To help contribute, here’s the only meme I’ve ever done, which I did in response to news that Abrams was working on a new ST movie. And after seeing how well the franchise is going with SNW and LD, I feel it’s even more appropriate.
I’ve hated him since Lost. Possibly even Alias. Stupid mystery box bullcrap, Yeah, some unresolved mystery is fine. Your entire show shouldn’t revolve around boatloads of them being insufficiently explained.
He dove right in and I think got the point. The only thing I don’t like about the JJ Abrams films are the aesthetics. It’s a funky mix of the original style, but “how it would have looked if TOS had money.” They should have made it look as hokey as the original, IMO. It’s fun watching through now and noticing how this material that doesn’t actually exist is totally just some plywood painted gray.
Yep. I liked them. Movie Trek has always been action anyways. He did some shit I really enjoyed honestly. Like Kirk being a rocker totally fucking fits.
They were very typical “J.J. Abram’s has no idea what a franchise is actually about”. He actually admitted not having seen any extra materials about the franchise before making the movies, and rehashed existing storylines because it’s safe.
JJ Abrams is loved by the studios for the very same reasons he’s dreaded by the fans.
I watched an hour long essay with only support in the comment section that was a love letter to the J.J. Abrams Star Trek film. The film has 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. A lot of people didn’t mind the J.J. film.
Honestly, just move away from it in the timeline. Legends canon has a a few thousand years to work with, and one of the funny bits about Star Wars is that even though the Old Republic and New Republic exist extremely far apart, the vibes and aesthetics are all fairly similar. And although I would say that Andor is proof you can do cool things with a Star Wars background, at its heart SW is a conceptually fairly simple. Young person with the help of wise wizard and plucky band must master his powers to face down the evil tyrant. Now, is that the OG trilogy? Prequels? Sequels? LoTR? The Matrix?
JJ at least got this part, the problem is you have to add enough flavor to the story that it doesn’t feel like a complete rehash, which JJ failed at with TFA even if that was the closest the sequels got. No idea how Rian made it out of the pitch meeting, pretty clear he had no interest in making a SW movie, and basically just went “never mind all that” to TFA. And then JJ has to land the plane that was basically rebuilt into a railcar midair, and it went about as well as could be expected.
I'd be happy if Rian Johnson got another chance with Star Wars. Brick, Brothers Bloom, Looper, and Knives Out were all great and at least personally The Last Jedi felt like it was trying to set up things to pay off in the next movie since he was originally slated to write and direct Episode 8 and 9.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but I certainly don’t share it. I literally hate every single thing about it. It is the most disappointed I have ever been leaving a movie.
I left it absolutely invigorated and optimistic for the franchise. I saw it had some flaws, with one sizeable one being that it should have ignored the cliffhanger in TFA and caught up 6-12 months later*; the OT (and less successfully, the PT) got to handwave a LOT of character development by simply letting life happen offscreen. Still, TLJ took a needlessly derivative setup from TFA and set the stage for a much more interesting Episode Nine than we got, and I utterly disagree that he didn't get or like Star Wars. Shit, Rian Johnson is the only one who was willing to SAY the words "Darth Sidious."
I thought he gave a thoughtful fan's perspective on what Star Wars needs to be to remain relevant, the theme of growing from failure being particularly well done for a big popcorn franchise. The scene with Rose's sister, the Yoda scene, the acting from Adam Driver after the throne room scene? All peak Star Wars IMHO. Then of course TROS came along and was so clumsy and petty in how it blew up Rian Johnson's new directions, and so generally messy, that it didn't even please the people who hated TLJ.
TFA was useful as a palate cleanser for the generation who rejected the PT, and it gave us a compelling new batch of heroes and villains (Snoke honestly being the least interesting as a character), but it didn't really DO much, and its worldbuilding was absolutely retrograde. TLJ was a needed course correction, but Disney not only recoiled from the backlash, but took all the wrong lessons from it even if it did need to affect the direction of Ep9. JJ was, in the end, very wrong for Star Wars, though if TFA was his only one, it might not have been so obvious.
*-Two others being the framing device of the "slow speed chase" and Finn's arc being such a minor step forward . A few tweaks to the technobabble or moving them to Crait earlier and having it be a bit more of a formidable facility could have helped the first one, and having Finn more explicitly trying to save Rey and Poe at the cost of the Resistance might have better highlighted the additional layer of growth RJ was thought he still needed.
I wouldn’t mind letting James Wan have a crack at a Star Trek film though. He made decent work of Aquaman and Malignant is basically already a Star Trek TNG type of plot.
I always wondered if there are different versions of individual Q in other universes or if there’s just one of each that exist in all of them simultaneously.
It was so insulting for him to come out and say he isn’t a fan of the source material. Was it too much to ask to find someone who’s passionate about Star Trek? I know they’re out there.
Exactly! If he was not a fan of any of the 60 years of source material perhaps he should’ve stepped aside and let someone who cares about Star Trek contribute to it
Imo, instead of asking why he didn’t step aside, I think the fault is on the studio executives for wanting to go in that direction in the first place. They clearly wanted a different direction to classic Trek, otherwise JJ wouldn’t have been their choice.
the guy who directed rogue one and the andor tv series isnt much of a fan of star wars, and those are two of the most acclaimed star wars projects since disney bought star wars
Although I do really like both of those and would probably put them at the top of the current generation of SW, they feel much less like SW properties and a lot more like they’re wearing a SW skin. Which, you know, is fine since it’s actually good and doesn’t destroy the property. Even if you don’t like Andor, they’re still making a ton of just regular Star Wars shit.
JJ basically derailed Trek for those of us that actually like the type of thing Trek was doing for nearly a decade. Basically took until SNW to get an actual Trek show.
Star Wars is samurai movies with a skin on it. The whole thing is borrowed, in space. So it’s okay to have stories like Andor, Rogue One and Mando, etc because they mesh well with the general design of the universe.
Lower Decks is as far as Star Trek as it can be, and yet it fits very well in the universe. Because it respects itself and respect the source material.
JJ never respected the source material and the universe.
Pretty much. SW is a very “hero’s journey” story. Somewhere else in this thread, I posted this:
And although I would say that Andor is proof you can do cool things with a Star Wars background, at its heart SW is a conceptually fairly simple. Young person with the help of wise wizard and plucky band must master his powers to face down the evil tyrant. Now, is that the OG trilogy? Prequels? Sequels? LoTR? The Matrix?
That, but in a space samurai/western backdrop. Andor not only respects the canon, it explores it. Sure, it’s not telling a hero’s journey tale, but it’s grabbing a piece of existing canon and enhancing it if anything.
This is where JJ I think fucked up with the Trek canon.
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