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J.J. Abrams To Direct Star Wars VII

azzkicker writes "It looks like J.J. Abrams will direct Star Wars VII. From the article: 'Sources have confirmed the Star Trek Into Darkness filmmaker will helm the next Star Wars movie, the highly anticipated installment in the landmark franchise scheduled to reach theaters in 2015."

28 of 735 comments (clear)

  1. No more time travel! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Time travel is the weakest of all SciFi plot devices, reserved for authors who are completely out of ideas.

    Please, Mr. Abrams, don't do that again.

    1. Re:No more time travel! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually Mr Anonymous, many of the best episodes of classic sci-fi series like Star Trek and Stargate were all based on time-travel. Yesterday's Enterprise, Anyone?

      In other words, you are wrong and it is actually the complete opposite. Time Travel scares away novice sci-fi writers because they cannot wrap their heads around the paradoxical nature of such concepts, while the great writers are able to mold the concept into compelling, memorable science fiction.

    2. Re:No more time travel! by yurtinus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More misses than hits in my opinion. Time travel *should* scare away more novice sci-fi writers than it does because more often than not, it's used as a cheap deus ex machina to introduce or resolve some part of the plot (like in the SG-1 season 8 finale, series finale, or *most* of Enterprise). If you want to explore time travel - explore it! Don't use it as a cheap gimmick to push along (or reboot!!) the story.

      --
      +1 Disagree
    3. Re:No more time travel! by bigkahunah · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Even though Abrams' last known direct contribution to Lost was the script to the season 3 premiere, "A Tale of Two Cities" (which he co-wrote with Damon Lindelof), and he had stopped being the main driving force behind the direction of the show as early as season 1, instead leaving Lindelof and Carlton Cuse as the showrunners, a considerable part of the (casual) audience still considers Abrams to be the man in charge of the show." http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/J.J._Abrams

    4. Re:No more time travel! by matunos · · Score: 5, Funny

      As long as he doesn't create an alternate universe where Greedo shot first, Vader made C3P0, the Force-sensitivity is a bacterial infection, and force-ghosts got 20 years younger, we should be just fine.

    5. Re:No more time travel! by RDW · · Score: 5, Funny

      For a more accurate flowchart of Primer (and several other movies) see: http://xkcd.com/657/

  2. MTV Star Wars! by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 5, Funny

    Luke, Leia and Han are supercool heroes from a galaxy far, far away. And boy are they full of angst.

    1. Re:MTV Star Wars! by Wrexs0ul · · Score: 5, Funny

      Starring Eugene Levy as Darth Vader, the dad still trying to be cool.

      "We'll just tell your mother we used the force"

      --
      --- Need web hosting?
    2. Re:MTV Star Wars! by Guppy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Funny, I thought the '09 reboot was Starfleet Academy: 90210. Gotta get my glasses fixed...

      Ah yes, "Melrose Space".

  3. Wait a second... by Daetrin · · Score: 5, Funny

    So the same person is now in charge of both the Star Wars movies and the Star Trek movies?

    I think i just felt a disturbance in the force, as if millions of fans involved in the never ending "which is better, Star Wars or Star Trek?" debates suddenly cried out in bewilderment and then their heads asploded.

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    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
    1. Re:Wait a second... by hermitdev · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Meanwhile, those of us that like both Star Wars & Star Trek are thinking, "hrrm, Episode 7 has a chance now of not sucking."

    2. Re:Wait a second... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He basically turned Star Trek into a Michael Bay movie and of course the same moronic people who love the Terminator franchise rant and rave about how good his rebooted trek is.

      Hey, what's wrong with the Terminator franchise? The first movie was great, the sequel was pretty good, and the TV series was brilliant. It's not like there were any more movies. I heard they did some kind of Transformers crossover thing a couple of years back, but you shouldn't judge the series by cheap imitations.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    3. Re:Wait a second... by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Funny

      I never understood why Star Wars fans were so upset with midicholrians, when the existence of such means you could potentially make a yogurt with active cultures to give you force abilities.

      "What do you want from the store honey? Dannon Light, or Dannon Dark?"

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  4. No Help by Master+Moose · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is not going to help explaining the differences to the Girlfriend when she says "Star Wars, Star Trek same thing..."

    "The Star Wars franchise had a series of movies starting a bit over 30 years ago. They are about to make some new ones. The guy who did Lost is going to direct them. . Where as Star Trek had a series of movies starting circa 30 years ago. They are now making new ones. The guy who did Lost directs them...""

    --
    . . .gone when the morning comes
    1. Re:No Help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's the way it was written on the box.

  5. Star Trek, Star Wars... by Computer_kid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Next he needs to do a reboot of Stargate, then he would have worked on all of the Star+* franchises.

  6. Re:The Lens Flare!!! by darthservo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Especially with not just one, but *two* suns in the Tatooine system.

    --

    Prove it.

  7. Re:Why JJ Abrams when you could get Peter Jackson? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    Star wars 7: There is a knock at Luke's front door. A bunch of people invite themselves in and eat all his food.

