JJ Abrams with Tom Cruise on the set of Mission: Impossible 3 Photo: Stephen Vaughn
Halfway through JJ Abrams' 2009 Star Trek, Chris Pine's Captain James T Kirk is exiled to a barren ice planet. Abandoned by both friends and enemies, he must eke out an existence in an empty wasteland. Little did he know it at the time, but a similar fate awaited Abrams, the famed Milky Bar impersonator and, at that time, the boy wonder of American popcorn cinema. He has been stuck on his imaginary ice planet since December 2019. That's when he brought down the curtain on Disney's dismal Star Wars sequel trilogy with one of the worst films ever made: The Rise of Skywalker. The Rise of Skywalker grossed $1 billion, the minimum for any new Star Wars film, and became the seventh-highest-grossing feature film worldwide in 2019. So on paper it's not a disaster. But in terms of the damage done to the reputations of everyone involved, it was equivalent to a direct hit from the Death Star.
None of the actors went on to bigger or better things – with the possible exception of John Boyega, who starred in Steve McQueen's excellent Red, White and Blue and has since complained that his Star Wars character Finn was suspended because of his race. Disney, for its part, continues to struggle to prove that it is a worthy steward of Star Wars. The company has come under renewed criticism after recently announcing the return of intergalactic girl boss Daisy Ridley Rey for a sequel trilogy that no one but Ridley's Agents wanted.
Adam Driver in The Rise of Skywalker Ascension” Photo: Lucasfilm
Most of the damage, however, was taken by Abrams, who was not so much sent to director's prison as exiled to a director's prison planet in the Hollywood equivalent of the Outer Rim. In 2019, his apparent decline was a source of great satisfaction. Nothing inspires schadenfreude like a child prodigy who flies too high and then burns up on re-entry. That's exactly what happened to Abrams, who was accused by Star Wars fans of dragging their beloved saga down the drain.
But now, three and a half years later, Abrams is finally ready to leave his icy cave with two new Star Trek films. It's too early to talk about a JJ revival. It's a far cry from the glory days when Tom Cruise sought out Abrams to revive Mission: Impossible with the excellent Mission: Impossible 3. Or when Disney executive Kathleen Kennedy begged him to oversee the new Star Wars trilogy.
However, there are signs of life from the void. Abrams is returning to Star Trek to produce through his company Bad Robot a prequel to his 2009 film, directed by Toby Haynes, fresh off his collaboration with Tony Gilroy on the Star Wars series Andor. Plans are also moving forward – albeit at zero warp speed – for the fourth installment of the saga itself. Abrams won't be directing either, but whenever he's on a project, you can spot his moves a mile away. And so his fingerprints will inevitably be all over these new Tracks.
For lovers of pure escapism, this is good news. Whether it's the Star Trek films or the TV shows Lost, Fringe and Alias, Abrams is a master of pure excitement in the ejection seat. His work is entertainment for entertainment's sake – an escape hatch from the routine of everyday life, a place where you go to have fun and just have fun. It's good that he was back in the captain's chair.
This is despite the sour aftertaste that still lingers after The Rise of Skywalker. Its gruesome set pieces included a scene in which horses race across the surface of a Star Destroyer. Then there were all these cheap fakes (Chewbacca is dead! Oh no, he's not, etc.). And let's not forget the worst dialogue in Star Wars, when Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron sees stormtroopers with jetpacks and exclaims, “Are they flying now?!”
No one can deny that the film is – catastrophe. Even Abrams seemed to suspect he was born with a turkey while promoting it. “I’ve never been good at endings,” he told the New York Times. “I don’t really think I’m good at anything, but I know how to start a story. It’s difficult to complete a story.”
As the backlash mounted, Abrams was reluctant to defend Skywalker. The people who hated it were entitled to their point of view. It was an opinion with which he was surprisingly sympathetic. “I'd say they're right,” he said of the scoffers, though with the caveat that the minority who liked “The Rise of Skywalker” also had a valid point. “The people who love it more than anything else are right too.” Like it, hate it – it didn't seem to bother him.
Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy, actors John Boyega and Daisy Ridley and director JJ Abrams attend the 2015 Star Wars Celebration. Photo: Getty
The Rise of Skywalker damaged his reputation in Hollywood. The golden boy has lost his shine. In 2022, the unthinkable happened: one of his projects was canceled by HBO. Demimonde was intended to be an ambitious dimension-traversing television series, with echoes of his big hit Fringe. Filming was to take place in Belfast, in the same studio where HBO filmed Game of Thrones. But the new boss of HBO's parent company, David Zaslav, has just launched a wild cost-cutting campaign. When Abrams refused to give in to the $200 million budget, it was goodbye to Demimonde.
This was not the first Abrams project to fail. In 2016, he was set to direct an adaptation of the best-selling documentary Killers of the Flower Moon, a job later taken over by plucky newcomer Martin Scorsese. However, in the context of the supposed failure of The Rise of Skywalker, Demimonde's death was a blow to the jaw.
Now he has begun his comeback. This return includes the intriguing possibility that Abrams could convince Quentin Tarantino to pursue his ambitions of directing a Star Trek film. Tarantino was fanatical at first, and a script was completed based on the classic original Trek episode “A Piece of the Action”, where Kirk and Spock are imprisoned in a society that modeled itself on Chicago in the twenties. However, these plans then violated Tarantino's vow to make only 10 films, a promise that prevented him from getting carried away with science fiction. But in Hollywood you can never say never. Unless it concerns Abrams and Star Wars, which he almost certainly won't return to.
Star Trek is a better fit, even if he just returned as a producer. First, Trekkers are far less toxic than the Star Wars “Fandom Menace” fans who seem to live by hating every Jedi spin-off (sometimes with good reason).
Secondly, Abrams' brashness is perfect for Trek. While Star Trek is often considered Star Wars' more cerebral older brother, William Shatner-Leonard Nimoy's original series is full of escapist silliness—whether it's Captain Kirk fighting aliens in junkyards or Mr. Spock playing his lush Vulcan lyre. Abrams, who wasn't a Trek fan growing up, acknowledged that pulp quality is critical to Star Trek—something missing from recent TV reboots like Star Trek: Discovery.
< p>Abrams first became famous for his “mystery box” approach to storytelling. Fringe and especially Lost kept the plot under lock and key. He gave us fragments. But the general picture was provided to the audience. He followed a similar path in his first Star Wars film, 2015's The Force Awakens, which hinted that Rey's parents were connected to Luke Skywalker's story.
Unfortunately, those seeds were squashed by deplorable behavior Rian Johnson. sequel to The Last Jedi. Meanwhile, the mystery box concept has fallen out of favor amid a glut of pointlessly complex post-Lost shows, such as Netflix's 1899, which was canceled within weeks of arriving on the streamer.
None of this It's not Abrams' fault. Mission: Impossible III, the 2011 Stranger Things-style Spielberg tribute, Super 8 and even Star Wars: The Force Awakens are all testaments to his unique talent for fast-paced, mysterious storytelling. At a time when subpar Marvel films have emptied the multiplex, there's surely room for more of Abrams' secret sauce. Fingers crossed that these new Star Trek projects are just the beginning and that Star Trek returns to theaters in earnest soon.
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