Where are you guys every time I get dogpiled for suggesting that J.J. Abrams is one of the worst writer-director-producer getting work today?
Let’s compare and contrast with another writer-director-producer who also works in the fantasy/science fiction/action genre and enjoys sprawling story arcs, characters with hidden motivations, and conspiracies. Yes, I’m going to bring Joss Whedon into the discussion. Like Abrams, Whedon enjoys delving into conspiracy, betrayal, banter, and not just a few ass-kicking female characters. But whereas for Abrams the story and characters are just an excuse to string together one action scene to another with plenty of camera flares thrown in to disoreint the viewer and distract from the fact that the story fundamentally makes no sense and the characters exist solely to justify otherwise completely absurd plotholes (like how to get Kirk from the surface of a frozen moon to the Enterprise flying away at Warp whatever at several lightyears distance using a capability that, were it actually to exist, would completely disrupt the entire technology of the Star Trek universe), for Whedon the characters exist on their own, with backstories and motivations which define how they respond to plot developments.
When Jayne betrays Simon and River in Firefly, it isn’t just to create a conflict for the sake of giving the characters a new challenge; it is because Jayne is a fundamentally untrustworthy individual who thinks everyone else is just as much out for profit as he is. In learning that this isn’t the case, the character makes a fundamental pivot of motivation which still doesn’t change the fact that he’s an asshole, but he turns into the kind of asshole who you might be able to trust in a fight not to stab you in the back.
In Star Trek Into Darkness, Abrams takes establish characters and the (very rough) outline of a story which was originally written to develop and explore the consequences of Kirk’s oft-irresponsible behavior and regret at what he failed to do, and turns it into an absurd action setpiece with zero chararacter depth designed to appeal to prepubescent boys. (Okay, he threw in the boobage shot to appeal to post-pubescent boys.) Even the twist at the end, swapping Spock’s sacrifice in the original for Kirk’s in the remale was rendered completely impotent by reversing it within a couple of pages, again by imagining a big action setpiece.
By contrast, In The Avengers, Whedon uses the superheroes distrust of S.H.I.E.L.D. and each other to forment most of the conflict. The villian, albeit played to the hilt by Tom Hiddleston, is almost irrelevant; the real challenge is getting the characters to work with one another, and the payoff is in the extremely well-orchastrated and cogent action setpiece in the Battle of New York, which included exactly zero lens flares and still managed to be visceral and satisfying, as well as appropriately comedic. (“Puny god!”) For Whedon, the action scenes are a nice to have, but as good as they are, the best scenes are those where the characters are interacting; the Widow “confessing” her sins to Loki in order to extract his motivations; the characters arguing in the lab; Banner roilling in just in time to “suit up”. In the hands of a director like Abrams this entire movie would have been an incoherent snoozefest.
As for Lost, I detected the distinct smell of shit about a third of the way into the first series when it was apparent that they were just piling on the mysteries that could in no way be legitimately linked together. The only saving grace was the intentional “red-shirting” of the science teacher in the last episode (and Evangeline Lily in her underwear, of course), which in no way made up for the layers of bullshit that they laided down season after season. I am in complete agreeement with the o.p.; the show was “lost” the moment they just started cramming in mysteries and cliffhangers with no idea of how they were ever going to tie them together or explain them, which as far as I can tell was right after the pilot pitch was accepted.
Stranger