You are entirely too generous. With Star Trek in particular, he made many substantive changes. To the extent that mere destruction might be considered substantive, I mean. “Hey, what if we got the whole gang together and had them do the same old thing, but dumber, and… while they were still kids!?”
Like Muppet Babies, but without the charm or the self-awareness to make it good.
JJ has a fundamental misunderstanding of Trek. I know this is going to sound super nerdy but this is a good example: there is no leading zero in the registry number of any starship ever. Except for the USS Kelvin because JJ needed to pay tribute to his grandmother. In a movie with a million computer monitors and a million random number sequences scrolling by at any given second, he had to paint 0314 on the hull because he loves his grandmother more than he respects Star Trek. It would have made more sense to call the ship the USS JJ’s Grandmother or whatever but no, JJ had to go and add something completely unnecessary to a system that worked perfectly well as is. Lather, rinse, repeat for many other things in the universe (for example the origin of Bones as a nickname for McCoy) and it starts to feel to me like JJ doesn’t really actually respect the source material at all.
Now I am not nearly as much of a Star Wars superfan as I am a Trek superfan so I don’t know if JJ wiped his ass with Star Wars canon the way he did with Trek but I am not surprised by anyone’s passionate dislike of his take on the franchise.
Remember that scene in Trek 2009 where Kirk is able to watch the planet Vulcan’s destruction from the surface of another planet in another system light years away?
Abrams put the exact same scene in The Force Awakens, only worse.
I know this is going to sound super nerdy, but: didn’t Jonathan Archer captain the NX-01?
Both Star Trek and The Force Awakens feel like they take place in a very small chunk of space over the course of an afternoon. He writes science fiction badly.
And it seemed his whole idea for a Star Wars movie was “What was in the previous movies, BUT MORE.”
Vader deflected blaster bolts with his hand? Kylo can halt them in midair!
Think the Death Star was big? Here’s a Death Star that’s a whole planet!
That has been a consistent problem with all the Star Wars films of the last decade (I can’t speak for the Disney+ series). Where the original trilogy seemed to leave some room for ambiguity in terms of how long it took to travel between two points (at the very least, it might be said that there was time for reflection and a change in mood a character moment or two weaved in), and the prequel trilogy is best forgotten (so I can’t say for certain what impression it gives, because I really have forgotten), the connecting scenes in the newer films that might give some sense of a passage of time are either left out or, worse, expressly show show that it doesn’t take much time at all to traverse great distances.
For example, in Rogue One, in the infamous “I’m such a badass I’m going to go cry to Vader like a petulant child so the fans can see Vader before the finale, and let him throw in a dad joke while we’re at it” scene, the editing makes it seem as if a trip in a shuttle craft to Vader’s layer has all the dramatic weight of a walk across the street to another building in the same office complex. Like, we see whinny-cape-boy leave one area pissed off and angry, and then stomp right on into Vader’s layer still pissed off and angry as if no cooling down period has occurred, no moment for reflection, with the time in the shuttle seemingly reduced to a ride in an elevator. It’s bad writing that undermines both the character (showing he’s such a cold, calculating, cape-wearing badass he can’t even pretend to be in control of his own emotions) and the universe (suggesting that it’s really not such an inconvenience to go see someone in person, at least for those in the Empire’s upper echelons with their own shuttle, such that the most privileged might just go see someone on a whim).
Is Vader’s layer where he has his lair?
I’d argue that it’s good writing that undermines his character. Krennic (whiny-cape-boy) is supposed to be faintly pathetic. He’s not a implacable killing machine like Vader, or a Machiavellian schemer like Tarkin. He’s a bureaucrat who’s Peter Principled himself way beyond his level of competence. He’s the “banality of evil” part of the Empire’s Nazi analogy: a guy who does monstrous acts not because of ideology or malevolence, but in order to get a good quarterly employee review. His narrative purpose is to be devoured by the sharks he foolishly thinks he can swim with. Him showing up at Vader’s doorstep still in high dudgeon after a two or three day hyperspace trip works perfectly with that characterization - it’s not that he didn’t have time to calm down and reflect, it’s that he’s not the sort of person who does either of those things.
