yup!! Abrams is a really good director, that LOST pilots is immaculate, MI3 is great adrenaline pumps, and TFA absolutely rules in the direction and actually has something to say beyond the nostalgia! i absolutely don't blame him for the mess of TROS, that's all Disney and their work.
It’s called “Mystery Box” because it’s empty. It’s up to you to write the mystery yourself while he leaves before he has to do any of the creative work.
@@ieuanhunt552 I wouldn’t even say it worked in Pulp Fiction (PF) I feel like the point of PF was LA, slice of life, character writing, not the mysterious briefcase. Abrams left so many hanging threads in The Force Awakens that were KEY to the story down the road (similar to his mystery boxes in Lost) that he set us all up for disappointment. There were no answers to “Who is Snoke?” “Who are Rey’s parents?” “What happened to Luke?” that would have left audiences satisfied. I think even if he helmed all three movies, we would have been disappointed with many of the answers we got, just like Lost. What do you think?
My biggest problem with Abrams is he doesn't care about logic as long as it looks cool. In Star Wars he introduced a power where Rey and Kylo can teleport objects to each other. In Star Trek he introduced a technology where anyone can teleport anywhere in the galaxy. He doesn't care what kind of potential problems those things introduce to the universe. You can't do that in franchises where attention to detail is very important to the fans.
One of the few thing that solidified my oppinion on JJ was durring the filming of the Force Awakens he made comments about not considering the prequels SW movies and he allegedly wanted to include a Gungan skull (implied to be Jar Jar's) to the opening scene of the movie. Like, even after almost 20 years of mockery that Lucas had to putt up with and even after it was public knowledge how much hardship Ahmed Best went through the dude really wanted to keep that hate wagon going and even add fuel to the fire instead of genuinely trying to improve things (maybe creating a badass Gungan character for a change) or adding something new. It really is poetic how he and his movies ended up being in the receiving end of that mockery while the prequel era is now more appreciated than ever before.
The movie literally begins with a guy staring into the camera to say "this will begin to make things right." Then he blows up Coruscant and Naboo for no good reason. Guys a total goober
I immediately knew something was wrong when I saw Stormtroopers in the trailer. The Empire died! Why are Stormtroopers still around? The world building in the sequel trilogy is so borderline nonexistent that we have no sense at all of what's happening, who we're fighting, and why. After Return of the Jedi gave us such a definitive and satisfying ending, an ending that stayed for decades, the one thing the sequels needed to do was answer the question of "why?". And they never did. They never even came close.
Glad you brought up Speilbergs diversity as a director, there is a very odd trend online of people saying "He just makes nice whimsy movies for kids" but when you look at his catalog of movies, not many of them count as "whimsy" movies, the closet would be maybe Hook and E.T but then there is Jaws, Bridge Of Spies, Schindler's list, The Twilight Zone movies etc. Even the movies people call whimsy movies like Indiana Jones and Jurrasic Park still have moments of legit horror.
Spielberg was always really good at getting that balance right, nailing that whimsy and sense of magical awe while still having a certain bite at the same time; E.T. might be one of his most whimsical and childlike films, and even it has some rather spooky and unnerving parts early on, and the scenes where it looks like E.T. might die are genuinely harrowing
He also directed a really good episode of Columbo!! I will forever bring this fact up because if he hadn’t directed that episode he probably wouldn’t be where he is today. The episode is called Murder By The Book!
You could say that Spielberg has been alternating between blockbusters and more "artistic" films for his entire career. Back in the 80's he followed up "Temple of Doom" with "The Color Purple" and "Empire of The Sun." Then came "The Last Crusade," followed by "Always" in the same year.
It's ironic that Abrams would replace Lucas. Lucas hated mcguffins that were meaningless. It's one of his critiques of Hitchcock and he created R2D2 to prove that mcguffins don't have to be meaningless. Mystery Boxes on the other hand are always meaningless.
I also laughed so hard when he complained about Super 8 being safe and derivative cause.... Rebel Moon is just Star Wars and Seven Samurai nearly beat for beat, both movies suffer the exact same issue
@@LDFrost117 Well the Imperium is the most obvious rip of the Imperium of Man of Warhammer 40k in terms of naming and style. One of the villains is named “Balisarius” and is part of the “Imperium” as well as some red-robed priests (aka Belisarius Cawl of the Adeptus Mechanicus, a red-robed technophile cult of the Imperium of Man), the military branch is called the Militarium (aka the Astra Militarum of the Imperium of Man). You have rebels who are called Blood-Axes (there is an Ork clan called the Blood-Axes). The guns look close to lasguns, etc. etc. Sure, a lot of this could be said to be more generic historical references, but put together it’s pretty damning
@@HonestObserver But there was no saving that crap, not in three months at least. The task Joss had was equivalent to trying to drain a lake with a tablespoon.
The problem is that JJ Abrams doesn't know what a mystery is. He treats anything that you don't immediately know as a mystery. A new character is introduced and it's treated as a mystery even if there are no attempts to hide the character's identity or misdirect the audience on their motivations. All his mystery boxes are disappointing since the characters and the audience don't really have to do any investigating. Things just get revealed in an anticlimactic way and then they move on to the next mystery box.
Exactly. Bad writers think mystery is simply the act of withholding information. It's not. Good mystery has planning, structure, breadcrumbs, red herrings all over the script from page 1. Artificially withholding information results in unnatural dialogue and lack of urgency for the characters because they are not asking logical questions to uncover the mystery until the time for the Big Reveal comes. It just makes the plot convoluted and the character motivations illogical.
@@One.Zero.One101 I wouldn't say characters you mentioned have illogical motivations, more like they just have none or little agency of what they want to achieve. They are reactive type (instead of being proactive) or they have inconsistent characterization depending on the parts of the story.
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie? Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
I was never particularly invested in J J Abrams as a creator, and really didn't have any strong feelings one way another when he was slated to direct The Force Awakens. And ultimately, his failure to realize that "I'll just set up a mystery box in the Star Wars Universe which has already had a conclusive 6 movie story told and let the next guy figure out where to go from there only to have to come back for the third one because I didn't like what he did with my literal nothing story" was gonna be a spectacularly bad idea. I still can't believe he managed to get Oscar Isaac to say "Somehow Palpatine has returned" in a multi-million dollar production without once thinking it might be absolute shit writing. It's staggering.
I don’t entirely get why people act like that’s SUCH a bad line in and of itself, given it’s completely accurate to the situation. At least it doesn’t contradict itself the way “Only a Sith deals in absolutes” does.
To be fair though that’s mostly on Disney. They should’ve had a plan for their trilogy instead of doing the Marvel formula with Star Wars. I think Force Awakens isn’t even a bad movie, it just gets bogged down from the fact the other movies happen. If there was an actual trilogy that worked I think people will be looking back on that movie differently. Just my thought but I like Abrams work a lot more than others. Still love the 09 Star Trek film and Super 8 is an underrated gem and easily JJ’s best work.
Very much thus. JJ had success with TV, but when he was handed ST 2009, did good job with that film, then really messed up with Into Darkness by redoing TWOK. TFA was a retelling of ANH with a Mary Sue. TROS was pure trash but I'm convinced he was micro-managed by KK the whole time.
Abrams and Synder are on the same level as being overrated. They did a few good things right but never could manage living up to their own films/tv shows. Abrams has no voice. He’s just a safe director.
I would say that for all of Snyder’s faults, he at least has some semblance of a cohesive vision, even if that vision doesn’t really have any substance. You know a Snyder film when you see one. Beyond the idea of a mystery box, I don’t think Abrams has anything that he’s dying to express or say - which is why was the perfect corporate director to kick off the reboots for both Star Trek and Star Wars.
Same level of overrated, ppl have hated JJ for years and he’s never attracted the same fandoms and horde of defenders as Snyder has, JJ was dispassionately accepted by general audiences but never praised the way Snyder was for a long time, Snyder had his whole aesthetic that ppl went insane over
@@GuineaPigEverydayUnfortunately I knew people who blindly sung JJ's praises for years until very recently. He definitely had a fandom although Ive never understood why
I do agree that Abrams doesn't have a voice/is a safe director, but the comparison to Snyder is way off. Abrams has never inspired the kind of die-hard fandom that Snyder did, but he's a more cohesive storyteller and generally good at set-ups. Snyder has a great visual sense and some interesting ideas, but doesn't have the patience for the nuances of storytelling. Abrams is Spielburg created in a lab. Snyder is Michael Bay with delusions of grandeur. It would be neat to set them both up on a play date. Make them co-direct/write something together. Even if it triggers the end times, it would be interesting.
I always hated Abrams' mystery box. I remember in his Ted talk about how he came up with the concept from a magic shop box. He equated it to learning Darth Vader is Luke's father. But that was a twist, not a mystery box.
What made the Vader reveal great is George Lucas put a lot of breadcrumbs in the script, he wasn't just withholding information like JJ Abrams' mystery boxes. Obi-Wan: "Yes, I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father." Obi-Wan: "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father." Aunt Beru: "Luke's just not a farmer, Owen. He has too much of his father in him." Uncle Owen: "That's what I'm afraid of."
@@One.Zero.One101 Those likely were not breadcrumbs. Lucas has been known to practice revisionist history in his own accounts, so his own claims lack credulity. We do know that in the early drafts, Darth Vader and Anakin were explicitly different people. Mark Hamill said that he was only shown Vader's line in secret during Empire (so he could properly react), and that he was warned that they'd know if he leaked the secret because the people that knew were Lucas, the director, and himself. Even then, Hamill wasn't told if Vader was telling the truth. James Earl Jones, who recorded the actual line of dialogue, said that he'd simply believed Vader was lying. Similar happened with the idea of Luke and Leia being siblings. While it was set up that Luke had a sibling in Empire, the decision for that sibling to be Leia wasn't made until Jedi.
@@BainesMkIIagreed, it’s almost a miracle that the retconning Lucas would do never turned out disastrously, though there are some awkward things like Leia saying she remembers Padme when ROTS depicts her dying after giving birth. I suppose the difference between Lucas and Abrams is that Lucas had somewhat of an outline, even if he did deviate from it quite a bit, and remained in control, while Abrams - if he did have his own outline - didn’t make sure subsequent directors would follow it and left them up to their own devices.
@@BainesMkII I think the acted line when they filmed the scene was "No, Obi Wan killed your father!" at least that what has been reported by Hamill and other people over the years. Several people including Harrison Ford only saw the real line at the premier, with Ford commenting that nobody had told him that before to Hamill. Also true about Luke and Leia, when you watch the first movie Lucas kind of set up Luke getting together with Leia but then decided they were siblings and went with Han instead.
Yeah I was laughing when the fan base was theorizing about Rey's parents. Knowing JJ Abrams, I knew this was a pointless exercise. The fans won't know what the answer is because the writers themselves don't know the answer. That's the difference between a Mystery Box and a real traditional mystery; you can't put breadcrumbs and red herrings in the script when the writer himself don't know what's inside the box.
@@One.Zero.One101 if you wanna do the ultimate comparison, just look at ryan johnson's knives out. you can say what you want about TLJ(i didnt like it very much either) but its undeniable that, compared to JJ abrams setups without any payoff, RJ actually knows how to write a mistery.
@@anakinlowground5515 I have to wonder though how well he would have done if he hadn't been forced to work with JJ's mystery boxes and had been allowed to tell his own story in universe. I'm not sure it would have been great, but I have to feel like it would have been better than what we got.
As bad and pointless as Last Jedi was, what i loved most about it was how Rian threw away literally every dumb puzzle box set up JJ had: Who are Rey's parents? nobody, fuck you. Why did Luke go into seclusion? Because he was disenfranchised with the Order, not for any other reason. How are we going to oppose the First Order? with faith in each other and the future, not a magic catchall Deus Ex Machina. and then JJ just... ignored it and made a different sequel to Force Awakens.
Fringe was the only J.J. Abrams' show that stuck the landing upon the opening of the mystery box. Which is double impressive considering its rocky start with season 1.
