JJ Abrams is World's Greatest Producer of Fan Fic
[no spoilers] I don't mean the title negatively -- I liked the reboots of both Star Trek and Star Wars that he wrote and directed. Given the long absence of each franchise, there is no problem in my mind restarting the series with an homage to the old series and characters. In particular, Abrams is great at peppering the movie with little shout-outs and inside jokes for the fan base. And both are reasonably good adventure movies with beautiful action scenes.
The problems comes with the second movie, and moving the series into new territory. The second Star Trek movie (Into the Darkness) couldn't seem to extricate itself from fan fic mode, retelling the Kahn story for the third time, with cute little reverses like Kirk dying and Spock screaming "Kahn.....", the opposite from The Wrath of Khan.
I understand the pressure. The fan base of both franchises was ready to strangle Abrams at the first hint of heresy to the original material. But for God sakes the Star Wars loyalists, of which I consider myself one, endured Jar Jar. The new Star Wars movie has some flaws, but it is a perfectly serviceable and enjoyable reboot. Now it's time to take some risks with it.
Postscript: Is there a handbook of Star Wars Imperial architecture? Is it driven entirely by creating movie aesthetics or have directors started to work a running gag here? In the new movie -- I promise this is not really a spoiler -- there is a scene with one of those classic Imperial rooms with the infinitely deep hole in it, featuring tiny narrow walkways without handrails (I consider this not a spoiler since at least one such room has probably been featured in every Star Wars movie). Anyway, one of the characters finds themselves clinging to the walls of said infinite drop some 12 or 15 fee below the nearest walkway. And what do you know, there is some sort of switch lever there. There are wall switches in my house that I think are located inconveniently, but wtf? Who designs these places?
By the way, the movie Galaxy Quest, which I still love, had a great parody of this sort of sci fi architecture. John Scalzi's Redshirts also touches on this territory as well.
