5 Ways J.J. Abrams Could Ruin Star Wars

[Vigormortis]

I love that we're speculating on things J.J. Abrams can do to ruin Star Wars as if George Lucas and LucasFilm haven't already done all of them. Repeatedly. For decades.

Anyway, I'll be blunt:
As far as I'm concerned, Episode IV and Episode V are the only good and great Star Wars films, respectively. The rest can fuck right off.

So for me, it can only go up from here. Or, at worst, stay the same.

 

[Veylon]

Three, or something close to it, looks like a good idea to me. There's a lot of room for a lot of stories in the Star Wars universe. Would it be so terrible if some of them didn't involve lightsaber fights and pseudo-spiritual declamations every few minutes? The original trilogy was at least sparing with them, but the prequels went way overboard.

 

[VoidWanderer]

After midichlorians and Jar Jar, apart from recruiting high school students to star in it, could it really get worse?

Pardon my presumption, but I'm less worried about Star Wars getting worse and more worried that it won't get any better.

How do I explain this concisely..

OK, remember Star Trek?
Rick Berman spent a decade mismanaging Star Trek, eventually fans got fed up and fled the franchise in droves.
Eventually it died.

Years later, during this explosion of Hollywood nostalgia-sploitation, some exec decided to reboot Star Trek for easy money, and handed the project to J.J. Abrams.

So Abrams took what he knew of Star Trek, dissected the culturally recognizable bits, and plopped them into a generic Hollywood action movie.

Star Trek 09' has Star Trek on the label and it has some flavorful bits from Star Trek in it...but it isn't Star Trek.
It's the Bacos version of Star Trek. Either way, the public loved it, so naturally it was a "successful" reboot.

But I can't help but feel that nothing has really improved for Star Trek as a result because...it isn't really Star Trek.
I don't hate the films, but I never once had this sense that I was watching Star Trek; just a bunch of references to them.

5 years later, and I find myself in an eerily familiar situation with Star Wars.

I won't beat around bush here: George Lucas obviously had no idea how to write a good script for the prequels, and ended up making three shitty, but popular action movies. While Lucas made a lot of money, hindsight has not been kind to the prequels.

And once again Abrams is up to bat to bring an old franchise back to the public eye...
Hell, even the elimination of the Expanded Universe feels kinda similar to how Abrams eliminated the original canon universe from the equation in his Trek films. Or at least that's how I take it.

So I'm apprehensive about this. Will Star Wars still be Star Wars with Abrams at the helm?

Personally, I enjoyed the retellings of Star Trek. It isn't like Abrams negated the original series, he just left it alone and made a variation on it, which doesn't affect the original.

I am not too worried about Episode 7, but I am also not super enthusiastic about it at this point.

 

[Kontarek]

Why does everyone blame Abrams for Into Darkness? I thought it was fairly obvious that all of its problems were wrapped up in the terrible script, which was written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon fucking Lindelof (aka the guy who ruined Prometheus). The direction was fine but it wasn't enough to save the film from it's alarmingly shitty script, which Abrams had little to do with.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Personally, I enjoyed the retellings of Star Trek. It isn't like Abrams negated the original series, he just left it alone and made a variation on it, which doesn't affect the original.

Well...by doing it the way he did, he didn't deliberately negate the original series, but he kinda did for all practical purposes.

Future Trek installments (if any) will be focused on the new universe and not the original because that's where the money and the audience is proven to be. While I don't hate Abrams films (they're fun), I cannot for the life of me call them real Star Trek films because it doesn't feel like Trek at all.

Neither of Abrams Trek films have the tone, or the intention, the style of writing or even the stupid quirks (they went out of their way to avoid technobabble, which I appreciate, but it kinda was associated with Trek all the same like a retarded cousin).

Of course, that just might be a sign of the times. There aren't really any sci-fi shows out there right now.
Lots of supernatural stuff, cop shows, and reality-show garbage but not really sci-fi. (nothing springs immediately to my mind anyway)

 

[babinro]

Consider all of the horrible Star Wars content that has been released since the original movie. None of this has ever managed to ruin the property. The fact that Episode 7 is being made despite Ep 1, 2, and 3 is proof of this.

EP 7 could focus entirely on Jar Jar along with his brand new even more annoying friends and it would make hundreds of millions in ticket sales. People will go see this movie if only to complain about how it's the new worst thing ever. They'll then do the same thing for Ep 8 and Ep 9.

 

[Je-Tze]

Dude?!! Really? There's nothing J.J. Abrams could do that could ruin STAR WARS worse than Lucas himself has done over the the last three movies. Not to mention nearly the entire collection of awful expanded universe novels.

That said, I would dearly love to see a GOOD writer/director get a hold of the franchise, and maybe make something decent out of it. While Abrams can't really "ruin" it, he's certainly not going to be GOOD for it. Oh well. I wrote Star Wars off a long time ago. If it ever reincarnates into something good it will be nice; otherwise I have long since ceased to have a reason to care.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

When you said "shit weasels" I thought you were referring to those rodents that can dampen the Force.

 

[Mangod]

I thought the movie up until the half-way point was incredibly accurate.

