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Has J.J. Abrams ever directed a bad movie?

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Wolfgunblood Garopa said:
It betrays the movie, while being the most typical action sequence. The movie went through so much effort to explain how powerful Khan is. Not even a half Vulcan should be able to withstand even a few hits from him, much less stay on those moving vehicles in the air while fighting him. Khan is also smarter and faster than anyone else- he wouldn't tactically lose in a fight. He single handedly kicked the asses of 100 or so Klingons in hand to hand combat with one hand while simultaneously shooting down all of their ships with a super laser in the other. Spock might be tough and half Vulcan, but that guy should be able to kick his ass pretty quickly.
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I'd say you're looking into that a bit too much. Who gives a shit. It's a superhuman dude fighting a space elf guy. If I analyzed movies like this in this sort of manner I'd hate them all.
 
Mission Impossible 3 was pretty forgettable, maybe that, I honestly can't remember anything about it, especially next to Ghost Protocol. Star Trek (2009) is one of my favorite movies ever, and I thought Super 8 was really great. Into Darkness was a disappointing follow-up that was still solid, though it definitely had issues with its script.
 
whats up with him and all the fuckin' canted angles in Star Trek. Like that's more distracting to men than all the pointless lens flare or his constantly moving/shaking camera. He starts the camera at a really skewed angle and then backs up and spirals until it's straight up (or a little skewed the other way?). Its kind of movement you can only do if you're trying to visualize a character's psychotic break from fuckin' reality. Not just to spruce up a scene of dialog. Like its all over this damn movie.
 
Fancy Clown said:
Whoa, really? I can get not liking Quantum, but the car chase at the beginning and the Opera house stuff were both better than anything in Into Darkness by a pretty wide margin.
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The car chase at the beginning isn't very well directed or edited. In fact, large chunks of the movie are pretty poorly edited. Marc Forster shouldn't be making action movies.

The Opera House scene is one of my favorite Bond sequences in a very long time though.

Quantum is okay. It's not a *bad* film. I've previously described it as DLC for Casino Royale. It's right on the bubble as being a top 10 Bond.

I think Into Darkness is a good movie. Not great. But the idea that there's some sort of huge quality gulf between it and its predecessor is baffling, to me. Most of the criticisms against it are vague/generic, and the more I hear them, the more it becomes apparent the criticisms are based less in personal opinion and more in internet narrative. Most of the criticisms of the film are just a loose pile of empty talking points that dissolve under basic analysis. There's not a lot of thought put into it. If people put as much thought into their opinion of the film as they put into coming up with adjectives to shove in front of the word "shitty," it'd be more fun to discuss.
 
ViewtifulJC said:
whats up with him and all the fuckin' canted angles in Star Trek. Like that's more distracting to men than all the pointless lens flare or his constantly moving/shaking camera. He starts the camera at a really skewed angle and then backs up and spirals until it's straight up (or a little skewed the other way?). Its kind of movement you can only do if you're trying to visualize a character's psychotic break from fuckin' reality. Not just to spruce up a scene of dialog. Like its all over this damn movie.
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lol yeah. I've noticed that too. Just a signature thing I guess. I don't think it's too extreme to hurt anything but I definitely know what you're talking about.

BobbyRoberts said:
I think Into Darkness is a good movie. Not great. But the idea that there's some sort of huge quality gulf between it and its predecessor is baffling, to me. Most of the criticisms against it are vague/generic, and the more I hear them, the more it becomes apparent the criticisms are based less in personal opinion and more in internet narrative. Most of the criticisms of the film are just a loose pile of empty talking points that dissolve under basic analysis. There's not a lot of thought put into it. If people put as much thought into their opinion of the film as they put into coming up with adjectives to shove in front of the word "shitty," it'd be more fun to discuss.
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You nailed it. This is what I was bringing up in my post on the last page. Most criticisms I see against it seemingly boil down to fanboy drivel or harping too much on stupid shit.
 
