J.J. Abrams To Direct Star Wars VII 735
azzkicker writes "It looks like J.J. Abrams will direct Star Wars VII. From the article: 'Sources have confirmed the Star Trek Into Darkness filmmaker will helm the next Star Wars movie, the highly anticipated installment in the landmark franchise scheduled to reach theaters in 2015."
It makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
And the rich get richer (Score:5, Interesting)
As an actor (and so distantly connected to the entertainment industry), what makes me cranky about this is Hollywood's affinity for known quantities. I like Abrams' work; I'm sure it'll be a fine movie.
But there are hundreds of lesser-known directors who might have done something. What would Kevin Smith have done? Or Alfonso Cuaron, who made the third Harry Potter movie so much more interesting than any of the others? Or somebody I've never heard of?
They're going with a known quantity, and maybe it's the right business decision. It means it probably won't be terrible, and will probably be pretty good. But no matter how good it is, it's still going to be more of Abrams, who we've already got plenty of.
They're going with a known quantity to eliminate the risks. And all you get from safe choices is safe movies. And "safe" is exactly what Star Wars wasn't, at least not the first time, the thing that made it great.
Re:Wait a second... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or perhaps we'll finally see an answer to that question: "Who would win? Enterprise vs. Star Destroyer"
Re:No more time travel! (Score:4, Interesting)
You can play it for comedy, eg one of the better time travel scenes is in the Bill and Ted movie where they and the bad guy keep going back to trump each other's move.
But seriously, there are only two possibilities for time travel.
(1) The universe is fully deteministic in which case the time-travel already occurred and the travel will change nothing, or
(2) alternate universe "time-lines" in which case whatever horrible thing you are trying to change still occurred in the original universe and you have just created a copy. Nobody ever deals with that.
That he butchered Star Trek gives me hope... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm basically the Trekkie the Onion lampoons: "Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film as 'Fun, Watchable.'" [theonion.com]
It was a really fun film to watch, with action and adventure and cute one-liners. A fun, summer action movie. But it was not Star Trek.
Star Trek is not about good versus evil. Star Trek is about Better versus Base. There is no 'evil' in the Star Trek universe, there's just other intelligent life who are different or frightened or struggling and the easy response is "blow 'em up!" but Star Trek asks its characters to be better than that and find another option. Yes, defend yourself, but always look for the other, peaceful solution to a problem. And the best part about Star Trek is that the heroes are...us. Us as we could be through science and reason and strength of character.
The 2009 JJ Abrams movie threw all that out the window and gave us a spectacle about a genocidal bad guy with a scary looking ship who must be stopped by punching. Fun movie, but it's not Star Trek, as it doesn't ask its characters or the audience to rise above being a base reactionary.
Star Wars, which I also very much enjoy, is a mystical fantasy of good "Chosen One" characters versus Evil so evil they call themselves "The Dark Side." And the moral choice presented is about the stupidest philosophy imaginable, that if you care about people, you will come to hate the people who want to hurt the people you care about, which will make you "fall" and then join up with the people you hate to kill the people you cared about. I get the idea that blind hatred can make you "no better than" your enemies, but it doesn't turn you into your enemies. Just to godwin's law this, yes, it's possible to hate Hitler SO MUCH for killing all those Jews that you start a genocidal campaign against Germans, putting them in concentration camps and gas chambers, and wind up no better than Hitler. You become what you hated. But in the Star Wars universe, if you love the Jews and hate Hitler, you wind up joining Hitler to kill more Jews, thereby become THE SAME AS Hitler. This is stupid and makes no sense.
So, JJ Abrams abandoned the fundamental premise of Star Trek (that we can rise above our base instincts to find peaceful solutions to our problems) and ruined Star Trek in a bad way. Maybe, in charge of the next Star Wars movie, he'll abandon the fundamental premise of Star Wars (that you have to be a dispassionate mystical robot to avoid killing your friends) and make the franchise much better and more interesting.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)