In order to avoid a derail, I won't debate my intense distaste for the cinematic translation. I'd just like to understand what the talk about the shit-weasels being redeemed means.

I believe Phil is being sarcastic. "No, no, you don't understand! The shit weasels will really appeal to our target demographic, we just need to find a proper context for it!"

The joke being that there is no "target demographic" for shit weasels, no matter how "proper" the context is. It's a bad idea, and a sure way for J.J to screw up this movie is to include them.

 

[Krai]

Star Wars is a tough series to kill. The prequels were awful movies and the series was not weakened by it. People saw what train wrecks the first two were and still went to the third installment of the prequels, being bad will not kill Star Wars. My theory is that the one thing capable of killing Star Wars is being boring. The prequels at least gave people something to talk about, as far as hatred goes the Star Wars prequels are one of the more fun things to hate. If the reaction to 7 is "It was OK but there there's nothing worth remembering" then Star Wars as a franchise will probably be hurt.

Creating this kind of reaction seems to be the specialty of Abrams. I do not remember what really happened in new Star Trek I remember not hating it, but it effected me very little, where by comparison I remember scenes and plot points from older Star Trek movies that were awful movies. Star Trek is a series I care about, Abrams made movies that I did not care about (until I realized the apathy he had inspired and was made angry by that.)

Looking forward I care about Star Wars but I worry that Abrams will make another movie I wont care about. There wont be anything to passionately love or to vitriolically hate. I think in order to matter Star Wars needs one of the two.

 

[Signa]

I could picture the midichlorians scenario actually working out in the movie's favor if done right.

I'm imagining a movie where some political entity is having some sort of eugenics war (like the Nazis searching for the master race! Not like the empire wasn't space Nazis already), and finding and haphazardly training Jedi to be war machines could set a suitable scenario for the movie to take place in. Bring in cloning of the kids/young adults that have the highest midichlorian counts, and you could have an army of Jedi for the protagonists to contend with. It would take a lot of effort to not suck, but I think it could be done, and still end up better than the prequels.

 

[JimB]

I believe Phil is being sarcastic.

Huh, okay. I got the feeling there was, like, some history of Kasdan defending the bad movie, or something. Thanks for the answer.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

I have said this all along but he should definitely rip off KOTOR for Episode VII!

I'm not talking about the twist with Revan, although I'm scared to think about how appealing it must be to Abrams; I'm talking about the looooove.

Jedis aren't supposed to get married and Luke Skywalker never got the girl even though he was the main dude. It also really fucked it up for his father when he got involved with a girl.

But Revan only became the legendary Jedi knight that he was thanks to his wife, Bastila Shan. I believe their love is what helped them triumph over Malack. I think it would be very interesting to see a star wars movie that addresses the role of true love with respect to the light side of the Force.

 

[Caiphus]

He could make the entire cast inhale helium before shooting!

He could forget which end is the front-end on the cameras!

He could get the characters to switch accents randomly at 20 minute intervals.

 

[The Hungry Samurai]

How about if he tries to make The Star Trek and Star Wars universe combine into some odd crossover event hoping to cash in on the Marvel Movie Money Train?

 

[Yelchor]

I wouldn't actually mind if he toned down all force-related subjects. I think that would be the right way to go if you wanted to capture a more classic Star Wars feel, as the Force is supposed to be this largely unknown phenomena that's either whispered with superstition or dismissed as just another myth or vague legend. By playing it down it has the potential to be more intriguing when it actually does manifest in some way, by its own accord or through people.

It simply comes down to this: Don't overplay the magic, otherwise it just becomes another thing in the world. Like the lightsaber becoming far less appealing simply because hundreds of them were shown every other scene.

But of course, this isn't the original trilogy. It's a new age and much has changed since Endor. As long as there's no uncanny tonal shift there shouldn't be much cause for concern, not that we know what the director is planning.

He seems to know how to make a movie at least. Maybe not a Star Trek movie. But a fun, exciting movie experience. That fact alone is leagues better than what came before.

 

[TheSanityAssassin]

Poor guy, must be hard making a movie that you know people will hate because it's not the original and hating it is somehow a cool thing to do.

 

[80sboy]

5 five ways J.J Abrams could make Star Wars better

1. Kill Jar Jar Binks
2. Use practical effects instead of relying to CGI
3. Have multiple people to guide him like Lucas's first film.
4. No Lens flare
5. Don't overhype everyone like Phantom Menace.

Bonus* Make it fun again. People are more open to Wangst when they are connected to the characters. Make them fun and lovable instead of putting them into crisis mode.

6. Retcon the prequels like he did the entire Star Trek lore by involving time travel.

As long as he doesn't blow up the planet of Yodas it'll be awesome. =D

 

[walrusaurus]

I can't tell if this is supposed to be a really bad attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor, or if its just the most insultingly stupid thing i've read on this website in a very long time.

Seriously: "he totally would change the franchise name if Disney would let him"? Is there any rational basis for statements like this whatsoever? This was just three pages of 'WAAAAAAH JJ ABRAMS BOOOOO!!!' and 'I can't believe hes gonna replace the death star with Barbie's super-pink dream house!!'

I've either completely missed the joke, or JJ Abrams personally slaughtered the OPs puppy.