I haven't watched it. But I remember overhearing that when it was announced it is about to be canceled, they asked the fans to send their theories and they tried to implement them in the final season.
That’s why I like A24. They showcase a lot of young and new directors. They take big swings and the movies are not hug budgets, mostly. But through A24 I’ve discovered a lot of directors that I now follow. Alex Garland, Ti West, Rose Glass and more.
Abrams built stories around a mystery box he never filled. It leaves his stories with that "fix it in post" feeling that never works out. "Somehow Palpatine returned"....
Lost was the first great media disappointment of my adult life. So much promise and potential only for it to end up being less satisfying than a rambling story told by a 6 year old. He's never managed to make anything better. None of his "stories" are ever complete.. I actively try not to watch anything he's involved with anymore.
I love how the guy from this channel just liked this comment and every other comment left by regular viewers (not channels with millions of subs) gets ignored. Typical cock sucking.
I agree, he is talented at directing you can tell the actors in his movies are having the time of their lives. I loved the chemistry and charisma of the characters in Star Trek and his Star Wars entries.
JJ Abrams is Hollywood's equivalent at Stephen Moffatt: They're great in small doses, small projects, maybe even just an episode or two. But you take off the restraints and things go off the rails!
Yep, some guys are good at making an interesting set up for a story...which then goes into absurd directions that ruin everything "cough" Sherlock season 4 "cough"
Moffat is kinda the polar oposite. He takes waaay to many risks and it never works. His best works are the standalones DW episodes, his DW era however was atrocious.
The comment about Snyder's creative swing @4:00 doesn't make too much sense when almost all of the lore or world of Rebel Moon is straight up copying previous films without a creative way to differentiate. So I don't think there's much merit at all including Snyder in the conversation of doing something unique
@@juanic95 Sucker Punch is probably his second best movie behind Watchmen. Only because it's his mostly original work and it's fun to watch the unhinged madness.
One could make the same argument about Star wars and Indiana Jones. One might get strung up for saying something like that but they did take a lot of ideas from stuff that came before.
I think the point is that Snyder is at least trying to create original franchises, even if they heavily steal from other series. Though Rebel Moon is also a poor example of that because it was originally his rejected Star Wars pitch.
Imagine being JJ Abrams, and people were saying you were the Next Spielberg, and at your current age he'd already made all his movies up to Catch Me If You Can and your contemporaries in your age range are people like Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, Dennis Villeneuve, Guillermo Del Toro, and Wes Anderson. Plus 4 of the 6 movies you directed start with the Word Star
Abrams is the ultimate studio darling. He’s safe he’s predictable and he takes notes from the execs. He’s the perfect director for modern Hollywood. He’s not out here to create art he’s out here to create AI art. It takes a lot of skill to make a film, especially big budget film. He clearly knows HOW to make films, just no interest in making creatively interesting ones.
The most maddening take I hear all the time is that LOST was ruined by JJ Abrams. The show managed to answer basically every mystery by the end and JJ Abrams didn't really work on the show past season 1, which is the one everyone says is amazing! Thank you for mentioning he only really worked on season 1. LOST has been done so dirty for so long and that's really sad since I think it's one of the greatest shows ever, flaws and all. Would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the legacy of the show.
Lost is sacred to my family! The only issue I have with it is the whole concept of the Others, they started out genuinely frightening but turned out to just be a bunch of arseholes, and I HATED the episodes where Kate, Jack and Sawyer were their prisoners.
He was hand-delivered so many opportunities that others dream of and squandered it. He got where he is because of nepotism and if one were to say more they might get cancelled.
Fun Fact: The Original director for Rise of Skywalker was Colin Trevorrow who previously did Jurassic World. But he left due to Creative Differences. David Fincher had discussions to direct it as well, but declined. And that’s when JJ Abrams returned to direct this.
J.J. Abrams is a hack. I remember Warner Bros. commissioned Abram's studio developing a bunch of DC Comics projects. They ended up just spending the money while coming up with absolutely nothing 😡
I think he’s talented, just not in the ways people would necessarily like. He made commercial entertainment out of Star Trek and Star Wars, which were mainstream enough already to not suffer too much from it but were not previously intended as such and therefore pissed off hardcore fans.
@@LinkMarioSamus And in the pursuit of short term mainstream appeal and money, he started the process of running both those sci fi IPs into the ground, from which they will never recover. It isnt just hardcore fans that are pissed off. Everyone is tuned out of Star Wars and Star Trek now.
@@TheSuperappelflap As if that’s not the norm for Hollywood. I would argue that Star Wars at least expanded too much too quickly and that was the real problem.
@@TheSuperappelflap Talking about overall, not within any individual work. And yes, it’s true that commercialising something won’t hook people forever. Also I don’t even really agree about The Force Awakens. The only plot similarities between it and the first movie are hardly things the franchise came up with, even down to exact scenes. Movie just evokes nostalgia a ton.
One of the bigger fallouts from his work/legacy is that through Bad Robot, he birthed an entire generation of directors and writers that have spread like a bad foot fungus into movies and TV.
The directors of Lucas generation that we remember are different, in that they were steeped in much superior literature and art, even if by second hand. Lucas was famously influenced by Joseph Campbell, who was in turn influenced by the great philosopher, Oswald Spengler. Anakin Skywalker is basically the literary archetype of Faust. This older generation of directors understood something about myth, theme, and storytelling. This is why Star Wars resonates with people, for the same reason the culture can still remember Shakespeare, Homer's Iliad, or Goethe's Faust. JJ Abrams saw Star Wars, and only understood it on a superficial level. Fair enough, but the bigger problem was that he relished and loved that, and that's true of the people that surround him. Superficial, pop culture dorks. Having a low view of Star Wars as just some goofy space opera laser show is one thing, and fair enough, but imagine having that view and actually adoring it. He has an unconsciously low view of storytelling (apparent in most of his movies), but relishes the bland entertainment. Those are the kind of midbrained dummies that permanently ruined Star Wars with their love.
I thinks Abrams needs to do something smaller. After all the hate Rian Johnson got for Last Jedi, he made Knives Out and that was a hit. He then made Glass Onion and now most people seem to like him for now. Abrams should do something similar.
The thing with Johnson is that before the last jedi he had a niche he stuck to, tried to do something out of that niche in the last jedi, screwed that up, then went back to his niche. His work before TLJ was fine he just wasn't fit for that kind of movie
@@carlosrod100 Technically Johnson didn't screw that up. If anything critics REALLY loved what he had to show in the Star Wars galaxy and fans... did everything they could to pretend those reactions never happened. Which will get a lot harder with The Acolyte on the way.
Knives Out was good, but that was mostly due to excellent performances by the cast. Ana de Armas in particular. The script was basically your typical Rian Johnson "I subvert your expectation because I'm smarter than you" stuff. And all the while it's not even true! The whole "she vomits when she lies" Idea is sooo S.T.U.P.I.D. but it seems like he didn't even notice. The guy desperately needs to humble down. Glass Onion is even worse for it. There he sacrificed the whole build up of suspense just to explain, in excessive detail, just how smart he is for stacking so many twist on top of each other. The whole movie comes to a screeching halt right in the middle from which it does not recover. He even let's his main character vocalize how stupid all of it is, as if he were in on the joke or something. But possibly even worse than that: his characters have hardly any profile at all. Even after two movies featuring that wannabe Hercule Poirot, I still can't say I have any meaningful impression as to who this character is. Johnson simply doesn't seem to care, even about his protagonists. They're all just means to an end to him. But that end isn't telling a good story, but "surprising" everyone about how wrong their expectations have been. What a worthwhile endeavor.
No, I think what killed JJ's career trajectory was accepting a $500million production deal from WB and DOING NOTHING for WB for over half a decade! Even Clueless Disney has to look at this and wonder if it's a great idea to make any future deals with this guy.
Personally, I think that a person who writes, directs, and edits, “Somehow Palpatine has returned.” Should never be allowed to make a decision again, let alone be given another series.
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie? Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
“Somehow… it’s true, all of it… But that’s a story for another time.” Cryptic dialogue, mystery boxes, and fetch questing Macguffins: “Where is the droid with the map to Luke Skywalker?!” “Where is the Wayfinder?” “Where does the dagger lead?” “Where is the map to Palpatine?”
Reminds of why i did not like Terminator Genisys. Because of lines like this. Terminator got his memory wiped out "uhh it is a standard operation"....who send good Terminator who raised Sarah..."uuhhh we will learn this in a sequel"- that never got created. and so on and so on
It sucks because his first project, Felicity, is maybe my favorite TV show of all time, but since then it seems like everything continues to get worse and worse...
I don't hate Abrams. I just don't think he should be writing or directing. I remember walking out of the theater in 2009, after seeing Star Trek and thinking 'Wow, he really wants to direct a Star Wars Movie . . . And I hope he never does!"
The first 3 seasons of Fringe at least hold up. Rewatched it last year. Still a great sci fi show. Its a shame he went downhill so hard so fast and never made anything decent since.
@@aygwm It's easy to set up a mystery, it's a cheap way to pique interest and keep people interested. But stories actually work on where they are headed. THat doens't mean you have to plan everything out, but that you have to have a basic sense of where you are going. Which is to say, with something like Sherlock (which I never finished so I have no idea what happened in the chaotic final season, I'm so lacking in curiosity) you have to decide, "I think this is about the mistakes he makes before he dies." or "I think this about what it means to carve out a modicum of peace/happiness/love when you're an unhappy genius." You can certainly change your mind if it makes sense to do so, but overall you do have to have some idea of *what the story is about*. If you don't, you won't have momentum, direction or an ability to develop character. Everything will seem random and directionless.
JJ Abrams has been the epitome of mediocrity. He created four television shows - Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe - that wasted audiences time, and then proceeded to hijack both the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises and run them into the ground.
@@kuhpunkt Did you watch those shows? Felicity started off as a success for The WB, but the minute actress Keri Russell cut her hair short, ratings tanked, as if that's all audiences cared about. Alias was an admitted Buffy the Vampire Slayer knockoff, which Abrams left after only two seasons and quickly spiraled into nonsensical mediocrity. Lost was one of the biggest ripoffs in television history; a show Abrams created without having the slightest clue where the story would go. Once again, Abrams left the show after just two seasons, and the show was already going downhill by that point. Damon Lindelof and others took over, who ran Lost into the ground and didn't even give the show an ending that explained anything. It was a waste of six years of the audience's time. Fringe was a totally forgettable X-Files ripoff.
@@44excalibur "Lost was one of the biggest ripoffs in television history; a show Abrams created without having the slightest clue where the story would go. Once again, Abrams left the show after just two seasons, and the show was already going downhill by that point. Damon Lindelof and others took over, who ran Lost into the ground and didn't even give the show an ending that explained anything. It was a waste of six years of the audience's time." How was Lost a ripoff? Abrams didn't create the show by himself and saying that he didn't have the slightest clue is just blatantly false. Abrams also didn't leave the show after season 2, but more or less after the pilot. Lindelof was the showrunner from the beginning. He didn't take over. Why do you claim that the ending didn't explain anything? That's just another thing that's blatantly false.
@@kuhpunkt Lost was Abrams idea. He was with the show until the start of season 2 and left to do Fringe. And how exactly did the ending explain anything? It didn't. It didn't explain where the ancient structures came from, what that light was, what the point of the island was, I just ended with everyone in heaven.
@@44excalibur Lost was not Abrams idea. Lloyd Braun wanted people stranded on an island and Abrams was asked to take over after another script wasn't good. Abrams was one of several writers to come up with ideas for the show. And now you say that Abrams left the show before season 2 - when you just said that he left it after season 2. Have you seen how many writing credits he has? And he already left earlier as I said to work on other stuff like The Catch (the project he originally worked on) and Mission Impossible 3. And what's to explain? Like the structures? What structures? The temple and the statue or what? From an ancient civilization that lived on the island. Does this have to be spoonfed to you? Where else is it supposed to come from? It's an Egyptian goddess statue and there are Hieroglyphs all over those remnants.
