J.J. Abrams Turned Down Directing New Star Wars Movies

[kburns10]

Wow, I liked the new Star Wars movie! But then again, I'm not a hardcore fan of Star Wars or Trek. I guess for hardcore fans, it was not a particularly good movie?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Abrams would've been an excellent choice for Star Wars. In the words of Red Letter Media; "J.J. Abrams should've directed the Star Wars prequels, and George Lucas should've directed people to their seats."

I'm not a big fan of his movies, but the guy has a Spielbergian flair to his directing which would've suited Star Wars greatly.

I quite liked the '09 Star Trek. It's not like the franchise was going anywhere, since it had basically bled to death by the time Enterprise was canceled. It was a well shot little space adventure movie. And I'm gonna be honest with ya, I liked the shiny iPod look of the whole movie.

 

[Madara XIII]

I can't help but imagine how a Star Wars movie directed by Quintin Terantino would turn out.

EVERYBODY SHOT FIRST!

And that's how it'd end.

 

[Remus]

A Fincher Star Wars movie would look something like this:
1 hour of the Galactic Council being reconstituted
30 minutes of the first Council meeting
15 minute climax in which 2 key members are assassinated in some horrific fashion, random_jedi_hero_01 vivisects the assassins, and they die too quickly to give up any information.
It would be loved by critics for adding depth to a franchise that had lacked any for soooo long but it would put fans to sleep.
/yawn

 

[Random Argument Man]

I can't help but imagine how a Star Wars movie directed by Quintin Terantino would turn out.

I can only imagine......

 

[J Tyran]

Star Trek reboot nitpicks

In a series of films where flying around the sun can send you forwards or backwards in time, where a torpedo can suddenly turn bare rock into a whole ecosystem and all the other countless nonsensical plot lines the 2009 Star Trek fits right in. Thats not even starting with the TV series.

 

[rodneyy]

Can someone tell me why the new Star Trek was shit again? I thought it was pretty good.

Story doesn't make sense. At all. As I said in an earlier post:

Spoiler

The central villain is angry with Spock because he failed to save the planet of Romulus from a supernova (despite the fact that supernova aren't exactly the most difficult thing to predict). So he goes on a mission to hunt down Spock and have his vengeance.

Except that, when he's transported back in time, he ends up in a period about 100 years before Romulus gets destroyed. And yet, this never gets addressed. He still goes round hunting Spock and blowing up planets despite the fact that, if he wanted to, he could go and warn Romulus that their sun is going to blow up in a hundred years, because Romulus is no longer destroyed, and he can do that. He could prevent the entire catastrophe that he's laying at Spock's feet, and thereby save the lives of millions as well as his own conscience, yet he doesn't. For what reason, I have no idea.

It's not even as if time travel couldn't prevent it. The entire conceit is that time travel allows you to change events and events, thereby justifying the 'reboot' of the franchise. So why doesn't Nero just stop wasting time, stop blowing up other planets, and head back to Romulus and prevent the entire catastrophe he's so moody about?

That is a huge plot hole. And it means that objectively, the entire story doesn't make sense. The entire thing is simply an illogical sequence of events that have no real relation to each other, and are nothing more than random sci-fi tropes thrown together in order to appeal to the 'geek' demographic.

That's just one of the issues with the plot. There are others as well, like:

Spoiler

- The fact that black holes make absolutely no sense in this film. They're shown destroying entire planets, and yet star ships are able to fly through them just fine. Nero's ship actively hangs around in the middle of a black hole for minutes at the start of the film.

- The fact that black holes are used as an explanation of time travel, with no reasoning given at all. Black holes are points of intense, unbelievable gravity. They are not wormholes to the past. Anything that gets sucked into a black hole is going to be crushed into sub-atomic matter, not jettisoned 400 years in the past. What makes this even worse is that the Star Trek series has already made use of wormholes for similar time-travelly storylines. Why not just go with one of those, rather than raping every bit of scientific knowledge we have about black holes? My only guess is that the writers (who are responsible for the Transformers series) have no familiarity with the Star Trek franchise at all, outside of a few pop culture memes.

