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[Michael F. Assbender]

Nice interview. Lots of cool tidbits, and definitely makes me feel this film is in good hands.

Pretty interesting to read that Apple's Jony Ive helped design Kylo's "spitty" lightsaber (minus the hilt part), too.

 

[Quick]

Johnson is only writing a treatment for IX, right? I don't think he was confirmed for doing the screenplay too.

Yep. No confirmation on screenplay for IX.

It should be noted that each director has writing experience, and 2/3 directors are contributing writers for their respective movies. That being said, I expect Trevorrow to be tied into writing too.

 

[Blader]

Yep. No confirmation on screenplay for IX.

It should be noted that each director has writing experience, and 2/3 directors are contributing writers for their respective movies. That being said, I expect Trevorrow to be tied into writing too.

That's what I'm afraid of :lol

Into Darkness is trash?!
I had no idea it was so hated here on GAF. I thought it reviewed well and I certainly enjoyed it. What was supposedly so bad about it?

The movie is either a fine blockbuster or an absolutely putrid piece of shit depending on how well or not you react to amusing Wrath of Khan callbacks.

 

[CloudyTuba]

You guys all know that before Jurassic World, Tervorrow made a very critically acclaimed indie called Safety Not Guaranteed, right? It's a very sweet and charming little film, totally great.

Jurassic World was disappointing, I agree, but Tervorrow is not the hack director some of you think he is.

One indie film with debatable quality and one bad big budget film. Calling him a hack would be inappropriate but that still isn't a very confident resume.

Personally I think if he is given a high quality script he'll be able to turn it into something good, I think as a director he does a good job. I just dont want him too involved in the writing himself. Jurassic World's bigger problem was the writing, not so much everything else.

From what I understand, Kasdan wrote 7, Johnson is writing 8 with some input from Kasdan, and the writer of 9 is unknown. I say bring Lawrence back full time for that one. I also hope that Abrams is still closely involved with the sequels as a Producer even if he isn't directing them.

 

[ZoltanXerxes]

Well, I'm hyped up...again...and yes John Williams is a Legend. Hands down, no contest, one of the greatest composers of all time.

 

[brandonh83]

Into Darkness is trash?!
I had no idea it was so hated here on GAF. I thought it reviewed well and I certainly enjoyed it. What was supposedly so bad about it?

Oh man everything including the Spyglass logo

 

[Guy.brush]

Into Darkness is trash?!
I had no idea it was so hated here on GAF. I thought it reviewed well and I certainly enjoyed it. What was supposedly so bad about it?

It didn't have even a basic respect for some ground rules of the franchise which it mimicked to be an entry of.
Transwarp beaming, intergalactic communicators, super speed, "I can't beam them up, they are on moving vehicles!" "Ok then beam me down onto those same moving vehicles"

My good the list is endless. And it did not just violate basic Trek universe building rules, the actual plot was completely lifted with a heavy sprinkle of nostalgia but done worse and didn't even have the balls to have Kirk/Spock be dead for the end of the movie til the next one.

 

[Michael F. Assbender]

Dunno if this has been posted, but I found it humorous (and it fits the topic since we are talking about J. J. Abrams). It's a recent AMA with questions from Jared Leto, Katie Curic, George Lucas, and several others. Nothing really new here (other than the fact that Abrams' involvement in Lost basically ended after the pilot, meaning he can't really be blamed for how bad the rest turned out), but kinda cool.

http://youtu.be/viDu9SLvF_E

 

[Quick]

That's what I'm afraid of :lol

:lol

I wouldn't worry too much about it yet. Like I said, Kasdan is going to make sure that each script gets a nice polish.

 

[Subpar Spatula]

Into Darkness is trash?!
I had no idea it was so hated here on GAF. I thought it reviewed well and I certainly enjoyed it. What was supposedly so bad about it?

Yeah, it was a pretty bad movie.

 

[Quick]

Into Darkness wasn't as great as the first Abrams Trek, but it was far from terrible.

The third act really brought it down, but it still wasn't bad.

