Dear JJ Abrams: Four rules for making Star Wars great again | Hacker News Reader

Dear JJ Abrams: Four rules for making Star Wars great again

dearjjabrams.com

40 pointsturoczy28 comments

I don't know what other people think. But as someone who loves Sci-Fi, I loathe this man and his approach to what he calls "art". I can't stand the many series and movies he's made.

Did not like Lost, I tried to watch a couple episodes of Fringe, I just hated it. It was bland, boring and feels so calculated. And Star Trek was a great example on how Hollywood movies are made nowadays, piece together a buncha action scenes and hope the story makes sense(I'm looking at your Iron Man 3).

Now I say this because I am not that big of a fan of Star Trek, I really liked TNG, Voyager and Enterprise, but I barely know anything about Star Trek(haven't even watched TOS) like many people do. But this man claimed on TV that he didn't like Star Trek, how on Earth can you expect someone to even understand it well enough to make a half decent movie. Especially considering the level of quality Star Trek is suppose to have.

People forget most major Hollywood directors aren't just or most significantly 'creatives', people who are hired to produce original creative works. They are business men just as much as the executive producers. Want to succeed big time in Hollywood as a director? Make sure you put together a film that appeals to the masses by use of cliches and established successful film patterns. And don't take any risks trying to appeal to both the fans and non-fans, just target the largest demographic from the get go. JJ Abrams doesn't make high quality original films because that's not what sells, and he has no interest in working by any other metric than what sells.

Make sure you put together a film that appeals to the masses

Ah yes, avoiding making a film that appeals to everyone surely would be the best thing for the Star Wars franchise. What we need to do is make a film that appeals to a couple thousand people- what could be better for the future of Star Wars?

"Star Wars: A New Hope" was not a smash hit because it was deep or witty or catered to nerds wrapped up in the mythos. I wasn't there, but speaking to members of my family who were, "A New Hope" was tremendous almost precisely for the things folks are mocking in this comment chain- drama, action, and ground-breaking special effects.

I agree. Early on I find it especially ironic when he verbally attacked Carter's X-Files for meaningless mysteries and a lack of satisfying conclusions, when now that pretty much defines JJ Abrams works.

Abrams TV shows are vapid mysteries that have no overriding theme and his movies are are plotless roller coaster rides.

It's okay to be a huge fan of some property and revolt against new entries or "reimaginings" of that property, but here's what it sounds like to people who aren't huge fans of the original property:

http://www.theonion.com/video/trekkies-bash-new-star-trek-fi...

The first episodes of Fringe felt like a leftover script from Alias, with some car chase action, a mild sex scene and X-file monsters dropped in.

(Thinking of it, maybe that combination is the reason why I got hooked... :-)

You forgot the color manipulation. It 'ain't scifi unless it's unsaturated blues and oranges.

JJ et al will destroy Star Wars like the locusts they are.

I'm just happy that Star Wars fans get to feel our pain.

This video seems to wallow in fanboy nostalgia and its conclusion boils down to "Can you just please remake Star Wars again but more HD-y-er"

The prequels were horribly acted, but the attempt to make a classical backstory to illustrate the fall to a romantic frontier was, to me, admirable. The Prequels were set in high society (city) to show the great classical culture which valued learning (libraries) and articulated methodologies to master the world around them (real understanding of the force).

I agree it clings pretty tightly to the original Star Wars, almost disturbingly so. The fundamental observation that "Star Wars was a Western" (and how that clashes with the prequels) is an interesting observation though.

Complete agreement.

Let's use another great sci-fi 'verse to provide context on why the "frontier" is not a necessary backdrop for good Star Wars, but rather, was a convenient short-hand for the rebel alliance who had to live there.

In Firefly, the browncoats lived in the outer planets (the frontier) because they wanted to be far away from the Alliance (ironic, I know) in the central planets. This embodied the separatist/individualist spirit.

But we needed aspects of the Alliance to show a sharp contrast to what the browncoats fought against and lost to. Some of the best moments in Firefly came from Ariel or Trash, which were set very much in the Alliance world.

So how does this relate back to this wonderfully produced (hey, nice commercial!) but woefully short-sighted plea from some group who claims to speak for the "fans". Well if you ONLY watched the original trilogy, you would think that Star Wars was all about the frontier. After all, there was no Coruscant and the moments in the Death Star were really limited in backdrop and exposition.

Then again, if you've read any of the canon books or played any of the games, you will know that dozens of storytellers have expanded the Star Wars universe, giving it beautiful color and context around the edges that 7-8 hours of the original trilogy couldn't possibly cover.

