TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

For reviews and close examination of sources - episode reviews, book reviews, raves and rants about short stories, et cetera.
Post Reply
User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue May 10, 2016 7:24 pm

http://www.tor.com/2013/01/29/jj-abrams ... -geek-pop/
JJA makes easy to digest commercial products, especially if he cannot take any risk.
Folks like Lucas and Spielberg were pioneers for taking the pulpy stuff they loved from the past and mixing it up with their own ideas and artistic vision. This isn’t the case with a J.J. Abrams. He’s influenced by Lucas and Spielberg. Are “original” J.J. Abrams films like Cloverfield or Super 8 truly memorable, or even all that good? I would answer with a big “no.” These films certainly don’t suck, but I can’t make a strong argument for their artistic merit in terms of originality. Having J.J. Abrams’ signature texture all over Star Trek already makes Star Trek retroactively like Star Wars. Putting Abrams’ texture on Star Wars will make Star Wars into a parody of pastiche of a copy of…Star Wars.

In his stories and novels, Philip K. Dick often created characters who got really freaked out by tightly controlled media products being created for specific public consumption. In terms of pop culture, the J.J. Abrams brand reminds me less of storytelling and more of a product. Yes, I admit to liking fast food, or even gourmet-style cheeseburgers. Star Wars has always been a kind of fast food, but with just enough substance (like a side-salad that you can eat if you want). Star Trek, at least in its correct and ideal form, never was fast food. J.J. Abrams changed that, and now with Star Wars, I think he’s poised to take away the side-salad. In terms of movie-making chops he (and Arndt) are totally at the top of their game. But what we’re talking about here is—more or less—the technical aspects of movies, featuring very little substance at all.

The assembly is perfect, but the parts are not greater than the whole. This is the main fallacy with the praise of J.J. Abrams: just because he’s good at assembling something that looks the way it should, doesn’t mean it’s good.
Written in January 2013.

I personnally acknowledged JarJar's ability to shoot visually pleasing action (I wouldn't call it good as it takes more than neat CGI to make things ace).

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue May 10, 2016 7:40 pm

https://accidentalhistorian.wordpress.c ... -not-good/
Let’s start at the beginning (for me): Lost. Lost was, for a couple seasons, one of the best things going on TV. It was an intoxicating mystery that, in many ways, helped launch the current golden age of television. It came up right as hanging out on the internet and discussing pop culture was going completely mainstream. This was the early days of Facebook and the rise of blogs and the point where hanging out on message boards trading fan theories was stepping out of the realm of nerds on Usenet into the realm of everyone’s mother and crazy uncle. I think this is why JJ Abrams got the reputation he did. Lost was that one pup culture artifact that happened to be in the exact right place at the exact right time with the exact right formula to capture the cultural zeitgeist. Had Lost happened a few years earlier it would have been a blip. Had it happened a few years later it would have been lost in discussions of Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, and Breaking Bad.

Lost is now a footnote because in the end it sucked.
JJ Abrams knows absolutely nothing about science.
All Abrams did was mash together Episodes IV and V and call it a day. I cannot stress this enough. That is the entirety of what happened with Star Wars Episode VII.
There’s another giant set piece battle. During said battle the New Order fires off its current superweapon, which is a giant laser built into the Death Planet. The Death Planet is the Death Star, but basically dug into a planet and, therefore, on a much larger scale. Because that’s how Star Wars works. The Death Planet fires a big-ass laser that somehow can be seen instantaneously from multiple planets across the galaxy, including the one that our plucky heroes are on, and then somehow splits into 5 beams that destroy 5 different planets/moons in a single system. I will admit that this immediately took me out of the movie because, seriously, how the goddamn fuck does that work? The answer is that it only works in a universe controlled by JJ Abrams.
At least, the Death Star was pure, simple and straight to the point without the forced dramatization of a "hyperspace" beam slower than a granma on one leg.
This is actually a place where Star Wars the Force Awakens fails miserably to match up to Lucas’s prequel trilogy. As bad as that trilogy was Lucas at least had the ability to imagine what it would look like to see a galaxy at war against itself. We saw the Trade Federation and Old Republic build navies and throw them at each other. That’s what the new Star Wars movies should look like. The New Republic has built a navy and is trying to drive the remnants of the Empire from their strongholds. Instead we have the New Order with a single Star Destroyer, some TIE fighters, and a superweapon against the Millennium Falcon and a dozen X-Wings. That’s the same damn movie George Lucas made in 1977 with a budget of ten bucks and no CGI. There’s even a gratuitous Trench Run sequence because JJ Abrams has never met a reference to a better movie he can’t flog for all it’s worth.
I won't quote the whole article, go read it.