  8. having just watched the Trek marathon on SyFy by decora · · Score: 5, Insightful

    i have to say that something has been 'lost' in the new age.

    the best original trek were about the human condition... I'm sure you can name some of your favorite episodes that leap to mind... but for me it is TOS like the Menagerie, or TNG like "The Inner Light" (where he plays the flute on) or the one about Enkidu and Gilgamesh.

    When Spock dies in Wrath of Khan, tell me you didn't cry ... now tell me even one memorably emotional scene from anything after Generations

    The new stuff is fine.. but its ... where is the heart? Maybe I'm just old but...

    1. Re:having just watched the Trek marathon on SyFy by tarpitcod · · Score: 5, Funny

      Please. All of that TNG crap. I wanted them to die. I wanted the scene to go like this:

      Picard> Yes, but the question is *should* we kill them?
      Data> Killing is not ethical
      Blah>
      Blah>
      Blah>
        Enterprise blown from the stars

      Enemy captain> If you're going to shoot, shoot, don't talk

  9. Re:Omg :( by DigitalSorceress · · Score: 5, Insightful

    this. So much this...

    Abrams has really shown great ability to come up with a good story context and set up a world and characters we get pulled into and care about.. and then CONSISTENTLY fails to take them to a satisfying conclusion...

    He's the biggest SF-tease evar.

    Maybe Abrams could start it up and get the story rolling for VII and VIII but then they could let someone with a history of doing it right (Joss where for art thou?) bring it on home in IX

    --

    The Digital Sorceress
  10. Re:1 Word by SoulMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry... that word should be:

    "THRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN!"

    7 8 and 9 were already books. And they were awesome!

    -SM

  11. And the rich get richer by jfengel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As an actor (and so distantly connected to the entertainment industry), what makes me cranky about this is Hollywood's affinity for known quantities. I like Abrams' work; I'm sure it'll be a fine movie.

    But there are hundreds of lesser-known directors who might have done something. What would Kevin Smith have done? Or Alfonso Cuaron, who made the third Harry Potter movie so much more interesting than any of the others? Or somebody I've never heard of?

    They're going with a known quantity, and maybe it's the right business decision. It means it probably won't be terrible, and will probably be pretty good. But no matter how good it is, it's still going to be more of Abrams, who we've already got plenty of.

    They're going with a known quantity to eliminate the risks. And all you get from safe choices is safe movies. And "safe" is exactly what Star Wars wasn't, at least not the first time, the thing that made it great.

  12. Re:The Lens Flare!!! by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's no sun! That's a lens flare!

  13. That he butchered Star Trek gives me hope... by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm basically the Trekkie the Onion lampoons: "Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film as 'Fun, Watchable.'"

    It was a really fun film to watch, with action and adventure and cute one-liners. A fun, summer action movie. But it was not Star Trek.

    Star Trek is not about good versus evil. Star Trek is about Better versus Base. There is no 'evil' in the Star Trek universe, there's just other intelligent life who are different or frightened or struggling and the easy response is "blow 'em up!" but Star Trek asks its characters to be better than that and find another option. Yes, defend yourself, but always look for the other, peaceful solution to a problem. And the best part about Star Trek is that the heroes are...us. Us as we could be through science and reason and strength of character.

    The 2009 JJ Abrams movie threw all that out the window and gave us a spectacle about a genocidal bad guy with a scary looking ship who must be stopped by punching. Fun movie, but it's not Star Trek, as it doesn't ask its characters or the audience to rise above being a base reactionary.

    Star Wars, which I also very much enjoy, is a mystical fantasy of good "Chosen One" characters versus Evil so evil they call themselves "The Dark Side." And the moral choice presented is about the stupidest philosophy imaginable, that if you care about people, you will come to hate the people who want to hurt the people you care about, which will make you "fall" and then join up with the people you hate to kill the people you cared about. I get the idea that blind hatred can make you "no better than" your enemies, but it doesn't turn you into your enemies. Just to godwin's law this, yes, it's possible to hate Hitler SO MUCH for killing all those Jews that you start a genocidal campaign against Germans, putting them in concentration camps and gas chambers, and wind up no better than Hitler. You become what you hated. But in the Star Wars universe, if you love the Jews and hate Hitler, you wind up joining Hitler to kill more Jews, thereby become THE SAME AS Hitler. This is stupid and makes no sense.

    So, JJ Abrams abandoned the fundamental premise of Star Trek (that we can rise above our base instincts to find peaceful solutions to our problems) and ruined Star Trek in a bad way. Maybe, in charge of the next Star Wars movie, he'll abandon the fundamental premise of Star Wars (that you have to be a dispassionate mystical robot to avoid killing your friends) and make the franchise much better and more interesting.

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  14. Re:Why JJ Abrams when you could get Peter Jackson? by lennier · · Score: 5, Funny

    Star wars 7: There is a knock at Luke's front door. A bunch of people invite themselves in and eat all his food.

    Far over the Endor forest green
    To Yavin IV and Tattooine
    We must arrive by hyperdrive
    And stick a fork in Palpatine...

    --
    You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
  15. Re:Really? by sconeu · · Score: 5, Funny

    Red October Shtanding by

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  16. An amazing coincidence! by bobdevine · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it true that J.J. Abrams real name is Jar Jar?