6:55 The reason for the final time traveling episodes of Felicity is a little complicated. They ended the show TOTALLY normally on episode 18 with Felicity graduating and making a final relationship decision between Ben and Noel, but THEN WB came back and said "We need 4 more episodes" and Abrams was like, "SHE ALREADY GRADUATED. WTF are we supposed to do? Time travel?" And WB was like, "Sounds good."
The sequels were doomed as soon as they green-lit them without a plan or vision in mind. They were doomed because Disney said "We need more Star Wars movies" not "We want to make these specific star wars movies". They are simply content.
@@spector3881Well yes she is the one individual most responsible, but I feel comfortable labelling anyone who insinuates that she had a specific feminist agenda in mind an unrepentant misogynist.
@@LinkMarioSamus I don't think she has a feminist agenda, it's just that Rei is such a poorly written character, and the whole sequel story was so poorly written...I hold her responsible for the whole thing.
@@spector3881 Good. She is not responsible for Rey specifically but as head of Lucasfilm she should take the fall. Tbh the main reason I don’t like Rey is that her character arc goes nowhere.
I'm not surprised that Abrams hasn't taken initiative on producing original IPS. Given that his edits on the Avatar script was plagiarized from a Russian novel and his script for SW9 was literally ripped from the Byss storyline of the original Canon but done worse, I don't think he has the creative capacity to create his own non-derivative material. Won't be too surprised if he starts pushing AI generated scripts like some directors. The only reason he hasn't been sued for the Avatar and SW9 incidents is because of Disney's backing.
Abrams' gimmick is remaking a lesser version of something that exists, with the illusion of a new mystery. Snyder's gimmick is remaking a lesser version of something that exists, with added slow-motion, swearing, and sex.
There was actually a big long paragraph I wrote about Abrams after I saw MI3 for the first time. This honestly reflects on how I’ve felt about him since 2019. “There was one last thing I wanted to address regarding the third one which I just saw. That film was directed and (partially) written by JJ Abrams. This movie helped me clarify my thoughts and feelings about Abrams as a filmmaker. He proved to be extremely talented when it came to cinematography, location shooting, stunt work, and visual storytelling. And it’s a very visually engaging movie with the action scenes and how well the actors work with one another. But there’s something else I found in it that I didn’t really like which is his approach to storytelling, particularly his mystery box storytelling. If I’m giving away mild spoilers, there’s a macguffin that acts as a mystery box called “The Rabbit’s Foot”. At the end of the movie, Tom Cruise asks one of the characters what it is, but there’s no answer that’s given. Basically, his approach to mystery box storytelling is often setting up a mystery around a certain object or plot element that makes the audience ask questions about what it is. But when you find the answer, it turns out to just be something meaningless or nothing at all. And in either way, it was just used as a way to engage the audiences easier. This was something I picked up on when watching his Star Wars films. In The Force Awakens, he sets up 2 mysteries: 1. Who are Rey’s parents? (Rey was the main character in the movie) 2. Who was Snoke? (The master of Kylo Ren, who’s the equivalent of Darth Vader in the movie) By the end, neither of them get any resolution. At the time, I thought he had a resolution planned for these mysteries but after seeing where they went in the next 2 films as well as seeing the mysteries he set up in MI3 were handled, I don’t think he did have an answer to those questions. That didn’t seem to be a problem for Star Wars at first though, mainly because in The Last Jedi, they used those mysteries to their advantage to develop the characters in unique ways. 1. Rey’s parents were no one. However, they used as a way to expand her character in that it didn’t matter where she came from, but rather how she handled herself as a person. It also allowed for the idea of the Force can be embraced by all individuals, not just a few select bloodlines. 2. Snoke was used as a tool for Kylo Ren’s development. Where Kylo ends up killing Snoke to push himself further to the dark and to take over the First Order for himself. After The Last Jedi, I thought the way they handled the mysteries was really great...until the next film. (Just for context’s sake, JJ Abrams did not make The Last Jedi. That film was instead made by Rian Johnson.) In The Rise of Skywalker (the other SW film Abrams made), JJ Abrams pretty much took both mysteries and convoluted them or made them worse. 1. It’s revealed that Rey is actually the granddaughter of Palpatine. (Which pretty much took away all the growth that she went through in the previous films) 2. It was revealed that Palpatine had actually created Snoke. Why? I don’t know. They never answered it. In fact, there’s no reason given to how Palpatine came back from the dead. In short, The Last Jedi’s answers were rooted in character whereas Rise of Skywalker’s answers were rooted in nostalgia-bait. In conclusion, the mystery box storytelling really hurts JJ’s storytelling and skills as a filmmaker. For all the skills he possesses (and he is really talented with those skills), he doesn’t really tell a meaningful story. As much as I enjoyed The Force Awakens, the only real story it has is just kind of a recycled New Hope plot with unresolved questions. The only real meaning that the movie truly possessed was only given to it from The Last Jedi. And even at that, Abrams only ended up making The Force Awakens look worse with how he handled his own mysteries. He is a good filmmaker, but as long as he keeps up his mystery box storytelling style, he’ll never be a great one.”
On a totally separate note: my one beef with the discussion surrounding TLJ is that Johnson democratized the force or showed force users don’t need to have royal lineage, but nothing in the films ever establishes this. The main Skywalker story focuses on someone with very important lineage, but we never learn anything about the lineage of any other Jedi in the 6 films. There is nothing to suggest that the force cares about who your parents are. Tangent over.
What a waste of a good villain, too. It's a Mission: Impossible movie, it's not No Country for Old Men, there shouldn't be realistic anticlimactic villain deaths here!
@@michaelbonet9062the only counter to your argument was the existence of midi-chlorians and how much the Jedi put into THAT, rather than the heart and spirit that ACTUALLY makes a Jedi.
I don’t think Abrams is actually incapable of writing an interesting and satisfying reveal for a mystery box. He’s just gotten used to not having to, and that’s made him unforgivably lazy. The biggest problem with his career is how he has popularised a lazy simplistic version of mystery box storytelling for lesser creators. I think Rings of Power is basically his fault. At least halfway.
Mystery Box = Lying To The Audience There's no talent here, there's no desire to tell a cohesive story and no intent whatsover to resolve story elements...it's just a six year old's way of writing: "And then this happens! And then THIS happens!!! And then THIS HAPPENS!!!"
I agree. I think "Mission Impossible 3" is his best overall movie. After he did 2009's "Star Trek" however, I think that's where everything started to unravel.
8:10 That's *exactly* why I found Alias so frustrating to watch. Sure, there was plenty of action and mystery but it felt hollow because the framing devices kept flip flopping and the twists felt more like curve balls. It was like someone was trying to construct a plot out of deleted scenes and B-roll footage. I really tried to like the show but it just felt like something was off and I didn't know why.
JJ Abrams solely deals in nostalgia. He's always alluding to the Blockbusters of the past. But unfortunately he's unable to create anything of his own.
Rise of Skywalker couldn't have been fixed by a dream team of Spielberg, Scorsese, and a dozen other great directors fused into one miracle director. JJ Abrams bears fault for the wreck that is the Star Wars Sequels because The Force Awakens was ALL setup with no payoff. Rian Johnson bears responsibility for the wreck that is the Star Wars Sequels because The Last Jedi is a sequel to 7 movies that exist only in Johnson's head. Kathleen Kennedy and Disney bear responsibility for the sheer incompetence of NOT having a plan for the trilogy, instead letting multiple directors do whatever and that resulting in Star Wars crashing and burning.
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie? Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
Abrams' writing is like attention ponzi scheme: 1) Throw random, but interesting stuff in front of the audience to attract their attention; 2) Promise to do something interesting with the stuff in the future if they continue watching; 3) Throw in new random stuff to distract from the old stuff; 4) Lightly touch on some of the old stuff, but tell the audience that the new stuff is now a focus of the "story"; 5) Throw even more random new stuff to distract from other stuff and promise to deal with it in the future if people continue to watch; 6) Continue adding more and more progressively stupid distractions until the audience gets tired; 7) Throw super new, super unexpected and super dumb stuff to keep audience in their seats for a bit more; 8) Jump the shark; 9) Half-bake some sort of emotional ending; 10) Abandon the project leaving only a scorched earth behind.
I absolutely loved Lost - it takes me back to a really fun time in my life and for me the journey was so much fun I didn’t really care about the destination
JJ is one of the most successful creators of all-time. BUT.... he did destroy two of the most beloved franchises in movie history in the process.Star Trek and then Star Wars was never the same and far worse after he was allowed to produce inferior and flawed versions. What he did was unforgivable to fans.
Saying Felicity has grounded story telling is so funny given all the bat shit crazy stuff that happens in that show, but I get your point. At least it started as grounded, it just got crazier as time went on.
Would be interested in hearing a simillar breakdown of Joss Whedon and your thoughts on wether he should have had a bigger break at the movies or stayed on the small screen.
The third part of the starwars "trilogy" was a poisoned chalice, once TLJ dropped there was no possible way to recover. I haven't seen any starwars after that point because I realised it wasn't for me (i don't even like the originals very much) but I could tell that once you do what TLJ did, there is no way to salvage anything. It completely destroyed all plot threads without introducing more. You can't create a new big bad in the final part of a trilogy, that's ridiculous. TLJ wrote a bad cheque that needed to be cashed - the last film was just going to cash that cheque no matter who did it. JJ just took one for the team on that one.
The risk-avoiding nature of J.J. Abrams is exactly why the studios have kept calling him to direct blockbuster features. He stays inline and is able to apply the same boilerplate formula to any high-concept production that, in the end, guaranties delivery.
The problem with JJ Abrams’s career is the same problem with many other directors who get a hold of a big franchise. He had a great artistic vision originally, with original shows like Lost and Fringe as well as great original movies like Super 8. But then after he got a hold of the Star Trek franchise, he started getting hired to make more sequels and franchises he felt passionate about rather than original movies. The same thing happened with Chris Columbus after he made Harry Potter or James Wan after he made Aquaman. All they went on to make after them were sequels to those movies which were already based on pre-existing source material or make movies based off of similar franchises. They’re directors who had artistic visions but ended up being built by Hollywood franchises rather than being built by their own original ideas.
The worst part of him going more for franchise films instead of more personal stuff, is that, there is proof that he could had made something more authentic even with those properties. Look at James Gunn career. Another nerd who is about the same age as Abrams, and his most celebrated films have been projects for Marvel and DC. And he is even relauching Superman into cinemas, which, ironically, Abrams was about to do in the 2000s, but nothing came of it.
This man single-handedly almost killed Star Trek. It took a decade to be able to move on from his take on the universe. These days the hate for new trek is less but most of it was because of his take on it.
the guy is the anti spielberg he doesn't create franchises but instead he destroys them and his friends are bunch dissapointments who do the same shit as him
Ive been saying this for years and until 2019 Id always get shouted down. I lost all interest in the Disney star wars when he was announced as director. "No but hes a fan of the originals tho!" "Exactly, and hes just gonna make lame copies of them as a result!" Told ya so, Erin. Ya bunch of dopes...
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie? Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
With Abrams himself being a "safe" director. I think it comes from Abrams himself having been a producer for a majority of his career. He tries to tap into what would be the most straight forward approach for an audience. This is probably most exemplified with the Force Awakens, essentially being a soft reboot/retelling of A New Hope to get the audience back in after the shared disappointment in the fandom at the time with the prequel trilogy. And I will say, Abrams himself is not necessarily a bad director. His visuals at times are beautiful, there is never a bad performance in any of his films, and his shot composition is masterclass at times. Where he falls short on occasion is as a writer, and I think he would have a stronger filmography in the future if he primarily focuses in on the directing and have other screenwriters take over on that front.
J.J. Abrams is like an anime with an interesting premise and cool visuals, but with no idea how to actually approach the subject matter or conclude it in a satisfying way...
