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Star Wars: Episode VII to be directed by J.J. Abrams **NON SPOILER THREAD** — Page 6

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Making Episode VII visually fit in with what has gone before isn't a problem. Not when you can just change what has gone before to fit with what you are doing now (Episode VII)! I look forward to finally picking up the OT on Blu-Ray in the future, only because all the lens flares they will have to add to match Episode VII will obscure all the other "creative decisions" aka visual faults the 2004/2011 transfers have!

For the record I very much enjoyed the 2009 Star Trek film when I wasn't being distracted by all the blinding lens flares!

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Star Wars PAL LaserDisc Project

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You guys know I don't have a horse in the race where Star Wars films are concerned. When the sale happened, followed by the announcement of sequels, I gave it a look and went about my day. No doubt I'd follow the developments, but from a distance. 

That said: As a huge fan of what Abrams has done with Star Trek, I can't help but think his involvement is a significant plus. I'm a long time fan of Trek who had finally said goodbye to it because it had become C-SPAN in space. Abrams returned it to science fiction adventure and  gave the characters depth again.

Likewise, his expert handling of Super 8 - making a 1980s-inspired film that actually looks and feels like the 1980s - is proof to me that he understands why that period in film connected with so many of us (myself included). If Lucas is truly uninvolved and Disney stays out of the way, Star Wars is in very good hands.

I'm now officially on the verge of weighing the pros & cons of considering whether or not I'm cautiously optimistic.

;-)

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I don't understand some of the negativity here... it's pathetic. If J. J. Abrams isn't innovative, perfectionist, smart and daring, I don't know who is... he created Lost. Lost turned out to be a boring mess after the first two seasons, but if the beginning wasn't innovative, exciting, suprising and every-good-thing-bundled-together, I don't know what else was. And JJ was only involved in the best part of the series. Similar with Star Trek '09. It needed a rethinking... oh, the characters weren't the same and did things they would've never done in the classic Star Trek? That was the point, people! I can understand why a Trekkie would be angry over that, but Star Trek has been changed and became fresh and exciting again. I liked the movie and it's untrue it didn't have a story, and most importanly it had interesting characters with interesting interactions, a nice dramaturgy and nice visuals. It was virtually everything the prequel trilogy should've been.

The only work by JJ Abrams that I've seen and made me disappointed, was Super 8, because it was just a child movie. But it was still an excellent job in its own way. JJ captured the beloved '80s feeling and looks and everything, too bad he was too respectful and reused the old story without updating it.

JJ Abrams would have been my first choice for the new Star Wars too. I may be a little wrong, and there are smarter guys out there. JJ Abrams still has to be in Top 5, at least, in the worst case. Choosing Abrams as director is good news, but half of the people just whining about it. Why not bring back George for them? Duh.

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zee944 said:

 That was the point, people! I can understand why a Trekkie would be angry over that, but Star Trek has been changed and became fresh and exciting again. 

Has it really?

Or have the critics got behind another average Star Trek incarnation instead of ignoring it or slagging it off like they did with Nemesis and Enterprise which are practically identical in places to Star Trek (2009)?

Watching last night I figured out I could splice bits of the later Trek films and telly shows and recreate the film with some accuracy.

The bits that are new are arguably the most grating.

If the media were praising the PT instead of slagging it off they would still have been rubbish films but I bet less people would be so upset about them because people are generally gullible.

The PT as it is with the only change being J.J. Abrams as director (without Lucas lurking behind him ROTJ fashion) would still be rubbish films but probably more entertainingly rubbish.

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from Reading about how JJ Abrams is a hardcore fan from way back like myself I am confident that he is in touch with the original fan base and will do an exellent job unlike Lucas who I feel ruined Star wars with those awfull prequels.
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zee944 said:

Similar with Star Trek '09. It needed a rethinking... oh, the characters weren't the same and did things they would've never done in the classic Star Trek? That was the point, people! I can understand why a Trekkie would be angry over that, but Star Trek has been changed and became fresh and exciting again.