 

[WadiumArcadium]

Into Darkness wasn't as great as the first Abrams Trek, but it was far from terrible.

The third act really brought it down, but it still wasn't bad.

Agreed. Definitely not as good as the first and I felt a bit let down by the ending, but I still found it pretty entertaining overall.

 

[Mindwipe]

Agreed. I'm also inclined to blame Kurtzman and Orci (specifically Orci) for Into Darkness' issues, and since that sequel took forever to get going, I think JJ had to go with the script he had vs. the script he wanted.

To be honest I've always been inclined to blame two of Hollywood's most wretched, but sadly successful and powerful, writers for the dumb recycled script.

 

[Sanjuro]

John Williams is Bob Kane?!

 

[Liquidsnake]

It didn't have even a basic respect for some ground rules of the franchise which it mimicked to be an entry of.
Transwarp beaming, intergalactic communicators, super speed, "I can't beam them up, they are on moving vehicles!" "Ok then beam me down onto those same moving vehicles"

My good the list is endless. And it did not just violate basic Trek universe building rules, the actual plot was completely lifted with a heavy sprinkle of nostalgia but done worse and didn't even have the balls to have Kirk/Spock be dead for the end of the movie til the next one.

I think this bothered me more than the other stuff. I mean WOK is one of the great sci fi movies of all time, and they kind of had a chance to give us something like that but in 2013 or what ever it was, and they really fd it up.

 

[near]

For someone who didn't give a monkeys about Trek before JJ Baby came along I enjoyed Into Darkness. It wasn't better than the first but still entertaining.

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

John Williams entering "my hero" status.

 

[JimiNutz]

Maybe I enjoyed Into Darkness because I haven't seen any of the previous Star Trek films other than the Abrams reboot.
I thought it was a fine summer blockbuster. Definitely one of the better ones from recent memory.

 

[robotrock]

Great interview. A couple of new behind the scenes photos too I believe? And some nice hi-res versions of existing photos and shots from the film.

Is this Star Wars Battlefront?

 

[WadiumArcadium]

Is this Star Wars Battlefront?

Uh no, it's in the 'final' trailer.

 

[Inferno313]

Don't think I'd call a Metacritic score of 72 "very critically acclaimed". For me it was an unfunny indie comedy with poor performances shot in a bland totally uncreative way. How the fuck he got the gig to direct Jurassic World, I have no idea. But that film turned out even more horrific than I feared.
The only thing I can say about Episode IX is thank god there is still time for Disney to wake up and replace him with....fucking anybody.

Unlike the games industry, film critics know how to use the full scale when they review films. So yes, a 72 is quite critically acclaimed. That's along the same scores as films like Batman Begins (70), The Avengers (69), The Hunger Games (67), Straight Outta Compton (72) and Inception (74) to use some populist recent examples.

That 72 on Metacritic is also a 90% on Rottentomatoes.

 

[Arkeband]

Into Darkness is trash?!
I had no idea it was so hated here on GAF. I thought it reviewed well and I certainly enjoyed it. What was supposedly so bad about it?

It's a bad rehash that relies on an endless stream of callbacks. Do you remember any scenes from the movie that weren't mirrors of WoK? If you can remember any other scenes, it was probably Benedict Crunderdunder jumping around and firing lasers like a cool guy.

People loved it because it was inoffensive and "turn your brain off". I'm fully convinced that it has decent review scores because it passed the test of reminding people of Star Trek, which isn't hard when its a remake.

 

[Black-Wind]

Even if 8 and 9 are shit (I REALLY hope they get someone other than JW guy for 9 ...) I feel confident that at least 7 will be great

 

[Lifejumper]

Maybe I enjoyed Into Darkness because I haven't seen any of the previous Star Trek films other than the Abrams reboot.
I thought it was a fine summer blockbuster. Definitely one of the better ones from recent memory.

Yup this is key. Enjoyed it too.

 

[Guy.brush]

Yup this is key. Enjoyed it too.