Sure the prequels were bad, but they were bad because they're bad movies. I certainly don't agree with the de-mysticism of the Force, or Jar Jar, or the implicit racism, or Han not shooting first or Mannequin Skywalker's casting, but let's be honest, those are just bad movie dialogue, story-telling and direction. These are problems every movie has (have you seen Howard the Duck?)

The reason the prequels were NOT about the frontier because it's really a story about Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin and Palpatine, whom coincidentally, all lived in Coruscant, a city. The original trilogy were about Luke, Han, Chewie and Leia and they all lived in the frontier, away from the Empire. Let's also not overlook the fact that Threepio is comic relief and the Ewoks are cute.

In conclusion, let J.J. Abrams make a good movie and let's not put artificial boundaries in because we have some misguided fanboy adherence to rules that were made up to begin with. If we listened to the fanboys, we'd never have Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Heath Ledger as the Joker and there would be 30 minutes of Tom Bombadil singing in the Lord of the Rings.

TL;DR: Let JJ Abrams do his job without constraint and Firefly rocks.

The prequels were horribly acted

They had great actors, so it must have been the writing that sucked, not the actors.

Horrible acting isn't necessarily the fault of the actor. I remember an interview with Ewan McGregor where he recounted being in front of a green screen, sat on a green saddle that was mechanically rocking back and forth (that would be CGIed into an animal of some sort). George Lucas kept shouting "look at the MOONS!", to which McGregor replied "WHAT MOONS?".

TL;DR: actors are only as good as the environment you give them to work in.

I remember hearing about Ian McKellen having a similar frustrations: http://www.nme.com/filmandtv/news/ian-mckellen-filming-the-h...

Yes, the big problem seems to be that George Lucas has forgotten how to write for human beings. The problem with the prequels was not in the broad concept of showing the fall of the Republic; it was that the execution was shoddy.

This video is is in the 'uncanny valley'[1] of webcontent for me. It is not organic but instead is really an advertisement/marketing for 'Sincerely Truman' a marketing firm, just like so many 'infographics' are just blogspam. I think they did a good job on the presentation, and I somewhat agree with the message, but it just has this layer of artifice on it, that makes me reject it. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

I don't think the downfall of the prequel trilogy had much to do with these four "rules". It had to do with an incoherent story, bland, one-dimensional characters, and a lack of connection between the personal struggles of the characters with the goings-on of the wider world.

People really seem to forget that they saw the first Star Wars movies as kids. The prequels looked as bad as they did because you were a grownup when you saw them - a lot of kids loved them.

Basically, I don't think it's possible to ever recapture what those movies were, because they're entirely tied up in childhood nostalgia. The world would probably be better if no-one ever tried, but hey.

What a dismissive answer. Great work doesn't age. If the original star wars had some terrible asian stereotype as a key character it would've ended up in the bargain bin too.

I don't think it's just nostalgia that makes me think Empire Strikes Back is much, much better than any of the prequels.

It's pretty obnoxious to expect everyone to play your tedious video in order to find out what the "4 rules" are. It's a webpage, just add a <ul>.

Here are two: 1) Cool it with the CGI, it doesn't hold up well if you abuse it and will look like ass after a year or two. 2) Let merchandising do whatever they want except influence the film in anyway way.

Those are the things that pissed people off the most. The general public didn't give a shit about the scientific/mystical "The Force" issue. They cared about pod racing having no fucking relevance to the movie and jar-jar looking like ass in addition to being annoying.

(The primary issue of shit dialog is probably already fixed, just by having new people on the job.)

If you're saddened by the steady encroachment of pop culture onto your HN frontpage, look at it like this: what a masterful piece of content marketing by the outfit behind Dear JJ.

It doesn't have much merit outside of that - the recommendations pick out a few arbitrary elements and say 'this is what made star wars great'. Classic cargo cult. Sincerely Truman may be a 'squadron of storytellers', but they don't seem understand that movies are comprised of characters.

That said, what a great soundtrack backing their Yoda scene. Wow.

These were horrible suggestions.

Off the top of my head: Kurosawa style wipes, context during action scenes instead of horrible shakey cam, force as philosophy instead of force as "magic" (christ what a terrible way to describe the force), delivery of lines over complex dialogue... there's lots more, but I'm annoyed at how bad this site was.

Bring back Firefly.

So, heaven would be Whedon being greenlit to remake the Babylon 5 series, for five full seasons, using the plot for the first four and given leeway to handle casting and dialog as he saw fit.

But, like so many wonderful things, that will never happen.

i honestly don't care any more - abrams clearly wants to make action movies, and is doing his best to shoehorn star trek into that mould despite the fact that action is not what trek is all about.

Abrams was the WORST idea of the new star wars generation. They should've gotten a real director, someone like Ang Lee or Kathryn Bigelow.

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