This is a weird thread to be honest. I know we all want him to knock Star Wars out of the park, but legend? He hasn't even made enough stuff to be considered that even if it was all great.

And yes, you could argue that something like half his movies aren't very good (not that I would).

You should've said Tarantino or Scorsese or something.
 
BobbyRoberts said:
The car chase at the beginning isn't very well directed or edited. In fact, large chunks of the movie are pretty poorly edited. Marc Forster shouldn't be making action movies.

The Opera House scene is one of my favorite Bond sequences in a very long time though.

Quantum is okay. It's not a *bad* film. I've previously described it as DLC for Casino Royale. It's right on the bubble as being a top 10 Bond.

I think Into Darkness is a good movie. Not great. But the idea that there's some sort of huge quality gulf between it and its predecessor is baffling, to me. Most of the criticisms against it are vague/generic, and the more I hear them, the more it becomes apparent the criticisms are based less in personal opinion and more in internet narrative. Most of the criticisms of the film are just a loose pile of empty talking points that dissolve under basic analysis. There's not a lot of thought put into it. If people put as much thought into their opinion of the film as they put into coming up with adjectives to shove in front of the word "shitty," it'd be more fun to discuss.
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Lol Casino Royale DLC is spot on.

As for some Into Darkness criticism, I've got some. My main problem was how aritificial the drama was. The best example of this is Spock's "death". A little earlier in the film they loudly and obviously make a point about how the blood can bring dead things back to life. Then the scene happens, and it's this swelling, emotional and loving homage to the iconic scene from Wrath of Khan, and then not 10 minutes after this happens they use the blood to bring Spock back to life. It's like JJ and company didn't even care about the emotional impact or stakes of the scene, they just loved that moment from Wrath of Khan and wanted to shoehorn it in.

I also thought Khan was not a good villain. Apart from that moment where he snaps that guy's neck like its nothing, he never felt like much of a threat becuase almost the whole movie is about every single one of his plans going wrong and him having to scrabble about! The climax of the movie is his ship getting dusted so he's just like "fuck it I'll crash it into a city and run away". It just felt at odds with the set up and reveal of him as this menacing, state-you down through the glass, scheming, powerful, clever ultra villain.

I haven't seen it or the original recently enough to get into a detailed comparison of what the first one did better, so I'll just say some vague words about how the first felt more colorful, fun, propulsive, and dramatic in an interesting way while Into Darkness was kind of tired and cold. it never realized its potential as a swashbuckling space adventure on a grand scale because it was too muddled up in the complexities of its not very interesting tale of double crossing and revenge plotting.

Also, I agree with VJC about all the canted angles, they really bother me haha.
 
I scourge Star Wars trailers for canted angles, so far just that one where the Tie Fighter is escaping. I'll let that one go, Abrams. But if the next trailer comes out and the squad is sitting in the millennium falcon talking, you better have tempered down that feeling of "yeah lets do some dutch angles here for no reason"...mothafucker I will never forgive this
 
ViewtifulJC said:
I scourge Star Wars trailers for canted angles, so far just that one where the Tie Fighter is escaping. I'll let that one go, Abrams. But if the next trailer comes out and the squad is sitting in the millennium falcon talking, you better have tempered down that feeling of "yeah lets do some dutch angles here for no reason"...mothafucker I will never forgive this
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But outer space and zero gravity and lasers equate to wacky twisting angles all over the place or something
 
Fancy Clown said:
Then the scene happens, and it's this swelling, emotional and loving homage to the iconic scene from Wrath of Khan, and then not 10 minutes after this happens they use the blood to bring Kirk back to life. It's like JJ and company didn't even care about the emotional impact or stakes of the scene, they just loved that moment from Wrath of Khan and wanted to shoehorn it in.
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I agree with this. The moment is unearned. The actual "KHAAAAAN" scream plays better (it actually means something here) but it (and the insertion of Old Spock) feels really lazy and ill-considered. If the first movie was some Paul's Boutique-esque culture collage, that last third of Into Darkness is basically Puffy from 1995 adding high-hats to 32 bar samples and calling it good.