"Room 104" is very similar to (and possibly inspired by) the brilliant british show "Inside No 9". Any americans out there - I would urge you to watch this show as it is amazing and i dont think it has made many waves overseas. I would advise that you skip straight to the second episode as it is a much better intro to the show than the first.
J.J. Abrams is returning to TV. He's an executive producer on a new show called "Presumed Innocent" on Apple TV Plus (it's based on a 90s movie that's based on an 80s novel). It comes out June 12 of this year.
I subscribed in the hope you do a video on Lost. I floored but an amazing show that people dont talk about. The way everything connects is very satisfying. Its smarter then people think.
What I really hate is how he treated the Cloverfield franchise. It's been 16 years since the first film, and we still don't have answers to what the monster is or its backstory. How hard is it to make a direct sequel with the monster?
Personally I don't think we need answers, sometimes the mystery around the monster can be more compelling, my issue is how he unnecessarily began to slap the name Cloverfield on films that clearly were not meant to be that at all like 10 Cloverfield Lane or The Cloverfield Paradox, hell Overlord at one point was supposed to have the title as well but thankfully was dropped
Why would you even want answer to where the Cloverfield monster came from? Abrams' mystery box style of story telling where he usually leaves it up to other people to clean his mess ain't a good thing but this never ending need for dumb-dumb audiences to get spoonfed some definitive answer to a thing that doesn't matter. Why not enjoy speculating and theorizing instead of waiting for pig slop to pushed down your throat?
@tappajavittu Because we've been speculating for 15+ years. Part of the fun of a mystery is getting answers to the mystery, with The Thing being the exception. They've made websites, ARGs, and filled their films with hidden details. At this point, it's getting more polarizing than fun. I want more, and even though there's been 2 other films, we haven't gotten a lot more. WTF?
@@ScofieldStudios I bought into the Cloverfield hype way back when, took part in the ARG's and what not, was satisfied with the film and haven't really thought about it since then, haven't even watched the pseudo-sequels. And the Thing being the exception? My dude, have you even seen films? Were you satisfied when the space jockey was explained as tall, pale humans? I sure as hell wasn't. Do you really want to know what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Do you want a spoon fed definitive answer to what the aliens were doing on earth in Under the Skin? I could come up with a lot more examples but it's late where I live and I need to make a poop.
For me, his biggest films have been heavily pushing nostalgia to the fans, prioritising that which gives the illusion of being good just because it features something fans used to like
The truth is that Abrams much like the notorious David Benioff & D. B. Weiss, just happened to be a rich daddy's boy who could pull a lot of strings due to nepotism. An analogy would be all these artists who can produce a semi-passable imitation of Drew Struzan's poster design, but they are incapable to create a style of their own. Abrams is a mediocrity allowed in spaces and given funding denied to people who could be AS innovative as Spielberg was back then, but in their own way. I see every Abrams movie as responsible for not getting an other, actually interesting movie, cause he drained the funds.
Man, a breakdown on your take of lost sounds super fresh. I’m one of the haters- but I think it’s such an interesting weave of ideas and I am thankful for what I got out of it and the memories of watching it with my friends. I really enjoy how you present ideas and since my memory of the show is a little cloudy- I feel like you would shed some really cool light on it!
@@kuhpunkt it’s for silly personal reasons. My bros and I would watch 6 episodes at a time and I was not the kind of kid to communicate my burn out 😅. But for non silly reasons- I didn’t enjoy the ending at the time and I’m in the boat that felt like it didn’t answer all my questions. But it’s been so long that I couldn’t give you thoughts I think are worth listening to. There were lots of things I enjoyed too though and when I started it again I was having a good time. I feel like I wouldn’t be as hard on it on another watch through.
@@kuhpunkt oh no, it doesn’t owe me anything! But I personally love when a difficult question has a nuanced answer more than a difficult question being left up to interpretation. It’s easier to say nothing than it is to say something so I respect that when I see it.
JJ (along with Kurtzman and Orci) broke Star Trek. The first 10min or so of his Star Trek is amazing. It really gets Star Trek and what Starfleet is supposed to be. And then they destroyed Vulcan...and gave us the Kelvin timeline....which I feel like every show has been trying to fix since about the second season of Discovery. Honestly, other than those 10 min. I can;t think of anything he has ever done that I really like...Uh...I liked Pike in Star Trek...that was good casting.
Abrams played it safe, then Johnson scrapped everything. Kathleen Kennedy let it all happen and is ultimately responsible. I kind of liked Force Awakens, but they clearly set out to “make a trilogy” just because, and never set out with a clear vision.
TFA both played it safe and indulged in mystery boxes. Besides the obvious plot beats like who are Rey's parents (which is pretty derivative if you think about it, it's just invoking the end twist of ESB and overemphasizing parentage in Star Wars), he doesn't even explain wtf the First Order and Resistance are! Like the setting is overly complicated and underexplained from the get go! The novels and stuff probably get into it, but you shouldn't rely on that for viewers. I also have no doubt that he and Johnson both screwed each other over by not leaving any story skeleton or even just plot notes for each other to create their sequels. Kennedy should be ultimately held responsible for failing to coordinate this mess, but I feel that Abrams is just as much to blame as both her and Johnson.
idk if I would say Rebel moon is entirely snyders vision / idea. He was suppose to do star wars and then disney got cold feet but he released his script anyway.
The only thing more damaging to the legacy of many great Hollywood IPs other than JJ Abrams are the myriad of assholes who put people like him in place.
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie? Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
Star Trek a beyond was where he started flopping around as a producer/director. By the time, he started working on the Force Awakens, his talent had already been burned out. Super 8 and Cloverfield are two of his strongest films
As bad as Rise of Skywalker was, they dropped the ball hard with Last Jedi. I was so done with Star Wars by the time Rise of Skywalker was released I could care less if it was good or not.
Even Family Guy knew that the Mystery Box was a scam with tickets to a mediocre comedy show. I'll take the boat. Props to you if you got that reference.
Ive always found that JJ is more trouble than hes worth in the long run because of his Mystery box approach. You risk your franchise. Keep in mind this is based on my subjective experience i have not seen all his work. If JJ had a guy who could assemble those pieces as he made them and help moderate his Mystery Box it would be awesome lol.
At least with a JJ Abrams movie, you know you aren't going to get answers, but you're only invested for a few hours. Give him a TV show and you know you won't get answers, but the investment will be in months and years instead. He's not a finisher. I think RoS showed us what happens when he's forced to give answers for the mystery boxes he sets up.
There are a ton of younger autuer directors making great mid budget movies. Ari aster, ti west, robert eggers, paul thomas anderson, yorgos lanthimos, dennis villenueve. There are a bunch more all over the world. Mid budget cinema is in a pretty okay place despite the dismal nature of most modern blockbusters
Are you a fan of Abrams?
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No!
Yo what it do?
Nope 👎
yup!! Abrams is a really good director, that LOST pilots is immaculate, MI3 is great adrenaline pumps, and TFA absolutely rules in the direction and actually has something to say beyond the nostalgia! i absolutely don't blame him for the mess of TROS, that's all Disney and their work.
The three words that best describe his works are the following and I quote "stink" "stank" stunk"
It’s called “Mystery Box” because it’s empty. It’s up to you to write the mystery yourself while he leaves before he has to do any of the creative work.
Mystery Box is a fickle bitch of a story device. It worked in Pulp Fiction. J.J hack has never been able to pull it off.
I think you're saying it nicely.
I mostly see the box is filled with crap and it's being smeared everywhere.
Pretty much
Empty is a perfect way to put it haha
@@ieuanhunt552 I wouldn’t even say it worked in Pulp Fiction (PF) I feel like the point of PF was LA, slice of life, character writing, not the mysterious briefcase. Abrams left so many hanging threads in The Force Awakens that were KEY to the story down the road (similar to his mystery boxes in Lost) that he set us all up for disappointment. There were no answers to “Who is Snoke?” “Who are Rey’s parents?” “What happened to Luke?” that would have left audiences satisfied. I think even if he helmed all three movies, we would have been disappointed with many of the answers we got, just like Lost. What do you think?
He's kind of an epitome of the modern nerd, caring more about the trappings of their nostalgia than the actual meaning behind it.
Ding ding ding ding ding
He's not a nerd. He just cosplays one and people buy into it.
Don't nerds care about thier intrests though?
My biggest problem with Abrams is he doesn't care about logic as long as it looks cool. In Star Wars he introduced a power where Rey and Kylo can teleport objects to each other. In Star Trek he introduced a technology where anyone can teleport anywhere in the galaxy. He doesn't care what kind of potential problems those things introduce to the universe. You can't do that in franchises where attention to detail is very important to the fans.
@@zogwort1522anime is Japanese.
One of the few thing that solidified my oppinion on JJ was durring the filming of the Force Awakens he made comments about not considering the prequels SW movies and he allegedly wanted to include a Gungan skull (implied to be Jar Jar's) to the opening scene of the movie.
Like, even after almost 20 years of mockery that Lucas had to putt up with and even after it was public knowledge how much hardship Ahmed Best went through the dude really wanted to keep that hate wagon going and even add fuel to the fire instead of genuinely trying to improve things (maybe creating a badass Gungan character for a change) or adding something new.
It really is poetic how he and his movies ended up being in the receiving end of that mockery while the prequel era is now more appreciated than ever before.
The movie literally begins with a guy staring into the camera to say "this will begin to make things right." Then he blows up Coruscant and Naboo for no good reason. Guys a total goober
@@theCarbonFreeze True but he didnt blow up neither Coruscant nor Naboo, just a bunch of no name planets
@@theCarbonFreezehe didn’t blow of Coruscant or Naboo. Idk where you got Naboo from, and that city planet was a different planet, something prime.
I immediately knew something was wrong when I saw Stormtroopers in the trailer. The Empire died! Why are Stormtroopers still around? The world building in the sequel trilogy is so borderline nonexistent that we have no sense at all of what's happening, who we're fighting, and why.
After Return of the Jedi gave us such a definitive and satisfying ending, an ending that stayed for decades, the one thing the sequels needed to do was answer the question of "why?". And they never did. They never even came close.
In the movie it was Hosnian Prime but Abrams originally wanted it to be coruscant.
Glad you brought up Speilbergs diversity as a director, there is a very odd trend online of people saying "He just makes nice whimsy movies for kids" but when you look at his catalog of movies, not many of them count as "whimsy" movies, the closet would be maybe Hook and E.T but then there is Jaws, Bridge Of Spies, Schindler's list, The Twilight Zone movies etc. Even the movies people call whimsy movies like Indiana Jones and Jurrasic Park still have moments of legit horror.
Spielberg was always really good at getting that balance right, nailing that whimsy and sense of magical awe while still having a certain bite at the same time; E.T. might be one of his most whimsical and childlike films, and even it has some rather spooky and unnerving parts early on, and the scenes where it looks like E.T. might die are genuinely harrowing
I would have added Munich to the list of Spielberg being not so kid friendly.
Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List...those 5 movies put Spielberg on Mount Rushmore of directors
He also directed a really good episode of Columbo!! I will forever bring this fact up because if he hadn’t directed that episode he probably wouldn’t be where he is today. The episode is called Murder By The Book!
You could say that Spielberg has been alternating between blockbusters and more "artistic" films for his entire career. Back in the 80's he followed up "Temple of Doom" with "The Color Purple" and "Empire of The Sun." Then came "The Last Crusade," followed by "Always" in the same year.
It's ironic that Abrams would replace Lucas. Lucas hated mcguffins that were meaningless. It's one of his critiques of Hitchcock and he created R2D2 to prove that mcguffins don't have to be meaningless. Mystery Boxes on the other hand are always meaningless.
I mean bb8 was always useful in the sequel trilogies
@@alexanderguerrero347 Did bb8 ever drive the plot forward tho? Legitimately cant remember
@@Xfacta12482 he had the half of the map to Luke in force awakens.
Yeah Rian Johnson is a far better fit for the franchise.
Except Hitchcock can direct actors.
