JJ Abrams to direct Star Wars Episode VII

Luke Jr.: I want to be a Jedi right now.

Luke Sr.: Normally it takes years of dedication and training to become a Jedi, but okay.

ABRAMS!!!!

j7wild wrote:

He is ruining the Star Trek franchise and now he is going to ruin the Star Wars franchise too!

He will be responsible for the downfall of the 2 biggest science fiction film franchises in celluloid history!

Ummm...the series has already fallen down, and now Disney is trying to pick it back up. At best, all I can say about George Lucas is that he absolutely, positively despised Star Wars and the fans so much that he gave them the sh**iest prequels imaginable on purpose; at worst he is simply a massively incompetent director with an atrocious eye for performance, for story-telling who managed to get lucky with the first SW films, had the good sense to let somebody else direct the next two, and then somehow lost that good sense and ham-fistedly tried to direct, write and produce the last 3 films.

He is a God-awful presence in the Star Wars ouvre. He is a stain...a blemish to the Star Wars legacy; the films work IN SPITE OF HIM. But oh what a price the prequels paid! This is the guy who gave us Jar Jar Binks.....a 9 year old Anakin Skywalker.....retroactive changes to established history.....a preening, pouting teenaged Anakin....clunky, wooden performances from some of the best actors and actresses in Hollywood......and you think J.J. Abrams could be *WORSE*??????

I'll take my chances with Abrams any day of the week.

While STINO had a worse script than the Prequels, it did have more energy.

I'll just wait and see what happens. I'm not concerned with the future of Star Wars very much.

Abrams confirmed.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/01/26/j-j-abrams-officially-named-star-wars-director/

We should change the title of this thread to :

"I hope J.J. Abrams doesn't f*** up Star Wars."

:lol!:

Here are some problems I had with the prequels (specifically THE PHANTOM MENACE). If Abrams can avoid making these mistakes he has a good shot at making a great movie:

#1 Forcing characters into the script (Lucas forces C-3PO and R2D2 into the prequels and it just doesn't work; especially in the case of C-3P0. By having Anakin be the person who builds C3PO, the inclusion of 3PO feels inorganic; it's a transparent case of squeezing in a character for which a storyline doesn't call for it. I'm also at a loss to explain how Anakin/Darth Vader would not recognize C3P0 years later in TESB).

#2 Being intellectually dishonest with the characters (admit it: when you first saw Star Wars and you heard Obi-Wan utter the line: 'When I first met your father, he was already a great pilot', did anyone concieve of the idea that the 'great pilot' would be a 9 year old boy? It's another example of Lucas shoe-horning in a plot element that doesn't call for it simply because he wants it, not whether the story dictates)

#3 Cheap laughs. The first Star Wars movie had humor, but it flowed from the situations; it never felt like any character was being used specifically for an easy joke. Not so with TPM. Jar Jar Binks destroys every scene he is in. Binks was a massive, massive distraction; so perfectly awful that, like a black hole, simply nothing was able to escape his grasp. Binks ruins every scene he is in, and I don't say that lightly. He serves no function other than to go for allegedly easy laughs, even though I don't recall laughing even once. At least with A NEW HOPE, the film appealed to kids without alienating adults. I'm not sure anyone was amused by TPM.

#4 Wooden acting. The one thing Abrams can definitely do is get a performance out of the actors, mostly because he wants to. Lucas hated directing actors and looked at them as something to get past in order to get on with the things he really wanted to be doing.

#5 Pointless plotting. The entirety of Episode I was essentially a waste of time. We spend 2 hours getting to know the most ruthless villain in the history of film as a cute, tow-headed, do-gooding, tyke. Don't get me wrong; I liked Jake Lloyd, but he should never have been cast in this movie because the character of Anakin should have started out as a mid-30/40-something man, not a child. And all of the political posturing and grandstanding the 1st and 3rd films also weighs down the narrative.

Lucas, who is stuck in a childish mind sometimes, thought Jar Jar would be a fun comic relief for both adults and children alike.

Was he wrong!

I recently watched the prequels for the first time. Granted, I've only seen the original trilogy once and it was about 15 years ago. I enjoyed the prequels for the sci-fi entertainment that they are. Episode I has a lot of faults and DAD-style cringeworthy moments, but it still has a charm that works. Neeson and McGregor are reliable actors that manage to actually perform in this CGI cartoon. Episodes II and III get better. My main problem with the prequels is that Lucas' everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach kills a lot of the tension and atmosphere that could had been built up better. This is where series like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fare much better.

I think Lucas' problem when he made the prequel trilogy was that he was trying way too hard to make a STAR WARS film. When he made the original trilogy, he didn't really know what he was doing - he just made films. But then when he decided to make the original trilogy, he just put way too much thought into it.

I dunno. I'm not against the thought put into it. A like the backdrop as far as the story goes. Where I think he really, utterly, failed was character. More than anything else he failed with the characters. Obi-Wan comes out best in the Big 3. Anakin is never heroic, and Darth Vader is frankly an improvement. Amidala actually has a decent arc in TPM, going from pacifist to guerilla leader to save her planet. But in CLONES she falls in love with the petulant t*** Anakin for no good reason and looks like a fool for doing so. And in SITH her role is to stand around and be pregnant. Then she abandons her kids by dying when she has no wounds.

I think Lucas' problem is that he's an awful writer and director.

Great businessman, though.

It says something that after all Lucas has done to STAR WARS, we still fear for it's safety at the hands of Abrams.

World's greatest chin?