I also agree that the film is colder/meaner than the first (which I thought was a bad call from jump - when the title of the film was announced I was like "aww shitty. C'mon now", especially considering what so many people loved about the first was that it was FUN) , and that Khan wasn't all that great a villain, but then again, I feel like if they hadn't leaned so heavily on "WHO IS HE" in the marketing, and hadn't shoehorned in that scene as their emotional climax for this movie, people wouldn't have judged Cumberbatch's Khan as harshly, because it would have been way more obvious/prominent that the villain was Marcus. I mean, Marcus is still the primary villain - but so much of the focus (not in the movie, but outside of it) is on Khan that it just kinda slides off.
 
BobbyRoberts said:
I agree with this. The moment is unearned. The actual "KHAAAAAN" scream plays better (it actually means something here) but it (and the insertion of Old Spock) feels really lazy and ill-considered. If the first movie was some Paul's Boutique-esque culture collage, that last third of Into Darkness is basically Puffy from 1995 adding high-hats to 32 bar samples and calling it good.

I also agree that the film is colder/meaner than the first (which I thought was a bad call from jump - when the title of the film was announced I was like "aww shitty. C'mon now", especially considering what so many people loved about the first was that it was FUN) , and that Khan wasn't all that great a villain, but then again, I feel like if they hadn't leaned so heavily on "WHO IS HE" in the marketing, and hadn't shoehorned in that scene as their emotional climax for this movie, people wouldn't have judged Cumberbatch's Khan as harshly, because it would have been way more obvious/prominent that the villain was Marcus. I mean, Marcus is still the primary villain - but so much of the focus (not in the movie, but outside of it) is on Khan that it just kinda slides off.
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I completely forgot Marcus was the main villain (or that his name was Marcus) because he was so boring and white-bread compared to the hyped up and snarling Khan. At least Khan had some character lol. And the whole 'mentor officer is actually the bad guy" felt trite in the way they handled it, because they spent all their time and effort on Khan. I don't remember the specifics of how that plotting was handled, but I remember being thoroughly unsurprised and unimpressed when he was revealed to be the big bad behind the scenes.
 
JJ has never made a legit crap film, only a series of films that are all pale imitations of shit that came out decades ago.

He is the directorial equivalent of nostalgia pandering.
 
Mission: Impossible III is seriously enjoyable and I adore Star Trek.

Into Darkness and Super 8 aren't bad, but I don't think they're all that good either. My issues with the former, however, have nothing to do with the direction.
 
Wow, he has only directed 4 movies? I thought he had done way more than that.

I've never seen MI:3 but I have seen both of the Star Trek movies and Super 8, I thought all 3 movies were great.

[edit]

I surprisingly amount of people hated the first Star Trek movie on Gaf.
 
He's never directed a bad movie but he's never directed a great one either and his direction style is merely solid craftsman. And that don't make him a legend.

He's good with lens flares though - he excels at that.
 
uncelestial said:
Kinda sucks the hype out of Star Wars 7 to know that.
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Er, why? That was almost 20 years ago lol. Completely different thing too. Abrams has written a lot of good stuff since but you're worried because of Armageddon? He was also a co-writer with Lawrence Kasdan who scripted Empire.
 
All you guys trashing the Star Trek movies, do you do it because you think they are poorly made films? Or do you just dislike what they did to the Star Trek mythos? Honest question.

Personally, I don't have much invested in Star Trek. To me, these new ones were pretty entertaining movies. To provide some contrast, I thought the Star Wars prequels were bad, and not just because of midicholrians or anything else related to that universe. They were objectively bad. With bad acting and groan inducing writing. I don't think you can say that about Abrams' Star Trek flms.
 
brandonh83 said:
Oh pfft. I'd wager a lot of people found his first Star Trek to be quite memorable.
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True that. That first Star Trek was memorable for some good and some bad, but I'd consider it a good movie even with it's big flaws.