Calling Rebel Moon Snyder's own mythology is generous.
I also laughed so hard when he complained about Super 8 being safe and derivative cause.... Rebel Moon is just Star Wars and Seven Samurai nearly beat for beat, both movies suffer the exact same issue
@@LDFrost117 don’t forget 40k, including just straight up ripping names off
@@chronovac right, isn't the way ships travel through space just the Warp?
@@LDFrost117 Well the Imperium is the most obvious rip of the Imperium of Man of Warhammer 40k in terms of naming and style. One of the villains is named “Balisarius” and is part of the “Imperium” as well as some red-robed priests (aka Belisarius Cawl of the Adeptus Mechanicus, a red-robed technophile cult of the Imperium of Man), the military branch is called the Militarium (aka the Astra Militarum of the Imperium of Man). You have rebels who are called Blood-Axes (there is an Ork clan called the Blood-Axes). The guns look close to lasguns, etc. etc.
Sure, a lot of this could be said to be more generic historical references, but put together it’s pretty damning
Bad as it is, it's 100% Synder's own creative vision. That's worth something.
Returning to "The Rise of Skywalker" for damage control was a career suicide
All of his work on star wars was a career suicide😂
Remaking Wrath of Khan too
Makes me think of how Joss Whedon got dragged into fixing the Justice League
tbh I think it was a maximum studio interference at that point
@@HonestObserver But there was no saving that crap, not in three months at least. The task Joss had was equivalent to trying to drain a lake with a tablespoon.
So true that JJ Abrams doesn't take risks. Here's one risk he can do: Reveal the mystery box to storytelling that's actually worth our while.
He would have to know how to tell a story and feel human emotions to do that.
The problem is that JJ Abrams doesn't know what a mystery is. He treats anything that you don't immediately know as a mystery. A new character is introduced and it's treated as a mystery even if there are no attempts to hide the character's identity or misdirect the audience on their motivations.
All his mystery boxes are disappointing since the characters and the audience don't really have to do any investigating. Things just get revealed in an anticlimactic way and then they move on to the next mystery box.
Exactly. Bad writers think mystery is simply the act of withholding information. It's not. Good mystery has planning, structure, breadcrumbs, red herrings all over the script from page 1. Artificially withholding information results in unnatural dialogue and lack of urgency for the characters because they are not asking logical questions to uncover the mystery until the time for the Big Reveal comes. It just makes the plot convoluted and the character motivations illogical.
He went full Joss Whedon. Never go full Whedon.
@@One.Zero.One101 I wouldn't say characters you mentioned have illogical motivations, more like they just have none or little agency of what they want to achieve. They are reactive type (instead of being proactive) or they have inconsistent characterization depending on the parts of the story.
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie?
Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
Wait, they get revealed? This is news to me, usually JJ movies and shows are all buildup and no payoff at all
I was never particularly invested in J J Abrams as a creator, and really didn't have any strong feelings one way another when he was slated to direct The Force Awakens. And ultimately, his failure to realize that "I'll just set up a mystery box in the Star Wars Universe which has already had a conclusive 6 movie story told and let the next guy figure out where to go from there only to have to come back for the third one because I didn't like what he did with my literal nothing story" was gonna be a spectacularly bad idea. I still can't believe he managed to get Oscar Isaac to say "Somehow Palpatine has returned" in a multi-million dollar production without once thinking it might be absolute shit writing. It's staggering.
I don’t entirely get why people act like that’s SUCH a bad line in and of itself, given it’s completely accurate to the situation. At least it doesn’t contradict itself the way “Only a Sith deals in absolutes” does.
To be fair though that’s mostly on Disney. They should’ve had a plan for their trilogy instead of doing the Marvel formula with Star Wars. I think Force Awakens isn’t even a bad movie, it just gets bogged down from the fact the other movies happen. If there was an actual trilogy that worked I think people will be looking back on that movie differently. Just my thought but I like Abrams work a lot more than others. Still love the 09 Star Trek film and Super 8 is an underrated gem and easily JJ’s best work.
For all its flaws I think Last Jedi will be the only film of the sequel trilogy people will revaluate.
Very much thus. JJ had success with TV, but when he was handed ST 2009, did good job with that film, then really messed up with Into Darkness by redoing TWOK. TFA was a retelling of ANH with a Mary Sue. TROS was pure trash but I'm convinced he was micro-managed by KK the whole time.
@@rickbase833 Some Mary Sue who gets captured and fights like a Padawan.
Abrams and Synder are on the same level as being overrated. They did a few good things right but never could manage living up to their own films/tv shows.
Abrams has no voice. He’s just a safe director.
I would say that for all of Snyder’s faults, he at least has some semblance of a cohesive vision, even if that vision doesn’t really have any substance. You know a Snyder film when you see one. Beyond the idea of a mystery box, I don’t think Abrams has anything that he’s dying to express or say - which is why was the perfect corporate director to kick off the reboots for both Star Trek and Star Wars.
Same level of overrated, ppl have hated JJ for years and he’s never attracted the same fandoms and horde of defenders as Snyder has, JJ was dispassionately accepted by general audiences but never praised the way Snyder was for a long time, Snyder had his whole aesthetic that ppl went insane over
Can add Josh Whedon in there too
@@GuineaPigEverydayUnfortunately I knew people who blindly sung JJ's praises for years until very recently. He definitely had a fandom although Ive never understood why
I do agree that Abrams doesn't have a voice/is a safe director, but the comparison to Snyder is way off. Abrams has never inspired the kind of die-hard fandom that Snyder did, but he's a more cohesive storyteller and generally good at set-ups. Snyder has a great visual sense and some interesting ideas, but doesn't have the patience for the nuances of storytelling. Abrams is Spielburg created in a lab. Snyder is Michael Bay with delusions of grandeur.
It would be neat to set them both up on a play date. Make them co-direct/write something together. Even if it triggers the end times, it would be interesting.
I always hated Abrams' mystery box. I remember in his Ted talk about how he came up with the concept from a magic shop box. He equated it to learning Darth Vader is Luke's father. But that was a twist, not a mystery box.
What made the Vader reveal great is George Lucas put a lot of breadcrumbs in the script, he wasn't just withholding information like JJ Abrams' mystery boxes.
Obi-Wan: "Yes, I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father."
Obi-Wan: "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father."
Aunt Beru: "Luke's just not a farmer, Owen. He has too much of his father in him."
Uncle Owen: "That's what I'm afraid of."
@@One.Zero.One101 Those likely were not breadcrumbs. Lucas has been known to practice revisionist history in his own accounts, so his own claims lack credulity. We do know that in the early drafts, Darth Vader and Anakin were explicitly different people. Mark Hamill said that he was only shown Vader's line in secret during Empire (so he could properly react), and that he was warned that they'd know if he leaked the secret because the people that knew were Lucas, the director, and himself. Even then, Hamill wasn't told if Vader was telling the truth. James Earl Jones, who recorded the actual line of dialogue, said that he'd simply believed Vader was lying.
Similar happened with the idea of Luke and Leia being siblings. While it was set up that Luke had a sibling in Empire, the decision for that sibling to be Leia wasn't made until Jedi.
@@BainesMkIIagreed, it’s almost a miracle that the retconning Lucas would do never turned out disastrously, though there are some awkward things like Leia saying she remembers Padme when ROTS depicts her dying after giving birth. I suppose the difference between Lucas and Abrams is that Lucas had somewhat of an outline, even if he did deviate from it quite a bit, and remained in control, while Abrams - if he did have his own outline - didn’t make sure subsequent directors would follow it and left them up to their own devices.
@@BainesMkII I think the acted line when they filmed the scene was "No, Obi Wan killed your father!" at least that what has been reported by Hamill and other people over the years. Several people including Harrison Ford only saw the real line at the premier, with Ford commenting that nobody had told him that before to Hamill.
Also true about Luke and Leia, when you watch the first movie Lucas kind of set up Luke getting together with Leia but then decided they were siblings and went with Han instead.
Wait, he claims he INVENTED the mystery box? Hilarious. That explains so much.
I was just thinking about how relieved I am that they've stopped handing important sci fi IP's to JJ. Thanks for reminding me why.
There aren't many left he hasn't, uh, left his mark on.
I would throw such a fit Stargate FINALLY returned in some form, only for *him* to be attached.
Now his students are doing that stuff, The duo guys doing amazon's Ring of power got that position because of Abrams
Sadly his studio Bad Reboot is still in business
Can you imagine if they had given Dune to JJ?
It’s called “Mystery Box” because it's a scam
So many of his movies are simply clickbaits framed as Epics.
Yeah I was laughing when the fan base was theorizing about Rey's parents. Knowing JJ Abrams, I knew this was a pointless exercise. The fans won't know what the answer is because the writers themselves don't know the answer. That's the difference between a Mystery Box and a real traditional mystery; you can't put breadcrumbs and red herrings in the script when the writer himself don't know what's inside the box.
@@One.Zero.One101 if you wanna do the ultimate comparison, just look at ryan johnson's knives out. you can say what you want about TLJ(i didnt like it very much either) but its undeniable that, compared to JJ abrams setups without any payoff, RJ actually knows how to write a mistery.
@@balacleaver583 I mean, yeah, Rian Johnson is a good director. Hell, he's a great director. He's just not the right director for Star Wars
@@anakinlowground5515 I have to wonder though how well he would have done if he hadn't been forced to work with JJ's mystery boxes and had been allowed to tell his own story in universe. I'm not sure it would have been great, but I have to feel like it would have been better than what we got.
As bad and pointless as Last Jedi was, what i loved most about it was how Rian threw away literally every dumb puzzle box set up JJ had: Who are Rey's parents? nobody, fuck you. Why did Luke go into seclusion? Because he was disenfranchised with the Order, not for any other reason. How are we going to oppose the First Order? with faith in each other and the future, not a magic catchall Deus Ex Machina.
and then JJ just... ignored it and made a different sequel to Force Awakens.
Fringe was the only J.J. Abrams' show that stuck the landing upon the opening of the mystery box. Which is double impressive considering its rocky start with season 1.
MI 3
I haven't watched it. But I remember overhearing that when it was announced it is about to be canceled, they asked the fans to send their theories and they tried to implement them in the final season.
And even then it was quite a rough landing.😂 But you're right, loved that show.
Fringe was great. I wanted to see Alcatraz ending.
@@ИванСнежков-з9й We dont talk about season 4.
That’s why I like A24. They showcase a lot of young and new directors. They take big swings and the movies are not hug budgets, mostly. But through A24 I’ve discovered a lot of directors that I now follow. Alex Garland, Ti West, Rose Glass and more.
Meth Headler is a great director too.
Abrams built stories around a mystery box he never filled. It leaves his stories with that "fix it in post" feeling that never works out. "Somehow Palpatine returned"....
The TV show Lost (that made him famous) was nothing but a frustrating mystery box.
Thing is his TV shows are full of great ideas. But when it comes to movies...
The tv shows are full of great questions with bad or no answers
Great setup, no payoff. Hes a hack
Lost was the first great media disappointment of my adult life. So much promise and potential only for it to end up being less satisfying than a rambling story told by a 6 year old.
He's never managed to make anything better. None of his "stories" are ever complete.. I actively try not to watch anything he's involved with anymore.
I love how the guy from this channel just liked this comment and every other comment left by regular viewers (not channels with millions of subs) gets ignored. Typical cock sucking.
@@evananderson1455agreed. Lost interest after season 3 or 4
I dont hate his directing. His writing on the other hand....
lol 100%. Bro has never written a full story.
the mans is the definition of paid hands
I hate both.
@@theCarbonFreeze Lol fair enough
I agree, he is talented at directing you can tell the actors in his movies are having the time of their lives. I loved the chemistry and charisma of the characters in Star Trek and his Star Wars entries.
JJ Abrams is Hollywood's equivalent at Stephen Moffatt: They're great in small doses, small projects, maybe even just an episode or two. But you take off the restraints and things go off the rails!