It's hard not to consider Star Wars even more dead than dead by now, considering that TFA is Disney's way of showing what they intend to do with their franchise.
And if even if you could somehow feel more excited by the Rogue One flick coming around (I might, but my faith level is quite low), don't forget that they announced a trilogy of Han Solo books. Err... I mean movies.
Because we really need that, don't we?
Solo was such an amazing character before his introduction to the events of ANH. Or... maybe it is those very events that made this anonymous, random rogue smuggler one of those amazing heroes.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu May 12, 2016 9:58 am

2011:

http://www.nerve.com/movies/jj-abrams-i ... f-our-time
Abrams isn't completely talentless; it's more like his reputation as a brilliant creator is inflated all out of proportion to his modest achievements. Only Joss Whedon is more ardently revered as a guru of geek culture. But when you examine Abrams' body of work, it's hard to fathom exactly how he attained this aura of creative genius. Like so much of his work, Abrams' popularity is a mystery without a satisfying answer.
So while I'm hoping for the best from Super 8, I'm worried that a gushing homage to the golden age of Spielberg will bring out the worst in Abrams. Spielberg and Abrams both understand the power of mystery; they love leaving big reveals to the imagination. But the difference is that at his peak, Spielberg cared enough about craft to put together tight narratives. His stories made sense, so you didn't feel let down by the questions he refused to answer. With Abrams, you just feel like he's cheating.
It turns out that Super 8 wasn't particularly stellar either. Some kind of uninspired E.T. gone bad or what do I know...

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu May 12, 2016 10:06 am

https://www.vice.com/read/how-is-jj-abr ... t-the-ways

The author presents three credible and solid reasons why Star Wars would fail.
Despite all that, the film failed because of entirely different reasons.

JJA is not an imaginative director. He does everything by the book and hides all of it behind modern dynamic shooting and tons of CGI of the highest caliber (usually) used as a distraction. He also rushes the narrative so you cannot breathe and notice all the problems and won't mind because, these days, you are "entertained".
Like some dumb monkey or when moving a flashlight around and mesmerizing a cat.
However, this also means the product cannot afford any time for proper exposure. An exposure which would require a good plot and good characters, both of which JJA never provides.
Therefore there lies the recipe for a proper failure amazingly wrapped in tentalizing glittering paper.

Sooner or later, the best parts of those movies will be the marketing. Period.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu May 12, 2016 10:11 am

https://filmschoolrejects.com/why-j-j-a ... 2c8fd9e327

This one is really good!
The concern that prompted people to start joking about the next franchises to be handed over to Abrams (Firefly! Battlestar! Murder She Wrote!) came from the bizarre fruit that blockbuster-obsessed Hollywood has borne: a shrinking pool of talent that can deftly handle event movies. That Abrams stands out as an obvious choice is the symptom. That he was hired is part of the disease. It’s the result of years and years of chasing away strong creative talent in favor of pliable commercial directors and placing almost every egg in the big budget basket.
The hiring of people like JarJar is a(nother) sign of Hollywood's overall bankruptcy.
So, sure, let’s call it somehow unfair that the guy who got to play around with Captain Kirk gets to do the same with Chewbacca, but the real question is whether there truly was no one else out there to do the universe justice, and if not, what does that say about the current state of big studio filmmaking? The secondary question is simple: if you have to excel at one tentpole in order to get another, what hope do other filmmakers have?
Maybe a more dangerous, inventive choice would have alleviated those concerns, but Abrams feels so obvious, so perfect, that it’s hard not to assume Disney is going to aim right for the middle with the final product. He’s not a middling director by any means, but neither is he astonishing in his talent. It’s easy to imagine he will craft some stunning work in the future; he just hasn’t done it quite yet.