He's directed good movies. He will have a directed a great movie pretty soon. :P
 
Warm Machine said:
Michael Bay is one of the best photographers working in film. The problem with his movies has never been how they are shot, it is their lack of taste or respect for the audience.

JJ isn't in the same league as Bay photographically. That isn't to say his movies are not visual, he just has no visual identity in the way that Ridley Scott, Adrian Lyne, Speilberg, Verbinski, Fincher, Cameron, or Bay has.
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Please don't include Bay (or Lyne for that matter) in lists where they don't belong. Bay has nowhere near the compostion, editing and scene construction skills of Fincher, Speilberg or Scott (particularly in their peak films they are way, way above Bay's skills and capabilities. Bay is also pretty poor at maintaining geography of action in his bigger set pieces.

BobbyRoberts said:
The car chase at the beginning isn't very well directed or edited. In fact, large chunks of the movie are pretty poorly edited. Marc Forster shouldn't be making action movies.

The Opera House scene is one of my favorite Bond sequences in a very long time though.

Quantum is okay. It's not a *bad* film. I've previously described it as DLC for Casino Royale. It's right on the bubble as being a top 10 Bond.

I think Into Darkness is a good movie. Not great. But the idea that there's some sort of huge quality gulf between it and its predecessor is baffling, to me. Most of the criticisms against it are vague/generic, and the more I hear them, the more it becomes apparent the criticisms are based less in personal opinion and more in internet narrative. Most of the criticisms of the film are just a loose pile of empty talking points that dissolve under basic analysis. There's not a lot of thought put into it. If people put as much thought into their opinion of the film as they put into coming up with adjectives to shove in front of the word "shitty," it'd be more fun to discuss.
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Both Star Trek and Into Darkness are pretty flawed and I've read plenty of sensibly criticism of both. Into Darkness gets judged more harshly IMHO because:
  • it has a great number of failures of internal logic: hell the big opening makes zero sense and even betrays it's own logic exposing why its a dumb sequence itself
  • it has fewer decent scenes/moments than Star Trek, which at least had some decent moments in the opening sequence, use of Spock Prime, key death scenes, etc. In every aspect Darkness was weaker across the board (apart from Weller who was terrific as ever but sadly sidelined as an interesting villain to shoehorn in Khan)
  • Both featured strong actors in prime villain roles (Bana and Cumberbach) and both rather wasted them in the end

Really neither is that good a film viewed critically (i.e. how good is script and narrative really, how strong are its themes and how well does it execute them) and both feature the modern habit of betraying their own internal logic every time it suits them but Star Trek at least felt lighter and fun and the cast felt like they were enjoying the roles, Into Darkness felt like a half assed mix of Wrath of Khan and Empire Strikes Back and the loss of fun really made the flaws it shares with the first film stick out more hence the poorer reception.

It did look lovely though.

I think they nailed the cast for the reboot by JJ and the plots they went for undermined the execution; particularly the fact JJ was clearly not really much of a fan of the classic Star Trek tone and kept trying to "Star Wars" it.

Hopefully now he's making a film in a franchise he seems actually passionate about he'll deliver something much more satisfying than his two flawed ST films.
 
For me, Into Darkness was the closest he has come to directing a bad movie and even then it was still a serviceable but flawed action flick. It mostly suffers from a bad script that does nothing to further the series. It felt more like a tv episode than a movie. But its still competent so not quite bad.
 
EGM1966 said:
I think they nailed the cast for the reboot by JJ and the plots they went for undermined the execution; particularly the fact JJ was clearly not really much of a fan of the classic Star Trek tone and kept trying to "Star Wars" it.