I say let moffatt go bigger. Give him 100 million let him loose.
@@alexanderguerrero347 oh no please. I don't think that would end well
Yep, some guys are good at making an interesting set up for a story...which then goes into absurd directions that ruin everything "cough" Sherlock season 4 "cough"
Moffat is kinda the polar oposite. He takes waaay to many risks and it never works. His best works are the standalones DW episodes, his DW era however was atrocious.
@@meurer13daniel Compared to the last two DW eras. Moffats run was basically the golden age.
The comment about Snyder's creative swing @4:00 doesn't make too much sense when almost all of the lore or world of Rebel Moon is straight up copying previous films without a creative way to differentiate. So I don't think there's much merit at all including Snyder in the conversation of doing something unique
Yeah, probably should have mentioned Sucker Punch instead, which was way more creative than Rebel Moon.
doesn't matter, Snyder knows what sells his work, is if shit looks cool.
@@juanic95
Sucker Punch is probably his second best movie behind Watchmen.
Only because it's his mostly original work and it's fun to watch the unhinged madness.
One could make the same argument about Star wars and Indiana Jones. One might get strung up for saying something like that but they did take a lot of ideas from stuff that came before.
I think the point is that Snyder is at least trying to create original franchises, even if they heavily steal from other series. Though Rebel Moon is also a poor example of that because it was originally his rejected Star Wars pitch.
Imagine being JJ Abrams, and people were saying you were the Next Spielberg, and at your current age he'd already made all his movies up to Catch Me If You Can and your contemporaries in your age range are people like Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, Dennis Villeneuve, Guillermo Del Toro, and Wes Anderson. Plus 4 of the 6 movies you directed start with the Word Star
Seeing Dennis Villeneuve on that list makes me thank the gods that we don't live in the timeline where JJ Abrams was tapped to direct "Dune."
@@tjenadonn6158
Oh god……
Abrams is the ultimate studio darling. He’s safe he’s predictable and he takes notes from the execs. He’s the perfect director for modern Hollywood. He’s not out here to create art he’s out here to create AI art. It takes a lot of skill to make a film, especially big budget film. He clearly knows HOW to make films, just no interest in making creatively interesting ones.
Perfect description
the _mystery box_ isn't storytelling, it's marketing
The dude was AI before AI
😂
Underrated comment 🏆
The originial NPC
Well said.
Even A.I. would write a better Mystery Box than he would...
The most maddening take I hear all the time is that LOST was ruined by JJ Abrams. The show managed to answer basically every mystery by the end and JJ Abrams didn't really work on the show past season 1, which is the one everyone says is amazing! Thank you for mentioning he only really worked on season 1. LOST has been done so dirty for so long and that's really sad since I think it's one of the greatest shows ever, flaws and all. Would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the legacy of the show.
Amen. Thank you.
Bro, thank you. Man, this is so refreshing.
Yes.
Lost is sacred to my family! The only issue I have with it is the whole concept of the Others, they started out genuinely frightening but turned out to just be a bunch of arseholes, and I HATED the episodes where Kate, Jack and Sawyer were their prisoners.
Absolutely one of the best shows ever!
He was hand-delivered so many opportunities that others dream of and squandered it. He got where he is because of nepotism and if one were to say more they might get cancelled.
Deservedly so
Thankfully he's not nearly as good of a director as Spielberg who's made some very subversive movies.
"they might get cancelled"
Why do I feel like this is a dog whistle for antisemitism?
@@econojon Surely no one is suggesting that the chosen people are suspiciously overrepresented amongst Hollywood producers?
How nepotism? Does his dad run Paramount or something?
Abrams should crawl back into his mystery box and close the lid
Fun Fact: The Original director for Rise of Skywalker was Colin Trevorrow who previously did Jurassic World. But he left due to Creative Differences. David Fincher had discussions to direct it as well, but declined. And that’s when JJ Abrams returned to direct this.
I’m glad David Fincher backed out.
He’s a great director should keep his distance from the poison that is Star Wars.
@@IncredibleFulk1 star wars itself is not poison, it is the woke propagandists who are holding the franchise hostage that are.
J.J. Abrams is a hack.
I remember Warner Bros. commissioned Abram's studio developing a bunch of DC Comics projects.
They ended up just spending the money while coming up with absolutely nothing 😡
I think he’s talented, just not in the ways people would necessarily like. He made commercial entertainment out of Star Trek and Star Wars, which were mainstream enough already to not suffer too much from it but were not previously intended as such and therefore pissed off hardcore fans.
@@LinkMarioSamus And in the pursuit of short term mainstream appeal and money, he started the process of running both those sci fi IPs into the ground, from which they will never recover. It isnt just hardcore fans that are pissed off. Everyone is tuned out of Star Wars and Star Trek now.
@@TheSuperappelflap As if that’s not the norm for Hollywood. I would argue that Star Wars at least expanded too much too quickly and that was the real problem.
@@LinkMarioSamus expanded too much? Force Awakens is almost exactly a shot for shot remake of the original Star Wars.
@@TheSuperappelflap Talking about overall, not within any individual work. And yes, it’s true that commercialising something won’t hook people forever.
Also I don’t even really agree about The Force Awakens. The only plot similarities between it and the first movie are hardly things the franchise came up with, even down to exact scenes. Movie just evokes nostalgia a ton.
One of the bigger fallouts from his work/legacy is that through Bad Robot, he birthed an entire generation of directors and writers that have spread like a bad foot fungus into movies and TV.
I will never be over the fact that Amazon gave Rings of Power to two basically-nobodies on JJ Abrams's recommendation.
Abrams takes no risks? Indeed, for he never CREATES. He only mimics what other, greater people have fabricated before him.
The directors of Lucas generation that we remember are different, in that they were steeped in much superior literature and art, even if by second hand.
Lucas was famously influenced by Joseph Campbell, who was in turn influenced by the great philosopher, Oswald Spengler. Anakin Skywalker is basically the literary archetype of Faust.
This older generation of directors understood something about myth, theme, and storytelling. This is why Star Wars resonates with people, for the same reason the culture can still remember Shakespeare, Homer's Iliad, or Goethe's Faust.
JJ Abrams saw Star Wars, and only understood it on a superficial level. Fair enough, but the bigger problem was that he relished and loved that, and that's true of the people that surround him. Superficial, pop culture dorks. Having a low view of Star Wars as just some goofy space opera laser show is one thing, and fair enough, but imagine having that view and actually adoring it. He has an unconsciously low view of storytelling (apparent in most of his movies), but relishes the bland entertainment.
Those are the kind of midbrained dummies that permanently ruined Star Wars with their love.
The answer was right in our faces all along! The mystery box answer is that Rey's mother was supposed to be Felicity!!! The circle is now complete!!!!
How?
@@CRYSTAL_CUSTOMS I can see your mind is not fully freaked
I thinks Abrams needs to do something smaller. After all the hate Rian Johnson got for Last Jedi, he made Knives Out and that was a hit. He then made Glass Onion and now most people seem to like him for now. Abrams should do something similar.
The thing with Johnson is that before the last jedi he had a niche he stuck to, tried to do something out of that niche in the last jedi, screwed that up, then went back to his niche. His work before TLJ was fine he just wasn't fit for that kind of movie
@@carlosrod100 Technically Johnson didn't screw that up. If anything critics REALLY loved what he had to show in the Star Wars galaxy and fans... did everything they could to pretend those reactions never happened. Which will get a lot harder with The Acolyte on the way.
He needs to go back to something like Night Beast.
Seriously, look it up. 😆
Johnson is a better creative than Abrams and was an established talent prior to TLJ
Knives Out was good, but that was mostly due to excellent performances by the cast. Ana de Armas in particular. The script was basically your typical Rian Johnson "I subvert your expectation because I'm smarter than you" stuff.
And all the while it's not even true! The whole "she vomits when she lies" Idea is sooo S.T.U.P.I.D. but it seems like he didn't even notice. The guy desperately needs to humble down.
Glass Onion is even worse for it. There he sacrificed the whole build up of suspense just to explain, in excessive detail, just how smart he is for stacking so many twist on top of each other. The whole movie comes to a screeching halt right in the middle from which it does not recover. He even let's his main character vocalize how stupid all of it is, as if he were in on the joke or something.
But possibly even worse than that: his characters have hardly any profile at all. Even after two movies featuring that wannabe Hercule Poirot, I still can't say I have any meaningful impression as to who this character is. Johnson simply doesn't seem to care, even about his protagonists. They're all just means to an end to him. But that end isn't telling a good story, but "surprising" everyone about how wrong their expectations have been. What a worthwhile endeavor.
No, I think what killed JJ's career trajectory was accepting a $500million production deal from WB and DOING NOTHING for WB for over half a decade!
Even Clueless Disney has to look at this and wonder if it's a great idea to make any future deals with this guy.
Personally, I think that a person who writes, directs, and edits, “Somehow Palpatine has returned.” Should never be allowed to make a decision again, let alone be given another series.
He shouldnt ever have been given work again after that atrocious first Star Trek movie he directed. Maybe even before.
Ugh, RIGHT AFTER Poe says that he lists all the ways Palpatine returned. Why focus on that ONE line?!
@@ShadowSonic2 The old man was in ground zero of the Death Star exploding. It is a ridiculous 4sspull no matter how you cut it.
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie?
Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
“Somehow… it’s true, all of it… But that’s a story for another time.” Cryptic dialogue, mystery boxes, and fetch questing Macguffins:
“Where is the droid with the map to Luke Skywalker?!” “Where is the Wayfinder?” “Where does the dagger lead?” “Where is the map to Palpatine?”
Reminds of why i did not like Terminator Genisys. Because of lines like this. Terminator got his memory wiped out "uhh it is a standard operation"....who send good Terminator who raised Sarah..."uuhhh we will learn this in a sequel"- that never got created. and so on and so on
@@Endru85x "Genisys". Oh my God, you're so precious.
@@ZoraCatone it is a title of the movie, invented by creators, hard to check on this, huh?
@@Endru85x Even so, the rest of it reads like a caveman.
@@ZoraCatone just take the L bro
It sucks because his first project, Felicity, is maybe my favorite TV show of all time, but since then it seems like everything continues to get worse and worse...
What a paradox, because "Felicity" starts with a character taking a big risk, if I remember the pilot correctly. But JJ never does.
Felicity is definetely a great show and even as hateful as Abrams got these days, Felicity really showed his competency as a writer
Saying that rebel moon is an attempt of creating anything original is an insult to originality in my opinion.
I don't hate Abrams. I just don't think he should be writing or directing.
I remember walking out of the theater in 2009, after seeing Star Trek and thinking 'Wow, he really wants to direct a Star Wars Movie . . . And I hope he never does!"
People have called him a hack for so long and I loved Fringe but time is not Abrams’ friend & much of his stuff has not aged well
Its nice to be vindicated. Ive hated him since Lost bungled the ending
The first 3 seasons of Fringe at least hold up. Rewatched it last year. Still a great sci fi show. Its a shame he went downhill so hard so fast and never made anything decent since.
He’s pretty bad at endings
@@theCarbonFreeze Lost is more Lindelof's product than Abrams's product, but yeah
@@aygwm It's easy to set up a mystery, it's a cheap way to pique interest and keep people interested. But stories actually work on where they are headed. THat doens't mean you have to plan everything out, but that you have to have a basic sense of where you are going. Which is to say, with something like Sherlock (which I never finished so I have no idea what happened in the chaotic final season, I'm so lacking in curiosity) you have to decide, "I think this is about the mistakes he makes before he dies." or "I think this about what it means to carve out a modicum of peace/happiness/love when you're an unhappy genius." You can certainly change your mind if it makes sense to do so, but overall you do have to have some idea of *what the story is about*. If you don't, you won't have momentum, direction or an ability to develop character. Everything will seem random and directionless.
JJ Abrams has been the epitome of mediocrity. He created four television shows - Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe - that wasted audiences time, and then proceeded to hijack both the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises and run them into the ground.