I feel like this statement sums up how I feel about the whole J. J. Trek 2009 thing. Essentially what it was is the taking of an established franchise and mainstreaming it. Giving it mass appeal. Making it something for everyone. Yeah, it is new and exciting, but I think your use of the word "fresh" is a bit extreme. We've seen this movie before and we'll see it again, there was nothing fresh about it.

If he does this for Star Wars, I am sure it will be a good thing and will make many fans happy. No director could get me excited for new a Star Wars film. You go to the cinema and watch the trailers, and it is the same movie over and over again, I've seen them all and couldn't care less. I love it when a film gets me excited, when the credits roll and I have to take a few minutes to gather my thoughts. Star Wars did that for a lot of people once. New movies still manage to do this to me, I'd rather spend my time on those than on the silly lineup of identical summer blockbusters.

J. J., being mainstream and a safe choice couldn't possible get me excited or be any further away from Star Wars' roots as a non-mainstream risk that became a smash success because it was something people hadn't seen before. I have no doubt J. J. Wars 2015 is going to be a huge success, people will love it. It was a smart choice.

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Since Joss Whedon and JJ are considered the new generations Lucas and Spielberg i can understand Abrams being selected as a director.  But no plot and no announced cast make me very wary at this point.

I mean none of the oot actors have seen a script and what if Mark Hamill says no i won't do it, if he is even supposed to be in it.  Remember when Sean Connery turned down the last indiana jones picture.

As far as i know Mark is pretty much retired as an actor.  And has even retired as the voice of the Joker.

He was Luke Skywalker for ten years and 20 years as the voice of Joker.

 

As for trek fans i can understand a bit of anger trek 09 was supposed to come out in 2008, and the huge wait for the sequel and JJ was not even committed to very late to star trek darkness and now can not be available for the third new film outing whether you call it star trek  3 or 13.  That and the proposed tv reboot for trek still has not happened.  They never even could come to a consensus if it would be animated or live action, and they probably nixed the idea as killing the golden goose.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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skyjedi2005 said:

As far as i know Mark is pretty much retired as an actor.  And has even retired as the voice of the Joker.

He still does voice acting regularly.

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skyjedi2005 said:

trek 09 was supposed to come out in 2008

But the title wouldn't have made sense.

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I'd pay to see Mark play a really creepy older Joker in a future Batman film.

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Where were you in '77?

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TV's Frink said:

skyjedi2005 said:

trek 09 was supposed to come out in 2008

But the title wouldn't have made sense.

Tee-hee.

As for me, I'm pretty much in agreement with CP3S.  Well, to be honest, I'm so over Star Wars at this point that I really can't be bothered to care all that much.  It doesn't anger me, but I'm not excited about it or even all that interested.  I guess I'll wait and see what happens, but you won't see me expending too much emotion over it.

I admit, though, to being a bit wary over Abrams simply because I thought Trek 09 was a pretty bad movie.  Still, like others have said, I feel that was more because of the writing:  its story was sophomoric, needlessly nonsensical in almost every conceivable way, and went nowhere.  But while I hated all those damned lens flares, Abrams's directing seemed otherwise pretty good.  He made an exciting picture with a lot of passion, and he obviously did a good job with his actors.  I'm not entirely sure how much input he had on the story, though, and, by extension, how much he'd have on this movie.  I guess that makes some of the difference to me...

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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I must say, I never noticed the lens flares until they were pointed out to me after I've already seen the film a few times.

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Gaffer Tape said:

I admit, though, to being a bit wary over Abrams simply because I thought Trek 09 was a pretty bad movie.  Still, like others have said, I feel that was more because of the writing:  its story was sophomoric, needlessly nonsensical in almost every conceivable way, and went nowhere.

Kind of like Armageddon?