Which makes him perfect for Star Wars and potentially terrible for it.
Written all over the effin' wall.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu May 12, 2016 10:21 am

http://www.tor.com/2013/01/29/jj-abrams ... -geek-pop/
So…what about the writers? A lot of us have heard that this awesome guy Michael Arndt is writing the screenplay for Star Wars: Episode VII. (Not to mention the fact that Orci and Kurtzman did a decent job with Star Trek, right?) Well yes, the director is the director and writers are the writers, but let’s get real. George Lucas didn’t write the damn screenplay for Return of the Jedi, but he’s all over that. Furthermore, it’s not like Disney robots aren’t totally “developing the story” with J.J. Abrams and Arndt. Lucas not being involved in Episode VII is positive from an entertainment/quality perspective, but it’s actually bad from an artistic perspective.

Folks like Lucas and Spielberg were pioneers for taking the pulpy stuff they loved from the past and mixing it up with their own ideas and artistic vision. This isn’t the case with a J.J. Abrams. He’s influenced by Lucas and Spielberg. Are “original” J.J. Abrams films like Cloverfield or Super 8 truly memorable, or even all that good? I would answer with a big “no.” These films certainly don’t suck, but I can’t make a strong argument for their artistic merit in terms of originality. Having J.J. Abrams’ signature texture all over Star Trek already makes Star Trek retroactively like Star Wars. Putting Abrams’ texture on Star Wars will make Star Wars into a parody of pastiche of a copy of…Star Wars.
For anyone who has seen TFA with eyes wide open, the self-mockery was quite obvious at times. It also a very bad sign when the makers of content for a given franchise start to insert tons of satire and self-referential jokes at their own expense. It smells death. The death of your show. Or the death of a series that's perhaps long overdure, or which could have provided one or two more opuses assuming someone serious and concerned had been at the helm of them.

A typica exemple would be the ALIEN series, which ended with the rather farcical ALIEN RESURRECTION. Both TFA and AR share one specific moment when a rogue hero lands an insane shot with his gun that is so WTF that it immediately pulls you out of disbelief. It's purely added for coolness and surely both directors thought it would be funny too.

This is really a bad omen. It's even worse when found in the very first opus of a new era of products, the one that is both supposed to revive the franchise and serve as a demonstration booth for the new owners' vision.
One can talk a lot of shit about how bad/flawed/annoying/delusional the Star Wars prequels were, but at least they certainly weren’t calculated and designed to appeal to exactly what the fans wanted. The flaws of the prequels prove their artistic integrity. Art should take chances, which is what Lucas was doing in 1977. But now, something like Star Wars is the status quo. And thanks to J.J. Abrams, that’s what Star Trek is now, too: a beautiful product that can do no wrong (technically speaking). If Star Wars (and Star Trek) were potential suitors for our affections, I’d argue that they’re too safe, too eager to make us happy. We happen to like nice movies, but, really, there are just not enough scoundrels in our life.

And J.J. Abrams is certainly not a scoundrel.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu May 12, 2016 1:55 pm

Just found that one.
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news ... e-20151020
Mirrors what I said above.
We're dealing with merchants, not artists.
Last night, less than two months from the film's premiere, Disney dropped the final trailer for this blockbuster-di-tutti-blockbusters during the middle of an NFC East game, and the brilliant sizzle reel confirms something that's become increasingly clear since that famous cast photo got imaginations racing back in April of 2014: J.J. Abrams is the cinema's greatest hype man since Alfred Hitchcock. You don't need to see The Force Awakens to know that he was the right person to direct it. No one else in Hollywood has displayed such a complete understanding of the idea that marketing is a narrative endeavor, an act of storytelling unto itself. The movie itself could be as flawed as the design of the original Death Star, but this trailer is so good that, for better or worse, you forget that it's only selling a movie.
The knock against Abrams, however, is that the films themselves almost seem like afterthoughts, something that's less important than the eggshell of wonderment he builds around them. But The Force Awakens turns his greatest weakness into the ultimate strength, because — for the first time — the movie he's been hired to make simply isn't as important as the experience of its unveiling. If this final trailer makes you forget that it's just selling a movie, that's only because J.J. Abrams never loses sight of the fact that he's actually selling so much more.
Mind you, considering that many trailers suck, without losing from sight that Star Wars is a special beast, perhaps lessons should be taken there?