"He created four television shows - Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe - that wasted audiences time"
What do you mean?
@@kuhpunkt Did you watch those shows? Felicity started off as a success for The WB, but the minute actress Keri Russell cut her hair short, ratings tanked, as if that's all audiences cared about. Alias was an admitted Buffy the Vampire Slayer knockoff, which Abrams left after only two seasons and quickly spiraled into nonsensical mediocrity. Lost was one of the biggest ripoffs in television history; a show Abrams created without having the slightest clue where the story would go. Once again, Abrams left the show after just two seasons, and the show was already going downhill by that point. Damon Lindelof and others took over, who ran Lost into the ground and didn't even give the show an ending that explained anything. It was a waste of six years of the audience's time. Fringe was a totally forgettable X-Files ripoff.
@@44excalibur "Lost was one of the biggest ripoffs in television history; a show Abrams created without having the slightest clue where the story would go. Once again, Abrams left the show after just two seasons, and the show was already going downhill by that point. Damon Lindelof and others took over, who ran Lost into the ground and didn't even give the show an ending that explained anything. It was a waste of six years of the audience's time."
How was Lost a ripoff? Abrams didn't create the show by himself and saying that he didn't have the slightest clue is just blatantly false.
Abrams also didn't leave the show after season 2, but more or less after the pilot.
Lindelof was the showrunner from the beginning. He didn't take over.
Why do you claim that the ending didn't explain anything? That's just another thing that's blatantly false.
@@kuhpunkt Lost was Abrams idea. He was with the show until the start of season 2 and left to do Fringe. And how exactly did the ending explain anything? It didn't. It didn't explain where the ancient structures came from, what that light was, what the point of the island was, I just ended with everyone in heaven.
@@44excalibur Lost was not Abrams idea. Lloyd Braun wanted people stranded on an island and Abrams was asked to take over after another script wasn't good. Abrams was one of several writers to come up with ideas for the show.
And now you say that Abrams left the show before season 2 - when you just said that he left it after season 2. Have you seen how many writing credits he has? And he already left earlier as I said to work on other stuff like The Catch (the project he originally worked on) and Mission Impossible 3.
And what's to explain? Like the structures? What structures? The temple and the statue or what? From an ancient civilization that lived on the island. Does this have to be spoonfed to you? Where else is it supposed to come from? It's an Egyptian goddess statue and there are Hieroglyphs all over those remnants.
6:55 The reason for the final time traveling episodes of Felicity is a little complicated. They ended the show TOTALLY normally on episode 18 with Felicity graduating and making a final relationship decision between Ben and Noel, but THEN WB came back and said "We need 4 more episodes" and Abrams was like, "SHE ALREADY GRADUATED. WTF are we supposed to do? Time travel?" And WB was like, "Sounds good."
people have a lot of hate for last jedi but i think the sequels were doomed from the moment they let jj get his grubby little mitts on them
The sequels were doomed as soon as they green-lit them without a plan or vision in mind.
They were doomed because Disney said "We need more Star Wars movies" not "We want to make these specific star wars movies". They are simply content.
It was Kathleen's fault
@@spector3881Well yes she is the one individual most responsible, but I feel comfortable labelling anyone who insinuates that she had a specific feminist agenda in mind an unrepentant misogynist.
@@LinkMarioSamus I don't think she has a feminist agenda, it's just that Rei is such a poorly written character, and the whole sequel story was so poorly written...I hold her responsible for the whole thing.
@@spector3881 Good. She is not responsible for Rey specifically but as head of Lucasfilm she should take the fall. Tbh the main reason I don’t like Rey is that her character arc goes nowhere.
I'm not surprised that Abrams hasn't taken initiative on producing original IPS. Given that his edits on the Avatar script was plagiarized from a Russian novel and his script for SW9 was literally ripped from the Byss storyline of the original Canon but done worse, I don't think he has the creative capacity to create his own non-derivative material. Won't be too surprised if he starts pushing AI generated scripts like some directors. The only reason he hasn't been sued for the Avatar and SW9 incidents is because of Disney's backing.
Abrams' gimmick is remaking a lesser version of something that exists, with the illusion of a new mystery. Snyder's gimmick is remaking a lesser version of something that exists, with added slow-motion, swearing, and sex.
There was actually a big long paragraph I wrote about Abrams after I saw MI3 for the first time. This honestly reflects on how I’ve felt about him since 2019.
“There was one last thing I wanted to address regarding the third one which I just saw. That film was directed and (partially) written by JJ Abrams. This movie helped me clarify my thoughts and feelings about Abrams as a filmmaker.
He proved to be extremely talented when it came to cinematography, location shooting, stunt work, and visual storytelling. And it’s a very visually engaging movie with the action scenes and how well the actors work with one another.
But there’s something else I found in it that I didn’t really like which is his approach to storytelling, particularly his mystery box storytelling. If I’m giving away mild spoilers, there’s a macguffin that acts as a mystery box called “The Rabbit’s Foot”. At the end of the movie, Tom Cruise asks one of the characters what it is, but there’s no answer that’s given. Basically, his approach to mystery box storytelling is often setting up a mystery around a certain object or plot element that makes the audience ask questions about what it is. But when you find the answer, it turns out to just be something meaningless or nothing at all. And in either way, it was just used as a way to engage the audiences easier.
This was something I picked up on when watching his Star Wars films. In The Force Awakens, he sets up 2 mysteries:
1. Who are Rey’s parents? (Rey was the main character in the movie)
2. Who was Snoke? (The master of Kylo Ren, who’s the equivalent of Darth Vader in the movie)
By the end, neither of them get any resolution. At the time, I thought he had a resolution planned for these mysteries but after seeing where they went in the next 2 films as well as seeing the mysteries he set up in MI3 were handled, I don’t think he did have an answer to those questions.
That didn’t seem to be a problem for Star Wars at first though, mainly because in The Last Jedi, they used those mysteries to their advantage to develop the characters in unique ways.
1. Rey’s parents were no one. However, they used as a way to expand her character in that it didn’t matter where she came from, but rather how she handled herself as a person. It also allowed for the idea of the Force can be embraced by all individuals, not just a few select bloodlines.
2. Snoke was used as a tool for Kylo Ren’s development. Where Kylo ends up killing Snoke to push himself further to the dark and to take over the First Order for himself.
After The Last Jedi, I thought the way they handled the mysteries was really great...until the next film. (Just for context’s sake, JJ Abrams did not make The Last Jedi. That film was instead made by Rian Johnson.)
In The Rise of Skywalker (the other SW film Abrams made), JJ Abrams pretty much took both mysteries and convoluted them or made them worse.
1. It’s revealed that Rey is actually the granddaughter of Palpatine. (Which pretty much took away all the growth that she went through in the previous films)
2. It was revealed that Palpatine had actually created Snoke. Why? I don’t know. They never answered it. In fact, there’s no reason given to how Palpatine came back from the dead.
In short, The Last Jedi’s answers were rooted in character whereas Rise of Skywalker’s answers were rooted in nostalgia-bait.
In conclusion, the mystery box storytelling really hurts JJ’s storytelling and skills as a filmmaker. For all the skills he possesses (and he is really talented with those skills), he doesn’t really tell a meaningful story. As much as I enjoyed The Force Awakens, the only real story it has is just kind of a recycled New Hope plot with unresolved questions. The only real meaning that the movie truly possessed was only given to it from The Last Jedi. And even at that, Abrams only ended up making The Force Awakens look worse with how he handled his own mysteries. He is a good filmmaker, but as long as he keeps up his mystery box storytelling style, he’ll never be a great one.”
He sucks at cinematography too. The lens flares make Trek 09 unwatchable. (Along with the terrible story and bad characterizations)
On a totally separate note: my one beef with the discussion surrounding TLJ is that Johnson democratized the force or showed force users don’t need to have royal lineage, but nothing in the films ever establishes this. The main Skywalker story focuses on someone with very important lineage, but we never learn anything about the lineage of any other Jedi in the 6 films. There is nothing to suggest that the force cares about who your parents are.
Tangent over.
What a waste of a good villain, too. It's a Mission: Impossible movie, it's not No Country for Old Men, there shouldn't be realistic anticlimactic villain deaths here!
@@michaelbonet9062THANK YOU!
@@michaelbonet9062the only counter to your argument was the existence of midi-chlorians and how much the Jedi put into THAT, rather than the heart and spirit that ACTUALLY makes a Jedi.
I don’t think Abrams is actually incapable of writing an interesting and satisfying reveal for a mystery box. He’s just gotten used to not having to, and that’s made him unforgivably lazy.
The biggest problem with his career is how he has popularised a lazy simplistic version of mystery box storytelling for lesser creators. I think Rings of Power is basically his fault. At least halfway.
Mystery Box = Lying To The Audience
There's no talent here, there's no desire to tell a cohesive story and no intent whatsover to resolve story elements...it's just a six year old's way of writing:
"And then this happens!
And then THIS happens!!!
And then THIS HAPPENS!!!"
JJ Abrams is the Hollywood equivalent of cutting the crust off a gluten-free sandwich.
And without any meat on it
Watching JJ Abrams career is like watching him un-learn how to make movies.
I agree. I think "Mission Impossible 3" is his best overall movie. After he did 2009's "Star Trek" however, I think that's where everything started to unravel.
I am a huge Bruce Timm fan and excited for Caped Crusader. I am also highly nervous for Caped Crusader thanks to Abrams's involvement.
I liked JJ Abrams, but now i noticed that more you think in his filmography and carrear worst it become.
8:10 That's *exactly* why I found Alias so frustrating to watch. Sure, there was plenty of action and mystery but it felt hollow because the framing devices kept flip flopping and the twists felt more like curve balls.
It was like someone was trying to construct a plot out of deleted scenes and B-roll footage.
I really tried to like the show but it just felt like something was off and I didn't know why.
JJ Abrams solely deals in nostalgia.
He's always alluding to the Blockbusters of the past.
But unfortunately he's unable to create anything of his own.
Rise of Skywalker couldn't have been fixed by a dream team of Spielberg, Scorsese, and a dozen other great directors fused into one miracle director.
JJ Abrams bears fault for the wreck that is the Star Wars Sequels because The Force Awakens was ALL setup with no payoff.
Rian Johnson bears responsibility for the wreck that is the Star Wars Sequels because The Last Jedi is a sequel to 7 movies that exist only in Johnson's head.
Kathleen Kennedy and Disney bear responsibility for the sheer incompetence of NOT having a plan for the trilogy, instead letting multiple directors do whatever and that resulting in Star Wars crashing and burning.
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie?
Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
Abrams' writing is like attention ponzi scheme:
1) Throw random, but interesting stuff in front of the audience to attract their attention;
2) Promise to do something interesting with the stuff in the future if they continue watching;
3) Throw in new random stuff to distract from the old stuff;
4) Lightly touch on some of the old stuff, but tell the audience that the new stuff is now a focus of the "story";
5) Throw even more random new stuff to distract from other stuff and promise to deal with it in the future if people continue to watch;
6) Continue adding more and more progressively stupid distractions until the audience gets tired;
7) Throw super new, super unexpected and super dumb stuff to keep audience in their seats for a bit more;
8) Jump the shark;
9) Half-bake some sort of emotional ending;
10) Abandon the project leaving only a scorched earth behind.
I absolutely loved Lost - it takes me back to a really fun time in my life and for me the journey was so much fun I didn’t really care about the destination
At his very best, he just reheated better things without improving them.
At his worst, he took a lot of credit for other people’s work.
I call him "DJ Abrams" because he can't create anything original, only remix original works into something slightly crappier.
JJ is one of the most successful creators of all-time. BUT.... he did destroy two of the most beloved franchises in movie history in the process.Star Trek and then Star Wars was never the same and far worse after he was allowed to produce inferior and flawed versions. What he did was unforgivable to fans.
Saying Felicity has grounded story telling is so funny given all the bat shit crazy stuff that happens in that show, but I get your point. At least it started as grounded, it just got crazier as time went on.
