Midweek Mouth-off: Future hits and helmers

Posted in Opinion by - February 06, 2013


It’s been a big week for directorial announcements.

JJ Abrams bounces from the Star Trek reboot to helm the geek catnip that is Star Wars: Episode VII. Meanwhile, in surprise news, Duncan “My name’s not Zowie Bowie” Jones swaps sci-fi (Moon, Source Code) for fantasy, accepting the task of bringing the long-discussed World of WarCraft movie to the big screen.

Today then we want to hear your thoughts on these announcements? Do you agree with the choices? Do you think Abrams and Jones are up for the challenge? Or did you have a different directorial first choice for these 2 high profile projects?

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This post was written by Noelle Adams
Copywriter by day, pop culture blogger by night (and lunch breaks and weekends), Noelle has been a movie addict since her mother rather inappropriately took her to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at the cinema when she was just 3. Her all-time cinema faves include the Indy trilogy, Batman Returns, Coraline, The Prestige, Gladiator and all those awesome dark fantasy flicks of the 1980s.
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  • Admiral Chief Troll Erwin

    Long live Star Wars!

  • http://twitter.com/JChess1 Justin Hess

    Not having played Warcraft, I can’t actually say yay or nay on Jones. Generally, I think he’s a damn good director and they should count themselves lucky to have nabbed him.

    Star Wars on the other hand – I’m not an Abrams hater, but most of his work in film has hardly lit my ass on fire. Yes, the Star Wars uni is one that is about spectacle but it’s also one filled with so much detailed that the customary breathless pacing of Abrams would mean the loss of that.

    I also feel that Abrams, while he is a writer, has little appreciation for storytelling and the original Star Wars films were very much classical storytelling, given Lucas’ obsession with Campbell’s Hero with A Thousand Faces. Yeah, there were Pew Pew lasers and funny creatures but there were also the underlying themes of destiny, fathers and sons and so on.

    Given Abrams previous films, I get the feeling that any approach to these kinds of themes would be serviceable at best, lacking real dramatic impact and like Super 8, would merely ape what had come before him instead of having any real substantial value.

    Of course, there will be people who say they don’t come to Star Wars for deeper themes and storytelling. They come for adventure and eye-blazing spectacle.

    But it’s solid storytelling that gives those things resonance and why the original films (A New Hope and Empire, anyway) are still held in high regard even 30 years after release

  • http://twitter.com/blahsum James Francis

    Abrams once made an interesting comment while punting the Star Trek remake. He said he wouldn’t make a James Bond film, because in his mind Bond has generally been done right and exploited its potential. I’m curious to see if he maintains that idea going into Star Wars.

    As for the movies – Well, WOW is based on a game, so who really cares? It will either be passable or awful. In the rare cases when directors did treat the material with real attention – I’m thinking of Christophe Gans’ adaptation of Silent Hill – it didn’t pull audiences.

    Star Wars has long stopped being about a specific director’s vision. Between the movies, TV shows and other spin-offs, it’s surprising there is an untainted core concept left at all. In my opinion, if anyone has shown the ability to pull that ship straight, it’s Abrams.