- If red matter can be detonated to create black holes, why does Nero need to drill holes into planets before setting it off? A black hole will easily destroy a planet regardless of whether its inside or outside. A black hole detonated next to Vulcan or Earth would have destroyed them both just as quickly, without requiring Nero to sit around like a duck with its arse in the air.

- The fact that Spock was apparently able to witness Vulcan's destruction from his moon base. If his moon was close enough to Vulcan to see it get destroyed by a black hole, it too should have been swallowed up. And if not, at the very least the moon would be fucked given that the mass around it which it orbits is now gone, and it has no gravitational centre to keep it stable.

- The whole introduction of Transwarp Beaming. Basically, Scotty has invented the technology to teleport people across gaps of entire lightyears, as he does with Kirk and himself by transporting from Hoth back onto the Enterprise.

So... why exactly are starships necessary anymore?

- The fact that Kirk is promoted from Cadet to Captain in the space of a few days. Literally, in the space of about a week, he goes from plucky new Starfleet cadet to Captain of one of the most important starships in the Federation fleet. How the fuck does that make sense? Even if he admittedly acted like a big damn hero, that's the sort of thing you get a medal for. You don't get promoted six ranks. Being a Captain is about having the experience to deal with any possible circumstance that a ship may encounter. What experience has Kirk, in all of his few days service as a Cadet, got apart from one kerfuffle which he managed to get through more by luck than anything.

- How did Kirk just happen to stumble upon Old Spock, given that they are two of the only sentient creatures on an entire moon.

The whole story is just an incoherent mess. If you shut your brain off, then yes it can be a bit of enjoyable fluff, but any actual thought about the plot shows that it has all the strength and consistency of wet tissue paper.

That's just the plot-holes. There is also the terrible dialogue, terrible direction (LENS FLARE EVERYWHERE) and utter lack of any of the moral/philosophical conundrums that typify the best of Trek...

In short, it was a plot-hole ridden mess that had nothing to do with Star Trek other than the names of the characters.

wait that was supposed to be vulcans moon? they had been at warp speed for ages at that point, even at impulse drive they would have been way beyond any moon. i just thought they messed up the size of vulcan in the sky when it was imploded.

another thing that got me was the massivly differing times it took the take out the federation ships. the first ship lasted for ages they had whole conversations and whatnot and still had time to go ramming speed. then what 20/25 years later it takes out the rest of the fleet of brand new ships in the few seconds it took the enterprise to catch up.

 

[TKretts3]

Well that's a real downer. Considering how well he did with the new Star Trek movie (And how good the next one looks, from the trailers) he would have done a great job with new Star Wars movies. But I'm sure they'll still be good. Disney wouldn't screw up something so big that they paid so much for. The only thing I'm worried about is lowered expectations. After the disappointing results of Star Wars I and II, I can only imagine that it won't take much to look good next to them.

 

[MasterProcrastinator]

On the other hand, with Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) picked to write Star Wars Episode VII [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120586-Disney-Hands-Star-Wars-Episode-VII-to-the-Writer-of-Toy-Story-3], I'm not sure the new film will be what fans really want.

I wouldn't be getting too worried about Arndt being at the helm of the script. Just because the guy wrote 'Toy Story 3', it doesn't mean that 'Star Wars Episode VII' is going to be in the same vein. It's a different movie, and will get different treatment. Professional writers of such caliber are usually relatively versatile, and are known for their ability to adapt their style to the tone of the project that they're working on.

Writers aren't incapable of turning their hand to different genres. A lot of the time, they can produce brilliance in different fields. For example, 'Johnny English' was co-written by the same people who co-wrote 'Skyfall' - Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Although it was done alongside different co-writers (William Davies and John Logan respectively), it's still impressive that the bulk of the 'Johnny English' writing team are the main contributors to the superb 'Skyfall' script, albeit with the help of Logan's expertise. But his filmography is also worth looking at for the purpose of this discussion. Other than 'Skyfall', he has writing credits on 'Rango', 'Sweeney Todd', 'The Aviator', 'Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas', 'Coriolanus', 'The Last Samurai' and 'Gladiator'. How much more diverse can we get here?