Maybe. You have to be really ignorant of the rules that got established over the years in the Star Trek universe to enjoy Into Darkness. It just goes against a lot of the fundamental rules like:
"when can you beam?", "how fast can you travel?" "over what distances can you communicate?".
It just gives a flying fuck about adhering to even the most basic of "physical rules" and instead just amps up the action so the audience gets saturated with noise.
It gets really nasty if the violations of a movie universe's rules happen within the same movie and it is not just breaking the past established rule set.

The problem is that the stakes become total illusions. Why should I care if a character is in danger if they can just transwarp beam everyone over vast distances, or they have the ability to communicate with anyone across the galaxy, etc.
You have to take a character's and the script writers words instead of "feeling" the world rules dictate what can happen in the plot or why a situation is dangerous for the heroes. It makes everything random and makes past action set pieces feel like a joke. "why did they not use this during X?"

Lucas made similar mistakes with the prequels where you would go "ok if the Jedi CAN run as fast as in Ep1, why didn't they solve situation X like this".
Stuff just becomes a random collection of "raising the stakes" but instead of real stakes for the characters that the audience can feel (because the movie is adhering to the universe it is trying to tell), the audience gets served noise.

I really hope the JJ that built the Enterprise on the ground on Earth under a free sky just so he could have his shot of brooding Kirk on a motorcycle look at it is not too present during EpVII.

 

[Sami+]

Genuinely cant wait for the behind the scenes stuff

They're making a documentary right? I love the Star Wars production documentaries, would suck to skip this one.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Maybe I enjoyed Into Darkness because I haven't seen any of the previous Star Trek films other than the Abrams reboot.
I thought it was a fine summer blockbuster. Definitely one of the better ones from recent memory.

I don't know if it's so much just that you haven't watched the previous films. I've seen them all, and find it a pretty decent film. The key seems to be not carrying a bunch of bullshit baggage into the movie with you regarding what Star Trek "really is," which tends to be a pretty selective reading of the hours upon hours of often super-contradictory messages and tones accumulated over half a century.

So when you don't have all this hopped-up bullshit pressing down on your shoulders as to what sort of unwritten "rules" the series has to follow, the movie plays a lot better.

Not to say it doesn't have it's fair share of problems and filmmaking fuckups.

 

[Blader]

It's a bad rehash that relies on an endless stream of callbacks. Do you remember any scenes from the movie that weren't mirrors of WoK? If you can remember any other scenes, it was probably Benedict Crunderdunder jumping around and firing lasers like a cool guy.

People loved it because it was inoffensive and "turn your brain off". I'm fully convinced that it has decent review scores because it passed the test of reminding people of Star Trek, which isn't hard when its a remake.

Not being overly familiar with WoK (aside from dude's name is Khan, Spock dies, "KHAAAAN!"), can't say that I can pinpoint very many mirrored scenes as is. And the ones I did recognize I just thought were cute homages, and not really something to get worked up over.

 

[-griffy-]

Into Darkness has plot problems, but still manages to be an extremely entertaining adventure flick featuring fun characters, which is really a testament to Abrams skill set. The moment to moment, meat and potatoes filmmaking is still extremely solid in that movie.

 

[clearacell]

Oh man oh man oh man, this thread got good faster than I thought.

Maybe we need an actor who can deal better with lighter scenes?

Maybe someone we can more easily see as our white knight?

Someone to brighten up the movie?

What I'm saying is, care to shed some light on what exactly you mean?

Actually when I saw the trailer I thought his posture looked weird, but I just thought maybe it was just that scene and the fact that he had to stand on an incline. Still a little bit weird.

 

[-griffy-]

Actually when I saw the trailer I thought his posture looked weird, but I just thought maybe it was just that scene and the fact that he had to stand on an incline. Still a little bit weird.

Standing on a sloping sand dune ain't easy when you gotta counteract the gravity of dat ass.

 

[Sou Da]

You think JJ accidently said "Like Poetry" a few times during production?

