It’s down to JJ Abrams style of writing. He’s frequently talked about his love for a “mystery box” where he believes a good mystery is better than fact. The problem with his writing is, unlike most other writers who use mystery boxes, Abrams doesn’t even know himself what is inside that box. And you see this across all of his work.
Frankly, I find him to be the most overrated writer and director in Hollywood because of this. I find everything he does to be borderline unwatchable. Though with his recent criticisms for Star Wars and Star Trek, it does feel like his audiences are starting to lose their love for him too.
Yeah, I'd rather not see JJ Abrams touch any of my favourite things anymore. So of course it turns out two of his writers became the Rings of Power showrunners. Fortunately they seem to at least know what's in their mystery boxes, but personally I could do without them.
The Star Wars sequels definitely suffered from the fact that Abrams just threw a lot of shit at the wall to see what stuck, then Johnson saw it was all shit and took the story into a different direction, and then Abrams lost his shit in the final installment.
Can we please just get back to writing proper stories again?
Unlike a lot of the old generation of Star Wars fandom, I actually liked a lot of what the sequels were trying to do, and I wanted to see a fresh, revisionist (even deconstructionist) take on the lore. Instead we got A New Hope for the third time and an incoherent mess of wasted potential and mutual sabotage between directors.
It's actually astounding that they would treat one of the most lucrative properties in history the way they did. Maybe they just assumed Star Wars was so big it couldn't fail.
I am old generation Star Wars fandom, and I actually liked what The Last Jedi tried to do. It didn't really succeed, but questioning the Jedi teachings, or at least Yoda's approach to them, that drove Anakin and possible Count Dooku to the dark side, and that Luke had to ignore in order to defeat Palpatine, is an awesome idea, and one of the few things left to really move Star Wars forward at that point.
It didn't come out well, was muddled in other crap, and the whole trilogy was crippled by two arguing directors, but that basic idea was solid. If that was indeed the intention.
I also liked the first half of The Force Awakens, when it was still about the Search for Skywalker, before it turned into Death Star 3.
Combine the first half of TFA with the good bits of TLJ, and you've got a good story.
You say that but I remember as far back as the 80s there being claims that George Lucas had planned 9 movies, including 3 prequels (which at that stage hadn’t been written).
Lucas then compounded things by selling the rights to Disney, a company famed for milking their IP.
Much as I enjoy the occasional Star Wars saga, I never really considered Lucas to be a great steward of the franchise either.
Super 8 has a coherent reveal of the mystery box. Lost did not and disappointed at the end.
The kelvin timeline from when he rebooted Star Trek is sort of mystery box but then we learn who Nero is in a coherent way early on as well. I did not like that JJ destroyed Vulcan and frankly made a confusing alternate, darker timeline at all. The reboots are good movies but they were not good Star Trek movies. Missed opportunities to explore the Roddenberry style themes of humanity and deep moral questions under a backdrop of optimism.
Speaking of the optimism in Star Trek... is it just me, or do Discovery and Strange New Worlds seem to be a bit "over-optimistic?" There's some really long scenes where they are trying to do an inspirational, optimistic Picard-style speech, talking about love and humanity and compassion, doing the right thing, etc.
Yeah those things are great, but spending 15 minutes showing every member of the bridge crew standing up, and repeating "we are Starfleet" every episode kinda starts to get old after a little while. The shows have been great otherwise, but I'm wondering if they are making this over the top on purpose, or if they are just missing the point a little bit.
Frankly, I find him to be the most overrated writer and director in Hollywood because of this. I find everything he does to be borderline unwatchable. Though with his recent criticisms for Star Wars and Star Trek, it does feel like his audiences are starting to lose their love for him too.