We got three contenders here:
JJ "Mystery Box" Abrams: Responsible for giving Star Wars his "non-writing" style of writing treatment. As usual, JJ had no answers to the many questions TFA raised and left it to others to figure them out.
Rian Johson: Has written and directed TLJ. 'Nuff said.
Kathleen Kennedy: She's the one who actually hired those two goofs.
Discuss.
RJ for all his faults clearly had some artistic credibility and KK is an executive whose job it is to make money - she's *meant* to be a hack.
Now JJA. 'ol JJ...
JJA has risen to the top of a wildly competitive creative medium without producing a single original work of merit. He is a parasite that has actively harmed film as a medium and I can only hope that his true legacy will be to live on as a verb , to 'Abrams', to 'fundamentally miss understand the elusive qualities of what elevates something beyond the sum of its parts', 'to bastardise', 'to steal', 'to whore out somebody more talented's ideas'.
JJ is the hack here. He literally hacked up Episode IV and made a new movie out of it.
Rian is a male feminist and studio whore. He also seems to be quite a dim bulb, intellectually.
KK is Ms. Peter Principle -- someone who was promoted to the level of her incompetence.
How on earth is jj the hack? He gave us things to talk about and explore in the next movies , why would he give everything away in one movie ? Rian Johnson could of explored Rey's and snokes origins but decided to throw them away , likewise with Luke's lightsaber , Rian Johnson is the hack , tfa was a much better film than tlj
shareI agree that tfa was the better film but I hated both.
JJ did a carbon copy of IV = hack
Rian did a carbon copy of a steaming pile of crap = lower than a hack.
'give everything away' he had nothing there!
Jesus I can't believe people actually fall for this mystery box bullshit!
All he had was a remake of A New Hope and every 'mystery' or plot thread was simply there to disguise this very obvious fact. C'mon was Snoke a good idea? Was Rey? Were these really acorns out of which a story could grow? Or are they the work of a hack? 'Mysterious old man' and 'flawless young woman'? Oh and a lightsaber that everybody knows was lost/destroyed 35 years ago but is now living in a shitty CGI Orange Yoda's basement? What a fantastic series of plot points with which to explore!
Han solo is dead. He killed off any chance of Luke and Han being on screen. And he did that because otherwise the empty shell of TFA had NOTHING.
The guy is the literal definition of a hack - he delivers a safe, mass produced product and he wouldn't know a good story if it bit him on the arse.
As usual, JJ had no answers to the many questions TFA raised and left it to others to figure them out.
Among other things, where did the First Order and the Resistance come from?
shareThis is the beginning of the opening crawl:
Luke Skywalker has vanished.
In his absence, the sinister
FIRST ORDER has risen from
the ashes of the Empire
The Resistance was explained in the movie. It's a group that formed because the New Republic didn't consider the First Order to be a valid threat and wouldn't commit any resources to stopping them.
C'mon - we both know that is weak; there's a huge explanation between a good explanation and a bad one...
What people wanted to know was 'how did the first order develop such a huge super weapon in secret' and 'what made them different to the Empire' amongst many many other things.
But we know the answer don't we? It's a soft reboot of A New Hope. And that's it.
They weren't different from the Empire, they were trying to continue the same course of action.
The backstory which was never directly relevant to the story, and thus not given in the movie, was that the Imperial remnants ran off to uncharted areas of the galaxy, which is also where Snoke hailed from. That's where Starkiller was developed and why they were able to work in secret before returning to the known galaxy.
In the grand Star Wars tradition going back decades, these kinds of side details can be found in other Star Wars resources like the art books and what not. They can't jam everything into the movies.
If you don't want to check out the books, then many websites like the Star Wars Wiki report on this stuff.
So why do they have a different name? A new logo? What the hell is the order and why was it the first?
You see any one save a hack would have the answers to those questions. JJ doesn't because he just doesn't care... a film needs bad guys and the bad guys need a name and they're evil and stuff. Is the extent of his 'craft'.
And running off to 'uncharted areas' doesn't explain how they pulled a planet sized weapon out of there arse - or where all the super duper star destroyers came from they seem to have in TLJ.
If that's enough to pass as an explanation for you, fine. My standards are a little bit higher, however.
shareIt's not like the original trilogy "explained" the Empire and its rise. That didn't happen until the prequels. Explaining every last detail and backstory is not something one should expect in a movie, unless those details happen to be a necessary plot element, like for example Kylo saying "Grandfather" to Darth Vader's helmet.
shareYeah, but Rose and Finn's side quest could have fleshed that stuff out instead of whatever it was they were trying to say.
shareANH didn't need to explain much because it was the first film. This was the 7th film, a sequel to the 6th and it did an absolutely awful job of explaining HOW we got from 6 to 7, which is the whole point of a sequel! To continue the story!
C'mon Frog I can tell from the way you write you're a smart guy, and I know you don't like TLJ so why give TFA a free pass?
The biggest hack was Lucas when he penned The Phantom Menace.
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