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psmith2.0
Mr. Vieira
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
 
2019-12-02, 13:04

And yet he does it worse than the thing he's aping. If there was a Lucas/Spielberg tribute band, Abrams would be the out-of-tune lead guitarist with two broken strings, still trying his best to play the familiar, classic licks and riffs (and mangling the entire gig in the process, to where everyone involved just comes off worse than they should).

How's that for an analogy?

I'm not even a Star Trek fan, but I checked out with this idiot back during that whole "Benedict Cabbagepatch isn't Khan" nonsense (when everyone knew otherwise). He thinks his "style"/approach - dangling, teasing, denying the obvious, etc. - is crafty filmmaking. It's just aggravating and frustrating. Especially when the payoff never really comes in a satisfying or sensible way. It's always something supremely goofy that seems written/tacked on at the 11th hour (you know, like Palpatine returning to Star Wars).

I know the cliché on him is "hack", but sometimes words mean things and I can't think of a more gainfully-employed, high-earning derivative hack than this guy. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all that, but we're not talking about that. He makes really weak, unsatisfying movies. They may dazzle you at first and tickle your fan-service spot in just the right way, but once you're able to remove yourself from all that and look at things objectively - the way I did with The Force Awakens about two months after its release - you just realize it's all a cheap parlor trick and hollow "pretend". That's why, from the get-go, I never wanted this doof in the mix. I knew what he was about, I've seen his other stuff and I just thought "no, this isn't the right guy, I don't care that he wears flannel shirts and glasses..." (that he didn't try to grow a beard was the biggest surprise of all). If you go back to those 2015 discussions leading up to TFA, everything I was concerned about came to be regarding him and the kind of job he'd do...wall-to-wall fan-service, nod/wink touches throughout, a rehash of something already done before, changing things just enough to be a little different/new at first glance, teasing/dangling a bunch of things and never really explaining or paying it off, etc.

So why would I - or anyone else, casual or serious fan alike - expect anything different, four years later? Did he suddenly learn to strike out and be his own man, and come up with something truly original that Spielberg or Lucas hasn't already done (well) before? I seriously doubt it. I wish they'd stuck with Colin Trevorrow on this, just so there might be the possibility of a different vision/approach to wrap this mess all up (although I wouldn't wish that impossible task on anyone). When I heard that Trevorrow was out and Abrams was assuming director/writing control of Episode IX, my heart sunk.

"Oh no...we're back where we started! He loused up the beginning, he's going to screw up the ending and he brought that little gnome Rian in to botch the middle...screw these people!". I want nothing more than to love Star Wars again...and they won't let me!

History is not going to judge these four years of Star Wars kindly. At all. Big picture, long term, they'll sit below the prequels in terms of storytelling, viewer satisfaction, writing, casting, plotting, etc.

Last edited by psmith2.0 : 2019-12-02 at 13:25.
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