JJ Abrams Thinks His 'Star Wars' Trilogy Might've Been Better if He Had a Plan. Ya Think?
Alberto E. Rodriguez. Getty Images.I don't think there's any shame in saying that some intellectual property matters to you. Or that it's important. Whether it's a novel, some musician's discography, an artist's collected works or even a space western about wizards and ape pilots.
"Star Wars" matters to me, and I don't care about being judged when I say that. I grew up on it from my impressionable teen years. I met a woman who owned the original trilogy on VHS and married her. We raised two sons on the movies, LEGO sets, video games and assorted merchandise. We even went to a "Star Wars" themed wedding of two friends of hers where I emceed and rewrote the "Love is never boastful" Bible passage you hear at every wedding into quotes from Yoda and Obi Wan about the Force. Stop making that face. All of this is cool.
As far as the last series of movies, the so-called "Skywalker Trilogy," I saw every single one of them at the theater. And the more thought I gave to them after, the less I liked them. Then when other "Star Wars" properties became available on Disney+, from "The Mandalorian" to "Rebels" and "Clone Wars," That dislike has rapidly declined into a seething, Alderaan blast-sized nerd rage.
It's incredible what this world George Lucas created in his head back in the mid-70s can be in the hands of artists who appreciate it the way the fans do. Who get it. And the more remarkable the failure of JJ Abrams' confused, nonsensical, steaming pile of Bantha shit really seems.
My assumption all along is that the problem with the Disney productions is that they made them up as they went along. Which seemed pretty obvious when you saw the direct ripoffs of the earlier episodes, inexplicable tonal shifts, the teases that never got paid off, the plot threads that were left dangling, the massive, Starkiller Base-sized plot holes, and the fucking fact that at the fucking end the bad guy turned out to be the same fucking villain from the original trilogy, with no reasonable explanation of fucking how or fucking why. They were just pulling stuff out of their asses the entire time. Because fuck Disney "Star Wars."
And I'm glad Jar Jar Abrams confirmed my suspicions:
Source - So when I spoke to Abrams recently … I asked him … does he feel the Star Wars trilogy would have benefitted from having a plan from the very beginning? In answering, Abrams drew from his wealth of experience in television:
“I’ve been involved in a number of projects that have been – in most cases, series – that have ideas that begin the thing where you feel like you know where it’s gonna go, and sometimes it’s an actor who comes in, other times it’s a relationship that as-written doesn’t quite work, and things that you think are gonna just be so well-received just crash and burn and other things that you think like, ‘Oh that’s a small moment’ or ‘That’s a one-episode character’ suddenly become a hugely important part of the story. … And the unexpected can come in all sorts of forms, and I do think that there’s nothing more important than knowing where you’re going. …
“There are projects that I’ve worked on where we had some ideas but we hadn’t worked through them enough, sometimes we had some ideas but then we weren’t allowed to do them the way we wanted to. I’ve had all sorts of situations where you plan things in a certain way and you suddenly find yourself doing something that’s 180 degrees different, and then sometimes it works really well and you feel like, ‘Wow that really came together,’ and other times you think, ‘Oh my God I can’t believe this is where we are,’ and sometimes when it’s not working out it’s because it’s what you planned, and other times when it’s not working out it’s because you didn’t [have a plan].”
Wow. Having a plan? That's a good idea? Especially when you take on a project that has 40+ years of canon, a rabidly loyal fan base and literally an infinite number of creative possibilities? Has that ever been tried before? Or is every multi-million dollar storytelling venture just the equivalent of theaterworks improv class where you pull ideas out of a hat and make it up as you go. "OK, the IT guy is coming to fix your computer, but he's a palace guard from a Shakespeare play. GO!" Only in this case it was, "You know what people like? The Emperor. And you know what they like better than Star Destroyers? Hundreds of fricking Star Destroyers!" So everyone's worst fears were realized. We're getting that from the space horse's (one of the ones who rode on the deck of a Star Destroyer) mouth.
I hope this serves as a lesson for everyone who's going to be put in charge of the next great movie franchise. When Peter Jackson adapted "Lord of the Rings" and made it into the best movie trilogy ever, he knew exactly where it was going. Which story beats were going to stay in. Which superfluous side characters would be out. And it was perfection. Before they ever filmed an episode of "Star Trek: The Original Series," they came up with everything from the blueprint of the ship to how the engines work to all the characters' backgrounds. Even "Breaking Bad" had decided what Walter White's fate would before they ever put him behind the wheel of an RV in the desert in this tighty whiteys.
Abrams did with my beloved space fantasy what he did with "LOST," which is just to throw the craziest shit he can onto the screen every once in a while, string those scenes together with some other scenes to sort of explain what's going on, but don't waste time trying to have it make sense. And I fell for it, since he got my money. And I can't shake that feeling like I just got taken in a Three-Card Monte game. Never again.
As a P.S., this is the best demonstration of what a colossal pod-racer wreck "The Rise of Skywalker" is. Enjoy. May the Force Be With You. Always.