J.J. Abrams To Direct Star Wars: Episode IX; Premiere Date Pushed To December 2019 (theverge.com)

A week after Jurassic World's Colin Trevorrow was ousted from the Star Wars: Episode IX director's chair, a familiar face has stepped in to replace him: J.J. Abrams, the man responsible for successfully rebooting the new trilogy in 2015 with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. From a report: Disney just pushed back the release of Star Wars: Episode IX from May 2019 to December 2019, Deadline reports. The news comes after an announcement today that J.J. Abrams is taking over from Colin Trevorrow as director of the movie. Episode IX, originally slated to premiere on May 24th, 2019, was supposed to be a return to May release dates for the Star Wars franchise. Back in 2015, The Force Awakens was also originally supposed to be released in the summer, but was moved to a December release after Abrams took over screenwriting duties with Lawrence Kasdan (The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi) and needed more time.

Comments

Yay... Abrams

[JaredOfEuropa]

"Reboot" is the right word for The Force Awakens. Are there any writers left in Hollywood these days or is it just a bunch of guys rehashing old material? Though to be fair, I was (relatively) pleasantly surprised by Rogue One.

Re:Yay... Abrams

[Anonymous Coward]

Too much grrl power feminism in rogue one. She went from nobody to jedi master in 17 minutes.

Re: Yay... Abrams

[gl4ss]

r1 was okay..

jj abrams however now has fucked plot sensibilities by screwing over several plot devices(by just being plain fucking stupid and inept at writing a plotline to fit the action he wants that wouldn't piss over everything) of TWO franchises.

he did it to star trek, he did it to star wars. and for those of not understanding what I'm talking about... force awakens provides a way to use hyperspace in a way that makes plotlines of pretty much all of the previous star wars movies irrelevant - and even force awakens itself!

the star trek reboot is full of gadgets that make the plotlines stupid, the traveltimes make NO SENSE at all and so forth. klingon homeworld is now literally 1 second or 15 minutes away, depending on your chosen mode of transportation. even fucking Q made more sense.

Re:Yay... Abrams

[SvnLyrBrto]

Um... No.

Sure, they made her kinda badass... justifiable, seeing as she was basically raised by a rebel fighter a bit too extreme of a fighter for the rest of the rebellion. But besides wearing a kyber crystal around her neck, there was nothing Jedi-like about Jyn Erso at all. The only one who displayed anything like force powers was the blind guy with the bo-staff. Well, him and Darth Vader, of course.

And strong females are hardly new to Star Wars. Yes, since it was basically "The Hidden Fortress... IN SPAAACE!!!", the narrative of A New Hope required Princess Leia to be in need of rescue. But did you forget that she was already a rebel agent using her senate position and diplomatic status as cover for espionage and started the movie off by:

1) Passing the Death Star plans off to R2-D2 so her mission would still be completed.
2) Gunning down Stormtroopers to create a distraction, and:
3) Telling off Darth Vader himself, before he knew he even had a daughter, and was very much in a larynx-crushing mood.

Re: Yay... Abrams

[thegarbz]

But it's cool when Luke does the same thing.

Rei: Goes from no powers to mind control followed by using the force to fling things around before even getting off the planet they were fleeing, proceeds to kill a Kylo Ren who had been perfecting his powers for years under a Sith master.

Luke: Unable to sense bolt blasters for an entire space flight. Soon after being taught by the best Jedi master in the universe and spitting the dummy when unable to lift simple stones. Even after a few weeks of training his skill level is still basic. He then proceeds to get his arse kicked.

Yeah totally the same thing.

Re: Yay... Abrams

[AmiMoJo]

Kylo Ren is no Darth Vader. He aspires to be, but he's a long way from there in the movie. And don't forget that Vader lost to Obi Wan pretty decisively, losing three limbs and nearly dying, when a similar age to Ren. And Ren is already injured when the fight gets started.

I think the bottom line is that when force sensitive individuals start waving light sabres around, a weapon that will hack of a limb with a mere touch, all bets are off.

Re: Yay... Abrams

[AmiMoJo]

While Rey's development is a bit rushed, it was probably a consequence of Mark Hamil getting old more than anything. If he were younger the central character would probably have been Luke fighting a resurgence of the Sith/Empire.