And he's not the only one. Akiva Goldsman, who wrote 'A Beautiful Mind' co-wrote 'I, Robot' and 'Batman Forever'. One can argue the quality of the latter two, but at least it shows he's capable of breaking out of one genre and into another. Guillermo del Toro is another name that springs to mind. He alternates between mainstream action and dark horror/fantasy, and handles each one skilfully. And now he's working as a screenwriter on 'The Hobbit' trilogy, and seems to be doing a fine job so far, if I am to be the judge. My point is that writers' past works don't necessarily indicate or dictate the style of their future works.

Heck, JOSS WHEDON - one of our 'fan-favourites' - co-wrote the FIRST 'Toy Story' movie! This should be reason alone not to place too much doubt on Mr. Arndt. You're free to have your misgivings, of course, but I feel that the lack of confidence people have towards this man is quite undeserved and a little silly. 'Toy Story 3' is his biggest writing credit, but it's not his only trick. It's amateurs that can't branch out from a single style, not Academy Award-winning professionals.

Again, let's not get too worried. If 'Oblivion [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1483013/fullcredits#writers]' is poorly handled in the writing department, THEN we may worry. But until then, I say we withhold any judgment.

 

[Eddie the head]

Well they can't possibly make Star Wars any worse than the last three movies,

So disney's first one is a kind of freebie for them...

Like the idea of Josh Wheedon in charge though.

Yeah they could have. I don't like the prequels, but they could have been worse. As it stands I regard them as Bad not horrid.

 

[Cpt. Picard]

When I saw the article title in the sidebar all I could read was "
J.J. Abrams Turned Down Directing New Star..." and for a second I was like "Yes! He's leaving Star Trek alone, maybe there's hope now..." and then I saw the "Wars" part and my heart sank.

I went to see ST2009 expecting a standard sci-fi action flick with some cool space battles maybe that is Trek in name only and even with personal expectations set so low I was still very disappointed. Like someone mentioned it's just a bunch of sci-fi tropes strung together with no regard to pretty much anything and some scenes ripped from Star Wars films.

To be fair to J.J. a lot of it is the script's (writers) fault. Still, he should stick to SW if he's such a fan of it or better yet, keep his paws of either franchise.

 

[McMarbles]

You forgot 2 things about J.J. Abram's movies:

Lens Flares

and LENS FLARES!

I wouldn't dare let him near the Star Wars franchise. 5 seconds with a lightsaber and the whole world would go blind.

You know why he did that, right? It was to make it look futuristic. Heck, I never noticed until rabid fanboys pointed it out.

Well, it's a good thing he put it in. All those aliens and starships and futuristic technology would NEVER have convinced anyone we could be in the future!

*smh*

 

[J Tyran]

Star Trek reboot nitpicks

In a series of films where flying around the sun can send you forwards or backwards in time, where a torpedo can suddenly turn bare rock into a whole ecosystem and all the other countless nonsensical plot lines the 2009 Star Trek fits right in. Thats not even starting with the TV series.

Ugh... now I feel like I have to nitpick your comment to show that j-e-f-f-e-r-s comment was not a nitpick.

The problem isn't "we do stuff with weird results". The problem is that "we do stuff with results that conflict with A)results seen in the previous TV shows / movies or B)results seen in the very same movie". Hell, according to this movie, Vulcan wasn't destroyed, it just went back 200 years further + created a separate dimension. Spock will find his mother's body preserved somewhere in "Into Darkness". 'Cause if a ship can survive the trip through a black hole, a planet should too, right?

P.S. The whole "flying around the sun to go back in time" was established in the TV series first, thereby making it an appropriate vehicle in "Voyage Home". I think that fewer fans would have had a problem with this series if they had just avoided the time travel aspects altogether and done a complete reboot.

My point is that whatever happens on screen in Star Trek (TV & Film) is little more than a plot device. It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, it usually doesn't. In the reboots case the black holes and red matter and everything else only provided the circumstances that would test Spock and Kirk and establish their relationship.

The 2009 ST was a lot like the original series in that way too, the special effects where crap and the story was often bizarre but it did its job and the show was about how Kirk and the crew dealt with the problems they faced. Star Trek lost its way, it became more about how accurate and feasible the technobabble was. The Original themes of character stories and morality was lost behind the canonization of pseudo science. The ship flew through the black hole because it needed too and the planet fell apart because it had too, thats all that matters in a Star Trek story.