Star Wars, The Force Awakens
Jan. 4th, 2016 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI hate to say this, but I really wanted to like The Force Awakens more than I did. I can't, and for one simple reason: JJ Abrams.
In his "Star Trek" reboot, there's a scene where Kirk and his crew are marooned on a distant planet and from an interstellar distance they watch as Vulcan is consumed by an artificial black hole.
In his "Star Wars" reboot, from their rebel hideout the heroes watch as Coruscant is destroyed by Death Star III.
George Lucas was a science fiction nerd, along with everything else in his film nerd career. He knew he was writing science fantasy, but he wanted there to be the underpinnings of classic SF in his work. To that end, he had some respect for things like the speed of light, and vast interstellar distances.
JJ Abrams has no respect for space, or his viewers. To JJ Abrams, everything in the universe is in low orbit. Things happening across interstellar distances are immediately visible to everyone, everywhere in the galaxy, with at worst the resolution of an aircraft somewhere high overhead. It's an insult to the viewer to assume that they need "lights in the sky" confirmation of the horror the rump Imperials inflict on the Republic. It's a deformation of science fiction beyond all reasonable bounds.
We humans have a bad sense of causality in the light-speed sense of the term, but we do have an intuitive grasp of great distance, of information taking time to reach us, and of things happening beyond our sight. Abrams is so visually driven that he cannot think of a way of communicating these things, so he feels compelled to show us, directly, bluntly, artlessly.
I liked the movie, but I would have liked it more had it been in the hands of less inept director. Any depth to the film was not Abrams's fault.
In his "Star Trek" reboot, there's a scene where Kirk and his crew are marooned on a distant planet and from an interstellar distance they watch as Vulcan is consumed by an artificial black hole.
In his "Star Wars" reboot, from their rebel hideout the heroes watch as Coruscant is destroyed by Death Star III.
George Lucas was a science fiction nerd, along with everything else in his film nerd career. He knew he was writing science fantasy, but he wanted there to be the underpinnings of classic SF in his work. To that end, he had some respect for things like the speed of light, and vast interstellar distances.
JJ Abrams has no respect for space, or his viewers. To JJ Abrams, everything in the universe is in low orbit. Things happening across interstellar distances are immediately visible to everyone, everywhere in the galaxy, with at worst the resolution of an aircraft somewhere high overhead. It's an insult to the viewer to assume that they need "lights in the sky" confirmation of the horror the rump Imperials inflict on the Republic. It's a deformation of science fiction beyond all reasonable bounds.
We humans have a bad sense of causality in the light-speed sense of the term, but we do have an intuitive grasp of great distance, of information taking time to reach us, and of things happening beyond our sight. Abrams is so visually driven that he cannot think of a way of communicating these things, so he feels compelled to show us, directly, bluntly, artlessly.
I liked the movie, but I would have liked it more had it been in the hands of less inept director. Any depth to the film was not Abrams's fault.