Having said that, what extraordinary abilities does she actually demonstrate during that film? She manages to pilot the Falcon reasonably well, and barely escape a fight with Kylo Ren without really beating him, and of course Ren's abilities are nothing like as developed as Vader's were - even his light sabre is a crude imitation, unable to produce the smooth, controlled beam that well made ones could. The "guard" actually seems to be an exhaust of some sort for the poorly controlled power supply.

Hopefully the next film will explain a lot more about who Rey is and why she has strong force powers. My guess would be that she is related to Luke somehow, or maybe Kylo.

Re: Yay... Abrams

[AmiMoJo]

Rei: Goes from no powers to mind control followed by using the force to fling things around before even getting off the planet they were fleeing, proceeds to kill a Kylo Ren who had been perfecting his powers for years under a Sith master.

Your argument would be more convincing if you managed to get basic details about the movie correct.

Rei's mind control powers only emerged after Kylo Ren had demonstrated them to her when trying to interrogate her. At the time she was strapped to an interrogation table waiting to be tortured, implying that the stress pushed her to use force powers. That's consistent with how force powers manifested for other users, e.g. Luke when he needs to make that critical shot, or contact his sister to be rescued after losing to Vader. It's well established that stress and powerful emotions like anger interact with force abilities.

Rei also failed to kill Kylo Ren. The battle ended in something of a stalemate, and Ren started out carrying an injury.

Ren's force powers seem to be relatively weak. He doesn't demonstrate anything like the power that other trained users did, and none of the typical dark side stuff like lightning or force-choking. His light sabre is also pretty poor quality, unable to form a solid steady beam. It's not clear how much training he has had, that hasn't been revealed yet, he seems to lack the discipline that Vader and other Sith had, being prone to emotional outbursts and still struggling with links to his family (which is why killing Han is so important).

Even after a few weeks of training his skill level is still basic. He then proceeds to get his arse kicked.

Right, because he didn't have enough training. After that he trains by himself, with no guidance, for an unspecified period of time but it only seems to be a year at most between ESB and ROTJ. At that point he has got good enough not only to beat Vader but the Emperor as well, at the same time.

Maybe, as every DBZ fan eventually realizes, power levels are bullshit.

Re: Yay... Abrams

[Rakarra]

Yeah. But did you look at the how poor Darth Emo's form and technique were? He was a brawler, and not a very good one at that.

Also, he had already been shot in the side by Chewbacca, a pretty critical wound. You'd think something like that would weaken a guy. He was still able to pretty easily handle Finn, but his second fight gets him into trouble.

I still feel like Rei developed mastery of The Force in a ridiculously short amount of time. Like... 5 minutes after she first learns she can use The Force she's already mind-controlling Daniel Craig.

Not convinced this is a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

JJ is famous for settings things up and then spectacularly failing to follow through. I enjoy his work until it all falls apart because he doesn't know how to finish/close a narrative and that does not bode well for a trilogy.

Re:Not convinced this is a good idea

[alvinrod]

I think the real problem with his work is that he's completely willing to sacrifice almost everything in favor of whatever scene in the movie he currently wants to happen even if it ruins other aspects of the movie. For example, in The Force Awakens I was generally okay with the story up until the attack on the Death Star (or whatever it was called, but it's the new Death Star so whatever) begins and it fires its huge burst of energy across the galaxy that is somehow going to hit the target in a small amount of time and the rebel forces are also able to almost immediately travel across the entire galaxy while being on comms in real time.

The rules for space travel in Star Wars are never really well explained, largely because they don't need to be, but those scenes seem to violate our understanding of how travel works from previous installments. Just the fact that you can communicate instantly in real time across those distances (and while traveling no less) pretty much makes the other movies make no sense since once you get the plans for the Death Star in the original movie, just instantly communicate them across the galaxy. Same shit with TPM, just instantly communicate that you're being invaded across the galaxy. But Abrams had written himself into a corner and logic had to die on the altar of the scene he wanted to happen.

I could overlook most of the criticism that were levied towards TFA when it came out as it was a generally well made movie, but that part just made me want to yell at the movie for being so stupid because the universe was no longer internally consistent. Him and Lindelof can fuck off of having anything to do with a script as they care far too much about the moment to the detriment of the whole. It was the same shit with new Star Trek films where who cares about any established rules of the universe, because it's time for this next really cool scene to happen now.