Would be interested in hearing a simillar breakdown of Joss Whedon and your thoughts on wether he should have had a bigger break at the movies or stayed on the small screen.
The third part of the starwars "trilogy" was a poisoned chalice, once TLJ dropped there was no possible way to recover. I haven't seen any starwars after that point because I realised it wasn't for me (i don't even like the originals very much) but I could tell that once you do what TLJ did, there is no way to salvage anything. It completely destroyed all plot threads without introducing more. You can't create a new big bad in the final part of a trilogy, that's ridiculous. TLJ wrote a bad cheque that needed to be cashed - the last film was just going to cash that cheque no matter who did it. JJ just took one for the team on that one.
I always got the sense that he wants to be Spielberg so bad. He's basically Dawson all grown up, melodrama and everything.
The risk-avoiding nature of J.J. Abrams is exactly why the studios have kept calling him to direct blockbuster features. He stays inline and is able to apply the same boilerplate formula to any high-concept production that, in the end, guaranties delivery.
What about that Short Spider-Man comic he did with his son? I remember everyone got excited thinking it was Spider-Man 4
I imagine after TRoS, Marvel must have *quietly* fired him.
The problem with JJ Abrams’s career is the same problem with many other directors who get a hold of a big franchise. He had a great artistic vision originally, with original shows like Lost and Fringe as well as great original movies like Super 8. But then after he got a hold of the Star Trek franchise, he started getting hired to make more sequels and franchises he felt passionate about rather than original movies. The same thing happened with Chris Columbus after he made Harry Potter or James Wan after he made Aquaman. All they went on to make after them were sequels to those movies which were already based on pre-existing source material or make movies based off of similar franchises. They’re directors who had artistic visions but ended up being built by Hollywood franchises rather than being built by their own original ideas.
The worst part of him going more for franchise films instead of more personal stuff, is that, there is proof that he could had made something more authentic even with those properties.
Look at James Gunn career. Another nerd who is about the same age as Abrams, and his most celebrated films have been projects for Marvel and DC.
And he is even relauching Superman into cinemas, which, ironically, Abrams was about to do in the 2000s, but nothing came of it.
This man single-handedly almost killed Star Trek. It took a decade to be able to move on from his take on the universe. These days the hate for new trek is less but most of it was because of his take on it.
Then proceeded to almost kill star wars 😂
i didn't think much of it cause his movies were fun
but then, he blew up a planet. three times...
the guy is the anti spielberg he doesn't create franchises but instead he destroys them and his friends are bunch dissapointments who do the same shit as him
The TV shows were much much worse
@@badfoody Thats all he knows how to do. Hes been cribbing Star Wars his whole career
Ive been saying this for years and until 2019 Id always get shouted down. I lost all interest in the Disney star wars when he was announced as director.
"No but hes a fan of the originals tho!"
"Exactly, and hes just gonna make lame copies of them as a result!"
Told ya so, Erin. Ya bunch of dopes...
classic Erin
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie?
Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
With Abrams himself being a "safe" director. I think it comes from Abrams himself having been a producer for a majority of his career. He tries to tap into what would be the most straight forward approach for an audience. This is probably most exemplified with the Force Awakens, essentially being a soft reboot/retelling of A New Hope to get the audience back in after the shared disappointment in the fandom at the time with the prequel trilogy.
And I will say, Abrams himself is not necessarily a bad director. His visuals at times are beautiful, there is never a bad performance in any of his films, and his shot composition is masterclass at times. Where he falls short on occasion is as a writer, and I think he would have a stronger filmography in the future if he primarily focuses in on the directing and have other screenwriters take over on that front.
J.J. Abrams is like an anime with an interesting premise and cool visuals, but with no idea how to actually approach the subject matter or conclude it in a satisfying way...
"Room 104" is very similar to (and possibly inspired by) the brilliant british show "Inside No 9". Any americans out there - I would urge you to watch this show as it is amazing and i dont think it has made many waves overseas. I would advise that you skip straight to the second episode as it is a much better intro to the show than the first.
J.J. Abrams is returning to TV. He's an executive producer on a new show called "Presumed Innocent" on Apple TV Plus (it's based on a 90s movie that's based on an 80s novel).
It comes out June 12 of this year.
He’s also making a new Batman cartoon on Prime Video (not on HBO Max)
I subscribed in the hope you do a video on Lost. I floored but an amazing show that people dont talk about. The way everything connects is very satisfying. Its smarter then people think.
Smarter than people think but also not as satisfying as it suggested it would be.
@@moretac it is on a second watch. Knowing the conclusion, you notice so much more.
What I really hate is how he treated the Cloverfield franchise. It's been 16 years since the first film, and we still don't have answers to what the monster is or its backstory. How hard is it to make a direct sequel with the monster?
He doesn't know the answer himself. He never did andnever will.
Personally I don't think we need answers, sometimes the mystery around the monster can be more compelling, my issue is how he unnecessarily began to slap the name Cloverfield on films that clearly were not meant to be that at all like 10 Cloverfield Lane or The Cloverfield Paradox, hell Overlord at one point was supposed to have the title as well but thankfully was dropped
Why would you even want answer to where the Cloverfield monster came from? Abrams' mystery box style of story telling where he usually leaves it up to other people to clean his mess ain't a good thing but this never ending need for dumb-dumb audiences to get spoonfed some definitive answer to a thing that doesn't matter. Why not enjoy speculating and theorizing instead of waiting for pig slop to pushed down your throat?
@tappajavittu Because we've been speculating for 15+ years. Part of the fun of a mystery is getting answers to the mystery, with The Thing being the exception. They've made websites, ARGs, and filled their films with hidden details. At this point, it's getting more polarizing than fun. I want more, and even though there's been 2 other films, we haven't gotten a lot more. WTF?
@@ScofieldStudios I bought into the Cloverfield hype way back when, took part in the ARG's and what not, was satisfied with the film and haven't really thought about it since then, haven't even watched the pseudo-sequels. And the Thing being the exception? My dude, have you even seen films? Were you satisfied when the space jockey was explained as tall, pale humans? I sure as hell wasn't. Do you really want to know what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Do you want a spoon fed definitive answer to what the aliens were doing on earth in Under the Skin? I could come up with a lot more examples but it's late where I live and I need to make a poop.
For me, his biggest films have been heavily pushing nostalgia to the fans, prioritising that which gives the illusion of being good just because it features something fans used to like
The truth is that Abrams much like the notorious David Benioff & D. B. Weiss, just happened to be a rich daddy's boy who could pull a lot of strings due to nepotism. An analogy would be all these artists who can produce a semi-passable imitation of Drew Struzan's poster design, but they are incapable to create a style of their own. Abrams is a mediocrity allowed in spaces and given funding denied to people who could be AS innovative as Spielberg was back then, but in their own way. I see every Abrams movie as responsible for not getting an other, actually interesting movie, cause he drained the funds.
Man, a breakdown on your take of lost sounds super fresh. I’m one of the haters- but I think it’s such an interesting weave of ideas and I am thankful for what I got out of it and the memories of watching it with my friends.
I really enjoy how you present ideas and since my memory of the show is a little cloudy- I feel like you would shed some really cool light on it!
Why are you a hater?
@@kuhpunkt it’s for silly personal reasons. My bros and I would watch 6 episodes at a time and I was not the kind of kid to communicate my burn out 😅.
But for non silly reasons-
I didn’t enjoy the ending at the time and I’m in the boat that felt like it didn’t answer all my questions. But it’s been so long that I couldn’t give you thoughts I think are worth listening to.
There were lots of things I enjoyed too though and when I started it again I was having a good time. I feel like I wouldn’t be as hard on it on another watch through.
@@thomasfogarty7190 Does a show owe you answers?
But as you said, maybe you would enjoy it more now.
@@kuhpunkt oh no, it doesn’t owe me anything!
But I personally love when a difficult question has a nuanced answer more than a difficult question being left up to interpretation. It’s easier to say nothing than it is to say something so I respect that when I see it.
JJ (along with Kurtzman and Orci) broke Star Trek. The first 10min or so of his Star Trek is amazing. It really gets Star Trek and what Starfleet is supposed to be. And then they destroyed Vulcan...and gave us the Kelvin timeline....which I feel like every show has been trying to fix since about the second season of Discovery. Honestly, other than those 10 min. I can;t think of anything he has ever done that I really like...Uh...I liked Pike in Star Trek...that was good casting.
Making a new Star Wars trilogy with absolutely no plan, and nothing to connect the 3 movies, was in fact a big risk. To be fair.
Abrams played it safe, then Johnson scrapped everything. Kathleen Kennedy let it all happen and is ultimately responsible. I kind of liked Force Awakens, but they clearly set out to “make a trilogy” just because, and never set out with a clear vision.
TFA both played it safe and indulged in mystery boxes. Besides the obvious plot beats like who are Rey's parents (which is pretty derivative if you think about it, it's just invoking the end twist of ESB and overemphasizing parentage in Star Wars), he doesn't even explain wtf the First Order and Resistance are! Like the setting is overly complicated and underexplained from the get go! The novels and stuff probably get into it, but you shouldn't rely on that for viewers.
I also have no doubt that he and Johnson both screwed each other over by not leaving any story skeleton or even just plot notes for each other to create their sequels. Kennedy should be ultimately held responsible for failing to coordinate this mess, but I feel that Abrams is just as much to blame as both her and Johnson.
If I never see another film or show from JJ Abrams, it will be too soon.
You misspelled "has no vision or ambition, other than to be considered a superficially competent director".
idk if I would say Rebel moon is entirely snyders vision / idea. He was suppose to do star wars and then disney got cold feet but he released his script anyway.
As an original, old-school 70's SW and TOS fan, I'll never watch another JJ film again.
Saying The Force Awakens is, “fine” is a perfect description of. It’s just there, no need to rewatch ever again.
It was hot garbage
@@TheSuperappelflap
No, it wasn’t
@@Richard-3874 it was a remake of the first star wars movie without any of the charm or worldbuilding or good acting
Abrams is the epitomy of "No taking risks".
The only thing more damaging to the legacy of many great Hollywood IPs other than JJ Abrams are the myriad of assholes who put people like him in place.
Jar Jar Abrams is a defiler of art. He defiled ST and SW.
Would Rise of Skywalker work better as a Looney Tunes movie than as a Star Wars movie?
Chris aka 3C Films has said that the Looney Tunes are great at turning really stupid ideas into something awesome.
Star Trek a beyond was where he started flopping around as a producer/director. By the time, he started working on the Force Awakens, his talent had already been burned out. Super 8 and Cloverfield are two of his strongest films
Felicity also had a mystery box. there was a goth girl who had a box no one was allowed to touch, and we always wondered what was in it.
As bad as Rise of Skywalker was, they dropped the ball hard with Last Jedi. I was so done with Star Wars by the time Rise of Skywalker was released I could care less if it was good or not.
9:56 if you make a video about Lost it has to surpass Billiam's Lost video run time lmao
Even Family Guy knew that the Mystery Box was a scam with tickets to a mediocre comedy show. I'll take the boat.
Props to you if you got that reference.
Ive always found that JJ is more trouble than hes worth in the long run because of his Mystery box approach.
You risk your franchise. Keep in mind this is based on my subjective experience i have not seen all his work.
If JJ had a guy who could assemble those pieces as he made them and help moderate his Mystery Box it would be awesome lol.
At least with a JJ Abrams movie, you know you aren't going to get answers, but you're only invested for a few hours. Give him a TV show and you know you won't get answers, but the investment will be in months and years instead. He's not a finisher. I think RoS showed us what happens when he's forced to give answers for the mystery boxes he sets up.
There are a ton of younger autuer directors making great mid budget movies. Ari aster, ti west, robert eggers, paul thomas anderson, yorgos lanthimos, dennis villenueve.
There are a bunch more all over the world. Mid budget cinema is in a pretty okay place despite the dismal nature of most modern blockbusters
Ari aster = overrated woke trash