 

[lastplayed]

Not being overly familiar with WoK (aside from dude's name is Khan, Spock dies, "KHAAAAN!"), can't say that I can pinpoint very many mirrored scenes as is. And the ones I did recognize I just thought were cute homages, and not really something to get worked up over.

Yeah, WoK had the whole Genesis and David subplot, obviously missing from Into Darkness.

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

John Williams is Bob Kane?!

That's pretty insulting to John Williams.

 

[EGM1966]

Into Darkness wasn't as great as the first Abrams Trek, but it was far from terrible.

The third act really brought it down, but it still wasn't bad.

Apart from looking really nice it was terrible in execution in almost every way. Just because it's a summer blockbuster doesn't mean some kind of free pass in terms of script, performances, thematic coherence etc which is why so many big films score low.

Sure enjoy it in a mindless way but don't try and defend something that by the standards of the medium is fairly poor. From an opening that is logically pointless to a conclusion where they're in a panic to recover Khan as a blood donor despite having tens of ready to hand donors right there it's narrative trash that can't even take a good film "Wrath of Khan" and reimagine it successfully.

 

[Quick]

Actually when I saw the trailer I thought his posture looked weird, but I just thought maybe it was just that scene and the fact that he had to stand on an incline. Still a little bit weird.

Standing on a sloping sand dune ain't easy when you gotta counteract the gravity of dat ass.

Dat ass so fat it actually created dat slope.

 

[opoth]

They should ask him why he's not directing the other two.

It's a huge sigh of relief that he's not on the hook for these. I chalk it up to the logistics of having to make one of these movies every 2 years but it's almost always better when the creative reins are passed for sequels.

ST Into Darkness, Avengers AOU, the Matrix sequels and especially the SW prequels should all be cautionary tales. Wrath of Khan and Empire Strikes Back are great examples of sequels that were better than the originals that had a decent level of creative shakeup between films.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

it's narrative trash that can't even take a good film "Wrath of Khan" and reimagine it successfully.

It's not a reimagination of Wrath of Khan though. They reimagine a single scene from that movie, but considering you're breaking down the ways the narrative fails in this post you should be able to identify that the narrative isn't similar to Wrath of Khan's at all.

Of course, the only reason we're even discussing the film in this thread is because Abrams mentioned it in a somewhat negative capacity in this interview, which should be somethin like a good sign for this movie.

 

[inm8num2]

STID is legitimately interesting up until Spock Prime shows up and the pseudo recreation of the most memorable scene from WoK. It's cool to see how Khan and Kirk are working together against Admiral Marcus, and while you can still have Khan going rogue it might have been more interesting to go about that in a different way (death scene doesn't really work in new ST because Kirk and Spock haven't had all the years of friendship they did in the original timeline). From an AICN review:

See that picture above? That’s the most iconic, resonant, emotional scene in all of STAR TREK. It’s one friend saying goodbye to another, after years of companionship and camaraderie. Those two men know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. They’ve seen each other at their best and their worst. The scene relies on context and history, but it’s no less effective to newcomers who see it. We have Spock, who dies in the bravest way possible, saving Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise. It is a good death. And in that death, he teaches his old friend Kirk an invaluable lesson – he faces death, finally, after dodging and cheating it for so many years. Kirk, at last, knows what sacrifice really means, and he becomes a better man for it. In 1982, when a character like Spock died, it meant something. Sure, he came back in the next movie, but at the time, audiences had no idea he would return. It felt final, and triumphant. It’s one of my favorite scenes in movie history. So yeah, I’m a little precious about it.

You don’t get to remake That Scene. You can’t, because what that scene means has been set up by years of episodes and a movie, and it has special significance. The fact that it’s now Kirk in the chamber and not Spock doesn’t change anything, and when Kirk dies we already know that it’s not permanent. It’s just an opportunity for Abrams, Lindelof, Kurtzman and Orci to shove fan service down the audience’s throat. There’s no special meaning or weight to it, and when Spock screams “KHAN!” at the top of his lungs, it feels like an insult. It feels like the filmmakers think so little of STAR TREK and the fans; that all we want to see are the same stories over and over.