I do agree with your larger point, though. The sequel trilogy really fucked up the depiction of hyperspace. Lucas was deliberately vague about how long hyperspace took, but was consistent in showing it being at least a couple days. Long enough for Luke to start his Force lessons, for example, but not so long that he got terribly far in them. Abrams introduced “hyperspace skipping,” where the Millenium Falcon shakes of pursuers by making a series of rapid fire hyperspace jumps, each one clearly to completely different planets, thus firmly establishing onscreen that travelling to a different solar system via hyperspace takes literally seconds.
One thing I’ll say for Abrams: he’s changed the central conflict between Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans from who has the better franchise, to whose franchise was more screwed over by JJ Abrams.
(As a SW fan, I have to give this one to the Trekkies: it’s hard to top Scotty inventing interplanetary transportation, and literally invalidating the entire premise of the franchise.)
Interplanetary transportation at warp speed, at that. Think of how many episodes of TNG would have lasted five minutes if they had that ability.
What sold me on just how bad Abrams’ version of Trek was was when the Enterprise was violently forced out of warp (by something, I can’t even remember what)… and still ends up right next to their destination planet. Thanks a lot, whatever-that-was, if you hadn’t forced us out of warp, we’d have missed our off-ramp!
Didn’t Jar Jar Abrams show the Enterprise being built on Earth instead of in a space dock? So much dumb in those movies.
The bit in The Force Awakens, where they get past the planetary shields by flying straight at the planet in hyperspace, and dropping out of it when they’re past the planetary shield, but before they hit the surface. They’re going faster than 670 million miles an hour - like, several multiples faster - and they hit a target that is, generously, maybe five miles wide. By eyeballing it. And it’s not even one of the Force users who does it - it’s fucking Han.
Good thing no one told him the odds.
The hyperspace stuff was bad enough. The worst part, IMO, was that the good guys could see the destruction of another star system from the surface of another planet with the unaided eye. Abrams just has no concept of how big space is.
That’s because the Death Star beam actually travels at the speed of light, but backwards in time. Nobody ever noticed when it was shooting at nearby targets, but when they aimed it across interstellar space, suddenly everyone knew what happened to that planet that mysteriously disappeared decades ago.
Well that only makes it more plausible. After all, it’s not some two-bit slavery-tolerating force-user doing it, it’s fucking Han.
After which the Enterprise proceeds to fall from the moon to Earth. Looked great but it kills brain cells. I wasn’t too impressed with the ease with which Nero’s drill could be disabled if only there was a single fighter jet or defense satellite anywhere on Earth or Vulcan in the first movie either. It’s bad science fiction, and has been noted the transitional scenes don’t do a very good of showing the passage of time so it’s just bad writing in general, in both franchises. They just aren’t well thought out.
Whatever Rogue One’s weaknesses might be, they can’t be left at the feet of JJ Abrams as I don’t think he was involved. Personally I think they did a great job of recreating the Star Wars-era look and feel of Star Wars. All the space combat looks like what the original bunch at Lucasfilm would have done had they the money and technology at the time. Rogue One also does a fine job of making the big Imperial and Rebel ships look seriously massive in a way none of the other movies do.
I think another thing Abrams did to both franchises was not allowing the story to really develop during the movies. It feels like a lot of jumping from scene to scene, action piece to action piece, with minimal development in between. Part of that is how modern cinema works for the most part but he’s definitely perpetuating it on his end.
Which is a shame, because for most people we understand that to be summoned to see a boss in person is an intimidating thing, and can be used as an indication you are in REAL trouble. Whether it’s being called to the principal’s office or being told the boss needs to see you, that’s a cultural thing we all understand as meaning you’re in deep shit. And they just blew it. The writing and editing of the scene fails to properly build tension and address character.
I think - and I know I’m the 188888888th person to say this - what really needs to happen is to stop making Star Wars things. The average quality is just abysmal at this point, because the priority has become the generation of content.