Hopefully now he's making a film in a franchise he seems actually passionate about he'll deliver something much more satisfying than his two flawed ST films.
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I think the "fan" aspect is increasingly overstated/overinflated. It suggests he half-assed it because he didn't really care, and that fandom itself is an automatic positive in the filmmaking process. I think there's plenty of examples (Star Trek II is a particularly great one, Empire Strikes Back is another) that go to the idea that being a fan plays very little (if any) role in the resultant quality of the film.

The problems with both Star Trek films are apparent in Super 8 and Mission Impossible, as well, just to varying degrees. And I'm fairly certain the catalyst for those problems isn't his level of fandom or passion for the film he's working on.

The fandom aspect is marketing driven. Its not really relevant to his filmmaking abilities at all.
 
From the movies he has directed so far I would rank them as:

  1. Star Trek (9/10)
  2. Mission Impossible III (8/10)
  3. Star Trek Into Darkness (7/10)
  4. Super 8 (7/10)

I really love his movies especially the first Star Trek, but I felt Into Darkness was a little bit derivative and so so at times.
Plus it was pretty annoying how they white washed Khan.

On a side note though, JJ Abrams usually has Michael Giacchino scoring the music, and he has done some fucking great music.
 
uncelestial said:
Because Armageddon is a legitimate contender for the worst script ever made into a summer blockbuster?
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Is that the only part of my post you saw? These things aren't so black and white. There are countless factors as to why what Abrams did with Armageddon absolutely does not apply here one iota. If Abrams continued to write scripts like that there'd be some pause, but that isn't the case and hasn't been for a long time.
 
brandonh83 said:
It's about being in the moment. When I watch a movie if I stop and think I can guess or make a good assumption about what will happen or who will live or die or whatever, that's just movies, but you're meant to take them moment to moment. Why even watch movies like this? You know Indiana Jones won't die.
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It's not about whether Indiana Jones dies. A movie teasing one of its climaxes as the first thing you see though? Much different tone. MI3 had some good moments but that wasn't one of them. MI3 even had surprises, yet this was the least of its bag of tricks.
 
brandonh83 said:
I'd say you're looking into that a bit too much. Who gives a shit. It's a superhuman dude fighting a space elf guy. If I analyzed movies like this in this sort of manner I'd hate them all.
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This isn't deep analysis - the whole movie is spent building up Kahn, and then he's beaten in a way that obviously and completely undermines the way he's defined. It's facially stupid.

This would be like if Jurassic Park ended with someone punching a T-Rex in the face to knock it out.
 
Trident said:
This would be like if Jurassic Park ended with someone punching a T-Rex in the face to knock it out.
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I wouldn't say that lol

I also thought Khan was a bit beat up from that ship crash as it were and Spock turned into a bat out of hell over the Kirk thing. I dunno it wasn't jarring to me. Oh, and he was actually taken out after she came and shot the hell out of him. The fight was pretty level until then. Khan is tough but Spock is as well. This is why I mostly find these complaints like this ridiculous. There are various factors if you pay attention. It wasn't just "Spock won wtf how"
 
Man, I do not get the Super 8 hate. It is a great film. MI3 is the best of the series in my opinion and I liked both of the Star Trek movies he has done (though both have some faults)
 
Super 8 - that's what I meant.

I thought Super 8 was completely overrated.

Cloverfield sucked too, but that was just produced by JJ.

Just a bunch of ripoffs.

Cloverfield - godzilla ripoff/Blair Witch ripoff

Super8 - ET/Close Encounters ripoff
 
Abrams has never given a poorly directed film. He can typically make me forget about the issues with the writing on his films, and since he's working with a great writer on TFA, I have high hopes for that project. So, I'd say Abrams actually is a great director, the scripts are just sometimes subpar.
 
Super 8 was decent.
It certainly wasn't the Goonies, ET, and didn't even have the charme and ingenuity of Explorers, but it wasn't bad.
I hate everything star trek, so I wouldn't know

I know what his first bad movie is going to be though...

A lot of people are going to hate TFA no matter what anyway
 
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