“I stopped listening to you when you said you didn’t like ‘Star Trek.’ I know what happened because your mouth kept moving after that, so I’m assuming you apologized,” - Jon Stewart
“I stopped listening to you when you said you didn’t like ‘Star Trek.’ I know what happened because your mouth kept moving after that, so I’m assuming you apologized,” - Jon Stewart
I completely get what he was trying to say. He wanted to make a movie where the massive Trekkies were happy but people like him were happy but fuck me if this wasn’t tone deaf to all hell. I’d say stay behind the camera but honestly stick to writing instead. Fringe was great and so was Lost before it went head over heels. There was another show of his called Alcatraz that was also pretty great. But the franchise movies are very miss-heavy for most people. I like the Kelvin movies but it’s for what they are, not because they’re necessarily great Trek movies.
i agree. the Kelvin films were, technically speaking, popular, crowd-pleasing films. But they were terrible Trek films, devoid of everything that makes Trek Trek. Trek was never meant to be “sci-fi boom-boom action-adventure idiots is space,” but that’s what JJ wanted, and we got 3 films like that. And his audition for George Lucas bagged him 2 Star Wars films, because, c’mon, that’s what it was really all about anyway.
and they were terrible Star Wars films, too. Popular and crowd-pleasing, but terrible.
To his credit, JJ did such a terrible job that it chilled out a lot of the more hostile Star Wars fans and gave us a common enemy lol
word. JJ brought me and my SW friends together and finally got me to watch all of the SW animated shows.
TFA wasn’t bad. Some of the characters were completely wasted(read: Finn) and it was a retread of a new hope, but it was decent.
Kirk and Uhura are caricatures, Spock isn’t anything like Spock, and the plot borders on parody. It’s like Orville but not funny.
TFA was not a terrible star wars film, even for star wars fans. Highly derivative of A New Hope, yes, but many star wars fans were longing for something akin to the original trilogy after the prequel trilogy was… controversial to say the least, and it genuinely seemed like a great place to start.
Rise of Skywalker? Whole 'nother story.
Given the modern state of the movie industry, I understand the desire to make movies with a broader appeal. That was his job. Economics trumps all other considerations.
Sure, but I think you can go for broader appeal and also be philosophical. I think a perfect Trek example is The Best of Both Worlds, which managed to be philosophical about what it means to be human while featuring plenty of pew pew space battle.
EDIT: Also, I think Barbie proved you can make real points about the defects of modern society even with movies that have the broadest appeal possible.
I honestly wonder how much control he actually had over the franchise or blockbuster movies he’s made.
Eg. The Sundance to Blockbuster Franchise pipeline is a well known thing in the industry. They farm talent for their latest franchise movie.
They don’t actually give the directors they hire much (if any) artistic freedom. The movies are far far too expensive to take risks like that. They simply need the name for on the poster, to give their McDonalds movie a veneer of artistic credibility.
It’s sad, because young talent thinks they’re being offered a great opportunity, when in reality they’re being whored out. The large studios know they’re too inexperienced to offer much pushback and that they can pay them less than they’re worth because ‘exposure’.
Obviously JJ is a big name, but I assume he also spends all day fighting with the producers and the studio when making a big movie like this. Or he doesn’t and he basically represents the studios, a bit like that Mitchell and Webb “Are we the baddies?” sketch. I dunno.
Lost was great because of Carlton and Damon. JJ Abrams barely touched it.