;)

(for those not aware, J.J. wrote the Armageddon screenplay)

“Grow up. These are my Disney's movies, not yours.”

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I guess he went to see Meteor (1979) between Star Wars films.

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Bingowings said:

I guess he went to see Meteor (1979) between Star Wars films.

 

I'll take Meteor over Armageddon any day. I wasn't aware that Abrams wrote the screenplay to Armageddon. That's very unfortunate.

 

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A lot can happen between when a writer turns in a script and what ends up on the screen though. And there are four other writers credited for Armageddon's screenplay.

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JJ is a safe choice. Arndt is a safe choice. I'm guessing that the movie will be "safe". Meaning that I won't care at all. Say what you will about the prequels, at least they took you places. Just not places you wanted to be.

Ah, who am I kidding?

I'll get very excited to see this movie, and then I'll see this in the theater along with the rest of the known world, and then I'll almost instantly embark on the joyous act of criticizing every single aspect of it that was either true to the originals, and thus boring, or new and different, and thus blasphemy. I'll then tell you all about it on this website, and continue work on my own ideas about the Prequels and Sequels. Most people will hail the new trilogy as a worthy conclusion to the saga, however, and Disney will make bank.

It's almost sad how predictable we all are.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Abrams strikes me as a slightly above average director. He can coax good performances out his cast, but his films are rather pedestrian from a visual point of view.

Ah, well, there are plenty of worse choices they could have gone with. I just hope the story's decent and that there're new lightsaber colours.

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I want to see a black lightsaber. It absorbs all other lightsabers.

“Grow up. These are my Disney's movies, not yours.”

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Fun fact. Lucas was once on a short list of directors to be considered for the earliest incarnation of a Star Trek film back in 1976. (And a potential script writer as well.) As Star Wars was obviously still in production, THX-1138 might have had something to do with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture

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DoubleOFive, I hear you loud and clear.

I have to say I’m disappointed by the choice of JJ Abrams to direct another STAR WARS movie. It’s a safe, corporate, marketable choice – not a very artistically valid one. Is Abrams a horrible director? No. But is a great one? Well… No. As a longtime, old-school STAR TREK fan, I despise and loathe what he did to that franchise (although he was aided and abetted by a script so atrocious and horrible that NO ONE could have made a comprehensible film from it). My issue with Abrams is that he’s all style and no substance. He makes movies which are the equivalent of a meal which looks and even smells delicious. Then you take a bite and realize it tastes like shit.

My example: SUPER 8. It was meant to be Abrams’ homage to those classic Speilberg movies which we kids from the 70s and 80s grew up watching. To give him credit, he was able to REPLICATE the LOOK and to a lesser extent the FEEL of those movies – but NOT the HEART. It just felt… Off, somehow. You could tell you were watching someone else’s take on an 80s Speilberg film and not an actual Speilberg movie. When you’ve got people tossing around F-bombs in front of kids, showing kids vomiting, and a creature which is neither definitively good nor bad (It just wants to go home – like E.T. – yet is kidnapping, killing, and eating people, but is still an innocent victim of abuse at the hands of the US Government… Confused? Yeah, so was I!), it’s either sloppy storytelling or pandering to more modern-day tastes for increasingly accepted vulgarity and cheap bathroom humor – something which Speilberg would NEVER have done, and therefore contradicts and flies in the face of the movies you’re so lovingly trying to recreate.

So, Abrams will make a film that looks and sounds and moves wonderfully. But I fear that the heart of STAR WARS will be sorrowfully lacking. Like a large, beautifully-wrapped Christmas present that, when opened, is revealed to just be an empty box. It’ll be all trimmings and trappings, and no soul. I hope I’m proved wrong. But my enthusiasm (and expectations) for this new SW movie have now just sunk VERY low indeed.