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu May 12, 2016 2:10 pm

Be careful with that one.
http://twitchfilm.com/2014/01/destroy-a ... brams.html
J.J. Abrams, whose sole creative impulse is to repeatedly complete the sentence "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" with whatever Twilight Zone-inspired minutiae is in his head at that moment, has instead determined that Episode VII should be one last adventure for the aged heroes of the original Star Wars trilogy, giving them a proper send-off before focusing the rest of the movies on that next generation of Skywalker children.

Just about the only pleasure I can take from this idea is in imagining how much fun it will be, two years hence, when a generation of born-again Star Wars haters, who have vehemently insisted for fifteen years that George W. Lucas is the sole, malicious corruptor of their once-beloved franchise, will have to accept that Episode VII is just fucking terrible for reasons that have nothing to do with their favourite whipping boy.
We could say, though, that it was possible to handle Solo and Organa well, but it would have required talent. Making Ford play the younger Solo but in an older, wrinkled skin makes no sense. It's offensive. It's nothing more than the sheer result of pandering to some old fans (who seem to be the only ones to sanctify a new movie) and the path of least resistance.
Fisher had the emotional spectrum of a glass window and why the hell would she be there? All logic would have had her retired or at least occupying more a more political position, especially of high prestige. Because that's what seems logical considering her portrayal in the OT. And that's where the EU was spot-on.
What the audience wants is to see Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo again. The problem is, that's impossible. Those characters are gone. They are a creation of celluloid well over thirty years ago. Without conducting the requisite thought experiments, though, the audience - and J.J. Abrams - will continue to "want" to see their heroes again, right up until the moment that they do. At which point, I think, a rather horrible collision between wants and needs will take place, right up there on the big screen.
Note earlier on that he identifies this audience as the older, the mature one, that was wants that nobody gives a shit about. And shouldn't much.
It's all well and good to imagine a version of Episode VII where Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford have one last hurrah and are generally awesome. Ask yourself, though: what will it feel like if they fail? What will it feel like if the effect isn't convincing, even for a moment, at resurrecting the characters that you loved in your youth, as you loved them in your youth? What if all you get is a disturbing coda to Episodes IV, V and VI that looks and behaves manifestly like an affront to the original product?

Someone, please, stop J.J. Abrams.
Comments are spot on too.

User avatar
2046
Starship Captain
Posts: 2040
Joined: Sat Sep 02, 2006 9:14 pm
Contact:

Re: TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by 2046 » Sat Jun 18, 2016 4:49 am

Having seen Cloverfield, Super 8, and JJ-Trek, the author's not wholly wrong, and I would even go so far as to say the attacks are epic even over and above the fact that, as with all art attacks, there's not really much evidence but for feelings and moods which, of course, the critiquer seeks to alter in the first place.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: TFA: Spot on reviews and prophecies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Jul 12, 2016 3:48 pm

I think it can go beyond mere feelings and moods.
There are objective elements, those present in the movies, which can be dissected. Then and only then, it's a question of personnal reaction to those elements that results in those polarized opinions.
Generally, the less people care about this or that, the more receptive they are to commercial movies. Or in other words, the higher the tolerance (or lower your critical senses), the more enjoyment you'll get out of a large variety of products.
Which perhaps would explain why it's best for a certain branch of the industry not to see people being too much schooled into the honing of those critical senses.
Like, for example, by globally making large scale commercial movies dumber so the new generations of viewers are not used to greater material.

Post Reply