I think Mike and Rich from RLM made a worthy point in their predictions video. The Force Awakens is going to be fun. It's going to be visually stunning. It's going to be emotionally engaging. However, it may not have the smartest or deepest story, and it really doesn't need to. Abrams has an almost visceral style of filmmaking, and that will suit Star Wars just fine.

 

[Freewheelin']

Cumberbatch is great in STID

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Spock Prime is a huge mistake. Especially considering it's not like Quinto needed Prime's insight to come up with the plan he did come up with.

"Hey, tell me about this obvious genius mastermind motherfucker."
"Well, he was a real high-toned sonofabitch, me."
"Goddamn, I was worried that I was right."
"Of course you're fucking right, you're me."
"So how did you defeat him?"
"Well, it was kinda dumb, actually. Like dogs, he couldn't look up."
"Dogs can't look up?"
"Ask Big Al, he knows."
"Well, you're me, and I'm you, so you're probably right."
"Exactly. And then I stuck my head in a huge microwave and we flew away. The end."
"Okay, so...hmmm. Alright, thanks! You ever heard of DJ Click?"
"Who?"
*click*
"Okay guys, here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna take the bodies out of the missiles."
"Uh, sir? How does that plan have anything to do with the pointless conversation you just had with Old You?"
"Shut the fuck up before I airlock you like my last name was Roslin"

 

[chefbags]

Finn's body looks weird. Wrong actor for the role

This is a new way to look at it. Fuck acting skills. His body is weird so he's wrongly casted. Lol ok.

 

[super-heated plasma]

There's one story spoiler in there that A.J. just drops in, toward the end of the interview, I think. Noting that the

Spoiler

Falcon changes hands, probably passed on to Finn or Daisy, by the end

. Great interview but I'd rather have not read that.

I thought he was referring to it changing hands to Lando, where Lando broke off the Dish in ROTJ.

 

[Astral Dog]

What about those Obi Wan movies?

 

[Bobby Roberts]

What about those Obi Wan movies?

Just speculation-based rumors. Nothing was ever announced, and there were no solid details from which said speculation was sourced.

It sorta got willed into existence, basically. It's like the live-action Netflix series rumor, or the theatrical versions finally making it to hi-def: It makes sense that it would happen, it's likely going to happen, but there's not really anything behind it other than it seeming like it should make sense, and people wanting it.

 

[Nibel]

JJ is saying everything I want to hear and it's scary to me

 

[boiled goose]

He isn't a shit director. He wouldn't have gotten the job if that were even some kind of remote consensus. Internet negativity does not apply to things like this. Jurassic World is not some generally frowned upon movie. It's fine to not like it, but yeah, not everyone would agree, and obviously not Lucasfilm, who I trust are smart people that know what they're doing. Colin will also have even more experience going in as he's about to direct Book of Henry.

This won't be a case where 7 and 8 are ohhhh so good but 9 sucks.

Jurassic world as absolute expensive garbage. I honestly cant think of a single redeeming quality. Worst movie ive seen since Transformers 2.

 

[Oersted]

Into Darkness wasn't as great as the first Abrams Trek, but it was far from terrible.

The third act really brought it down, but it still wasn't bad.

First one wasn't really good. It was just... there.

 

[Ashhong]

Disagree.

Abrams did a great job with Star Trek 2009. Then Into Darkness happened and it was utter TRASH. He's 1 for 2 in bringing back a beloved series, so Episode VII could go either way.

I think VII will be fine, but if Abrams is doing Episode VIII then it could really end up as another Into Darkness. (Episode IX is already a write-off since the Jurassic World director can't make a decent film to save his life).

Technically he is 1 for 1 in bringing back a beloved series. Into Darkness shouldn't really count as "bringing it back". He brought Star Trek back to the mainstream with the first one.

Unless there is another franchise you are talking about

 

[brandonh83]

Jurassic world as absolute expensive garbage. I honestly cant think of a single redeeming quality. Worst movie ive seen since Transformers 2.

You'll forgive me if I classify this as hyperbole.