucas swung for the fences in the PT. Even if some of the results, like Felucia, we’re terrible.

 

Agreed. Vibrant and stunning. My only complaint is we didn’t get to see more of the planet.

 

I veto that opinion!
Do you have a Plan B?

 

Felucia severely tarnishes the Order 66 scene for me.

 

Felucia looks too much like a scene right out of a Disney movie.......

 

The idea behind the first Jedi Temple be that the Jedi came from humble beginnings, like the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones. However, the real-life location actually detracts from the wonders. A humble cup can outshine everything if it's surrounded by extremely shining objects. That's what makes it so special.

A Jedi Temple being small and humble will look grand in a location where the wonders of life itself dominates. Take for instant, Dagobah. Yoda's Hut is humble and small but its location lies within a fantastical swamp production set teeming with life and mist that you would not find anywhere else in the world. That's why it feels so magical.

 

Very few of the sets and locales impress within the ST (IMO). There’re all pretty derivative and unimpressive, and I thought both R1 and Solo did better. Saying that I did like the aesthetic of a ship graveyard I.e. Jakku, but I think it looked better in concept art than it did in the actual film.

 

Agreed, the ship graveyard was a nice concept, but I think it would’ve held a lot more weight if all those ships weren’t in active use and we were truly seeing the “bones” of a lost era. In general TFA is just so uninspired in terms of the backdrops. That rocky rubble where Finn squares off against the trooper strikes me as a limited budget TV show.

 

I think Jakku and Starkiller Base definitely had more opportunities for further world building. I would have loved to have seen more aliens and creatures living within the wreckage on Jakku, not just Rey in her AT-AT. And the revelation that Starkiller Base was once Ilum is a pretty significant one (although I imagine it assigned retroactively in Jedi: Fallen Order). Part of me wishes that the search for Luke Skywalker would have led to the discovery of Ilum as Starkiller Base, which could have been a more organic way to introduce it into the story.

 

Exactly that. Many of those scenes (particularly the opening sequence of Jakku) look more like back lot Battlestar Galactica than they do Star Wars. I like the idea of both a lake planet and a crashed ship planet, but they look so dull on screen (IMO). The only time I get a sense of scale in the ST is with Exagol (spelling?) and the interior of the Sith pyramid.

Totally agree. Even something as simple as Luke Skywalker/the Republic and Kylo Ren/The First Order in a race to to see who can find Starkiller Base first, would have been so much better than what we got in TFA. It would have given the film a sense of peril/jeopardy that is missing throughout the entirety of the ST.

 

Yeah, agreed. It kind of weirds me out, too, that it was a bunch of OT era ships from some apparently important post-Endor battle that apparently ended the war when there's not a word in the film to insinuate that there was any significant battle with the still united Empire in the aftermath of Endor. I'm sure most people that don't care about the EU (so, most people in general) just see it as the remnants of some random battle that must have taken place during the time frame of the OT.

Making Jakku's ship graveyard the home of the remains of, say, an Old Republic battle, or a conflict from some other far off era with ships and vehicles totally unknown to us, would have been significantly more intetesting visually. The only thing of note that I think you would lose doing that is the sequence of Rey putting on the Rebel helmet but, honestly, I'd be ok losing that beat.

 

It should be noted that TROS outright contradicts that stance by stating that the Battle of Endor is the last battle of the Galactic Civil War. Granted, it was the most important battle but it's quite evident that the whole Jakku being the last final battle of the whole war was something made up by Disney/Lucasfilm to retroactively explain there's so much Star Destroyer Junk on Jakku.

 

And on that note, Rebels also refers to Endor as the end of the war, in its epilogue.

"...And with a decisive victory at the Battle of Endor, the Emperor's reign of terror came to an end."

 

Touché.

I'll be honest, I always just see the the Emperor's death and the collapse of the formal Empire as going hand in hand and basically forget that the Battle of Jakku is a thing that happened post-Endor in the outside lore unless I am actively engaged in a conversation about the ship graveyard.

 

Agreed - the battle of Endor was always the end of the Galactic Civil War... which seems to be confirmed by several sources within existing canon. I think that one of the continuity challenges that the ST presents is that it’s in the ST’s interest (narratively and visually speaking) to suggest that the Galactic Civil War extended years beyond Endor, because it makes the First Order (as a remnant of the Empire), a bit more logical/believable.

 

I'd argue the Battle of Endor was the end of the Empire's reign, and then the Battle of Jakku was the end of a significant Imperial presence in the galaxy. Smaller remnants remained (like Gideon, Thrawn etc), but none could command widespread authority.

 

Jakku could have been cool if they stuck with the giant junkyard planet but instead they made Tattooine 2.0

 

I agree with that, because at the moment, that's how we're left to rationalise it... but I think that leaves a few gaps in logic/continuity re. how 'remnants' of the Empire were able to establish an army/fleet as polished and as advanced as the First Order. I think it would have been more logical, would have been visually/aesthetically more distinct, and would have required less willing suspension of disbelief, if The First Order would have been portrayed similar to the Rebels in the OT e.g. it's the First Order who have all the old kit and clunky ships. It's the First Order who are on the run and in hiding from the Republic.

Totally agree. The best conceptual element of the ST is relegated to a bit of waste ground on Jakku. How visually impressive would it have been to see villages/residential areas born out of the wreckage of ancient ships? That would have been a great aesthetic.

 

The rubble of Maz’s Castle set is one of the least inspired locations in Star Wars. I deeply dislike that whole sequence, which is then followed by a truly terrible Resistance base location. There are just so many visual duds in the ST. Rogue One blew the ST away on that front in its very first scene on the Iceland ring planet (Lah’mu). Immediately a millions times more interesting a location than anything in the sequels.

 

I really liked Exogol concept wise, probably most of all, in the entire ST. There's a lot of great concept art work showing if off and some intriguing details were thought through. However, it was filmed so dark you couldn't actually seen any of it, save for a few highlights. And the whole thing was over before it began so you never really got to know it. And then it really made little sense anyways, in a movie that made even less sense, so that didn't help either.

I feel like in a lot of cases there's some cool concepts developed by the art team, and then what got approved or filmed was a toned down safe OT-repeat version of it. Jakku started out looking like a Mad-Max space oil junkyard. Even though it had a really cool scavenger scene, it basically just turned into Tatooine 2.0. Maz's hangout started out looking like a huge crime planet with waterfalls, lagoons, and huge landing platforms, only to turn into any forested lake in the USA with stone castle. Many of the ships are just OT ships, with something lopped off or squished. JJ ship designs seem shoe-boxy and boring. The Resistance carriers in TFA, and the FO transport drop ships are examples of this. Nothing really stands out.

I don't know if they got scared or lacked confidence, or reigned it all back in due to costs. Who knows. End of day, the artists can't fix the movie. They can only dream of what's on the page being handed to them.