Fucking hell... JJ Abrams? Given the amount of good or even great directors who would have agreed to make this film, the choice of Abrams is fucking unfathomable.

His films: MI3, STAR TREK, SUPER 8. Anything special or even particularly good among that lot? No. And, as STAR TREK proved, the guy is just as enthusiastic to bastardise beloved characters as Lucas was with the prequels.

They're treating STAR WARS as "just another franchise" with this appointment when, in light of the damage done by the prequels, the opposite approach was utterly essential.

Sadly, JJ Abrams is commercial. Disney want their money's worth. They'll probably get it with him.

Control wrote:

I think Lucas' problem is that he's an awful writer and director.

Great businessman, though.

Agreed. Not sure why people keep trying to over think Lucas. Even the people who worked with him and are generally supportive of him will tell you that he hated directing. There's no great mystery to this. He was always more infatuated with the optics than the story. And you have to give him credit for knowing when to throw in the towel and let someone else direct, which is why I believe he not only hated the prequels, but he hated the fans and he hated Star Wars so much that he forced himself onto the prequels rather than let anyone else have a chance at directing them. Certainly after the universal condemnation of PHANTOM MENACE, you'd have thought he'd give the directing over to someone else. But he was defiant to the bitter end, and destroyed a series of films that had the potential to be so much better.

Yeah, basically (as far as I know) he found the shoot of A New Hope so drainingly problematic that he swore off directing, hence Kershner for Empire and Marquand for Jedi. By the time of the prequels, technology had moved on to the extent that he could replace those pesky actual locations, sets etc. with CGI 'n' greenscreen and was therefore happy to direct all three ... but yes, I've heard McGregor decribe his directorial instructions as, erm, 'minimalist' more than once.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Yeah, basically (as far as I know) he found the shoot of A New Hope so drainingly problematic that he swore off directing, hence Kershner for Empire and Marquand for Jedi. By the time of the prequels, technology had moved on to the extent that he could replace those pesky actual locations, sets etc. with CGI 'n' greenscreen and was therefore happy to direct all three ... but yes, I've heard McGregor decribe his directorial instructions as, erm, 'minimalist' more than once.

Harrison Ford was famously quoted as saying he told Lucas:"George, you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can't say it.", and Carrie Fisher said Lucas' direction always came down to this: "Faster" and/or "More intense".

Terrence Stamp refused to ever work with Lucas again:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/29/terence-stamp-found-working-on-phantom-menace-boring

Stamp discussed his involvement with the very first of the Star Wars prequels. Speaking of his relationship with Lucas, Stamp said, "We didn't get on at all. I didn't feel he was a director of actors, he was more interested in stuff and effects."

He went on to add, "He didn't interest me and I wouldn't think I interested him."

So why did Stamp want to do the movie in the first place? Well, he wanted to meet Natalie Portman, but when he turned up for his first scene with the young actress, she was nowhere in sight. Stamp asked Lucas as to her whereabouts, the director replied, "That's Natalie", pointing to a piece of paper on the wall.

Stamp summarised the experience quite pithily: "It was just boring."

I've never felt that the prequels were so dependent upon special effects that Lucas had no choice but to wait 16 years to make Episode 1. I think it's lazy and a cop-out for him to suggest that. I found the original three to be much more epic in scope and weighty and profound than the prequels could ever hope to be. I think he is a man who is at odds with his own creation because his creation is much larger and more powerful than he is. What he gave life to has become more successful than him; in fact, maybe even in spite of him. He gave birth to something he was not able to control, and I believe he has great disdain for the Star Wars fans (I like the series, but am not hard-core). I think he resents the fans and I think it shows in his refusal to release the original trilogy onto Blu-Ray and/or dvd untouched and without the new special effects. I think his resentment shows up in his retro-direction of the scene where Han Solo kills Greedo (I guess we're all just a bunch of gun-loving rubes for liking the fact that Solo pulled the trigger first). Thank God that SOUTH PARK ruined Lucas' chances to "re-imagine" RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, because I firmly believe he would have successfully pressured Spielberg into changing the scene where Jones shoots down the Arab swordsman (played by NSNA actor Pat Roach). We already saw what they did with E.T., taking guns out of the FBI agents hands and digitally changing them to radios.

There's nothing about the prequels that couldn't have been filmed in 1986, 1989 and 1992. Lucas blames the lack of f/x technology for his inability to make those films at that time, but somehow, someway, we all managed to get by loving the original three films even with limited capabilities.

I'm not really sure why Lucas chose to go back to directing, other than perhaps he's just sado-masochistic. A loving, protective guardian of such a franchise would certainly have brought in a real director to film Episodes 2 and 3 after the disaster that TPM was. It's also good that Rick McCallum is gone as well; he was too much of a "Yes"-man to Lucas; no one appeared to pull Lucas aside and tell him how awful the writing, the acting and the directing was. Lucas' gift to the fans could have been in hiring an A-list director to film 2 and 3, but he chose to go down with a ship he sunk simply because he is bull-headed and piggish.

Based upon all that, I can't help but think bringing in a guy like Abrams (an established director with a track record of success and someone powerful enough to call the shots and be his own man and not take any "suggestions" from Kathleen or Lucas, if he happens to be visiting the set or trying to "consult") can only help the series.

CJB wrote:

World's greatest chin?

My God, it's like the end of BEETLEJUICE.

LUCASJUICE.

Sounds nasty.

JJ Abrams is a much better fit for Star Wars than he ever was for Star Trek.
I don't understand why people believed Disney would take any risks with their appointment of a director for this project.

Who believed that?

I'm expecting Star Wars by way of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.