My dearest hope was that someone with a proven track record of handling a massive franchise and infusing it with genuine soul and emotion and depth of feeling and character – such as Peter Jackson – would be given the reigns.  Or even a graduate of the school which created STAR WARS in the first place, like Joe Johnston, who makes fun, rousing adventure movies (ROCKETEER, CAPTAIN AMERICA).  Or someone like Joss Whedon, who has and exhibits a fan’s understanding of what makes something like STAR WARS tick. 

Oh well.  It’ll be what it’ll be.  But I am saddened to say that I won’t be rushing to the theaters to see this.  I may just wait for the safer bet of catching it on VOD or some other home video format.

 

“I… I can’t believe it…!”

“That is why you fail.”

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I admit I wasn't happy when I heard that J.J. Abrams was going to direct the new Star Wars movie. I kept thinking of all the failings of the new Star Trek movie, namely: EXTREEEEME KIRK! ("look I'm driving cars off cliffs as a kid, now I'm picking fights at bars with large alien people, oh and now I'm hitting on anything and everything I see that has breasts!" *facepalm*), Mr. Toad's--I mean Mr. Scott's wild ride (really, he's teleporting down and just happens to end up going on some magical pipe ride, really?), the whole re-enactment of the "there's always a bigger fish scene" only this time on an ice world (I guess if you are making a prequel to a famous science fiction series, you must be obligated to include a scene like this (big CGI monster chases protagonist, check, then proceeds to get eaten by even BIGGER CGI monster...check!); it must be in the small print), etc., etc., etc...

But now after thinking about it for a bit, I am hoping that most of the problems I have with the new Star Trek movie lie with the horrible script and not the direction (*crosses fingers*)...I liked most of Super 8, so maybe it isn't Abrams' fault that the Star Trek movie was lackluster...I mean I thought the casting was pretty good (Spock, Mr. Scott, etc.), so perhaps if the script is written properly (which I am optimistic of what Michael Arndt can accomplish), then the new Star Wars movie could turn out all right. I'm certain that it will be better than the prequels. This isn't Georgie Boy writing the script ("I truly...deeply...love you."<----worst line in all of Star Wars), so I will try to remain hopeful...

 

 

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Super 8 was intended to be a general homage to that sort of film.

Not a slavish remake of one of them.

So it has the child friendships, it has the government conspiracy and caring but clueless parental figures of ET and CE3K but it also has the body horror of Alien, Gremlins, Jaws and The Blob remake etc (an alien has to eat and you guys eat mammals).

As for F-bombs, kids that age have always spoken that way, if you think otherwise you just weren't listening.

It was difficult to get such language from a child passed the certification boards of the 80's (look how shocking the language in The Exorcist was thought to be in the early 70's, now it's almost retroactively comical).

Once again it wasn't a perfect film but it was well directed.

The actors seemed to be motivated into acting like their characters instead of reciting their lines in a bewildered fashion to a man with a chrome ball on his head.

This may lead to a better Star Wars film than we have had of late even if the writing is a bit pants still.

By all accounts the writer can write too.

But John Carter proved to me at least that a reputation is not enough to make an interesting film.

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I saw JJ's Star Trek only once. I don't really consider myself a Star Trek fan, but I was curious. For me it was unmemorable. But that said, I really don't know what to expect from him in regards to a Star Wars film.

If they are characters I actually care about, unlike Star Trek, then I will just have to see how they are written and how they are directed and what everything else looks like.

One thing is for sure, Kathleen Kennedy will keep him in line. I'm pretty sure of that. I don't think she'll let him take it too far from where the films were previously in terms of look, feel, etc.

But if it were me, if I were to be offered a dream job like this after being a fan for as long as I have been, I'd know what the fans want to see. I'd also know that if I wanted to do things right, really right, I'd want to hire as many of the original crew members as I could and do as much with the old school effects as possible. That means ILM and the archives would be at the top of my list of things to check out.

JJ has an opportunity to lear a whole lot more about filmmaking than he's ever experienced before if he digs right in at ILM. That's gotta be exciting!