STAR WARS EPISODE IX: RETURN OF THE J.J.
- Adam Tye
- Sep 13, 2017
- 5 min read
J.J. Abrams returns to put Star Wars back on cruise control
Colin Trevorrow’s swift exit from the Episode IX premises (due to, by some accounts, his massive Death Star sized ego) has slipped swiftly into our rear-view mirrors, as Lucasfilm turns to J.J. Abrams to stick the new trilogy’s landing, essentially swapping Diet Spielberg for Spielberg Zero. So you can wave goodbye to your wishlist of David Lynch (really?), George Miller (okay, that would have been awesome) and Rian Johnson (*sniff*) to helm the final installment and instead look forward to another visually slick and blisteringly-paced entry in the Nu-Star Wars universe.
To paraphrase many Star Wars characters: I’ve got an tepidly optimistic feeling about this.
Let’s start with most straightforward response to this news, which is that given the choice between an Abrams-helmed Episode IX and a Trevorrow-helmed Episode IX, I will take Abrams’ version any day. I don’t take a great amount of pleasure in bashing people’s movies, but I make little bones about my dislike for Trevorrow’s Jurassic World – a film with obnoxiously awful characterization as well as some of the most hollow nostalgia baiting ever to grace your eyeballs. Stick Abrams (or most people) next to Trevorrow and they’ll look like fucking Kubrick.
But Abrams isn’t just an attractive choice in contrast to Trevorrow. I'm not sure exactly the worth in going over these points seeing as we already have a Star Wars movie available to demonstrate them, but he certainly has a technical prowess envied by most Hollywood directors, with The Force Awakens in particular achieving a terrific blend of old school Spielberg-esque cinematography, whilst keeping things kinetic enough to fit with modern filmmaking sensibilities. His sense of pacing is bewildering and his love of Star Wars is apparent enough to hand over at the very least a solid, charming entry in the saga (again, we’ve already seen he can do this). I've been dismissive in the past when people mention how J.J. Abrams earned Lucasfilm 2 billion dollars from The Force Awakens (surely any decent Star Wars movie was going to earn all the money?) but I probably/definitely shouldn’t be, given how absurd the pressure of navigating not just the fans’ demands but also the studio’s demands too must have been. Given the apparent directorial difficulties occurring at Lucasfilm recently, perhaps Abrams is just what the studio needed internally at the very least.
The other half of my response comes from whether or not Episode IX suffers from some of Abrams worst impulses, or whether he is able to rise above them, possibly buoyed by the direction set by Rian Johnson’s upcoming Episode VIII, which Abrams already apparently reveres as a script that he wished he had directed. Aside from the ubiquitous complaint that The Force Awakens was too similar to A New Hope, over time I’ve come to recognise that possibly the biggest flaw in The Force Awakens is that the film moves so quickly that some of the characterisation gets a bit lost in the blur. Taking the ‘Plinkett’ test of having to describe a character without referring to appearance or profession, describing Rey and Finn is not impossible, but certainly trickier than describing Han Solo or Kylo Ren (the most fully-fleshed character in the new trilogy so far). Abrams’ pacing is so ferocious that these kind of cracks don’t tend to show at first, but over time they become clearer and clearer, which might go some way towards explaining why The Force Awakens gets progressively harder for me to rewatch.
I’m less worried about this for Episode IX, however, largely because everything we’re hearing and seeing about Episode VIII seems to indicate that Johnson will be taking Star Wars to some uncharted territory, whilst also beefing out the new characters that were introduced in Episode VII. Given J.J. Abrams technical abilities, I don’t think it’s too unreasonable for Abrams to conjure up a fitting end to the characters’ storylines after Johnson has had his way with them.
The real question when it comes to Abrams' involvement with Episode IX, is whether he's the sort of choice people want to see tackle Star Wars again. We've already seen the kind of film he can deliver and even as someone who enjoyed The Force Awakens, I'm having trouble mustering mountains of enthusiasm a second go, given the lost opportunity to see someone else tackle the project (ignore the blatant hypocrisy in my wish that Johnson got to do Episode IX as well as VIII). But then, that someone else was originally planned to be Colin Trevorrow, so maybe I should stop complaining.
Whatever the case, with Abrams in the cockpit once again, Star Wars is probably about to cruise in for a pretty leisurely Episode IX landing, even if I can give you good odds that it will have at least two Death Stars in it.
Please Abrams, don’t put multiple Death Stars in it.
About that wishlist I mentioned earlier, even though it’s redundant now:
David Lynch – I know he was originally considered for Episode VI and all that, but come on – really? Star Wars is inherently auteristic and I understand that, but I’m not sure it’s the kind of franchise that opens itself up to multiple kinds of stylistic takes. Ever since the original came out, each film has been done very much in the vein of Lucas’ original vision and I’m sure Rian Johnson’s film, as much as a shakeup as it looks to be, will continue to do something similar. There’s a specific kind of adventure-y tone to this franchise that I’m not sure Lynch would fit particularly gracefully into. I’d suggest he have a go at one of the Star Wars Story movies instead, but it looks like those movies are just Lucasfilm’s plan to sneak us a ton of prequels so maybe not.
George Miller – Okay so on the one hand, hell yes. Watch Mad Max: Fury Road and tell me Miller doesn’t have to the visual storytelling chops and even nuance to pull of a bludgeoning Star Wars movie. On the other hand, Miller seems like a bit of a wild card when it comes to the filmmaking process which Lucasfilm probably doesn’t want right about now. So I agree, this would have been awesome, but it was also always unlikely.
Rian Johnson – I was holding out hope for this one, given how much I love Looper and how The Last Jedi looks to be quite a different take on this new trilogy. It would’ve made sense to have Johnson guide the series to the finish line from there, but alas it seems that making a Star Wars movie is somewhat exhausting, which is, you know, fair enough. Here’s hoping that The Last Jedi will deliver on all the hype I keep building up for it.
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