"SKumm's Thoughts"
A Love Letter To J.J. Abrams
Dearest J.J.:
I love you. Not in
an “I want to mate with you” way. It is
more like a “will you take my first born child as a gift” kinda way. Seriously. (Sorry, Brandon)
To say that you have become the Savior of Hollywood would be
like saying humans need air to live.
It’s just one of those obvious statements that, if uttered aloud, anyone
standing nearby would scream “NO DUH, JACKASS”, and hit you with a stick to
emphasize their point. What you did with
the “Star Wars” franchise…
But to exalt in your awesomeness by only bringing up your
latest stroke of genius is doing you a disservice. What you did with “Star Trek” was, literally, unbelievable. Not only did you reboot a series which
floundered miserably after the last four Hollywood iterations, but you did it
with brains, humor, and no little amount of fascinating technique. I even enjoyed INTO DARKNESS, and I have
been threatened by die-hard Trekkies over that admission. (By the way, I now refer to them as
Trekorists—those people are psychotic, and I fully expect an entire landing
party of them to try and shove a photon torpedo up my Romulan one sunny day.) You could quite possibly be one of the
smartest fanboys on this stinkin’ planet; for the Trekorists that didn’t
understand how certain plot-points of INTO DARKNESS were possible (future-Spock
set it up in the first one, you freaking morons) just shows a certain lack
of…oh, I don’t know…CEREBRAL FUNCTION.
And for those arguing certain points of THE FORCE AWAKENS… I
don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, other than to say that, while some of
the points were valid (another Death star?
Come on, man; surely the First Order could have come up with a different
freaking weapon of mass destruction by now…) (and that isn’t spoiling anything,
so for anyone that hasn’t seen AWAKENS yet that thinks I just spoiled the whole
film for them, please go pound sand with your face), most were made by those
people that stand around at the truck stop with a Schlitz’s in one hand and the
sports page in the other, telling their buddies how they woulda won the big
game and how much of a tool the head coach is.
Don’t listen to them, Mr. Abrams.
They, too, are Trekorists.
I’m sorry to see that you will not be directing the next
installment of the “Star Wars” franchise.
I fear for how the universe you re-birthed will continue. It’s like how Ridley Scott abandoned ALIEN
after the first film, like a god that created this wonderful thing and then
left it behind like a used up ex with social anxiety issues and bad hair
(wait…). I understand that you are
staying on as a producer (very smart thinking, especially after FORCE AWAKENS
grossed enough money to purchase an actual Star Destroyer…). But you are leaving the writing and directing
up to someone else entirely. Not that
Rian Johnson doesn’t know his way around the genre (LOOPER was brilliant), and
I understand that you have a crap-ton of projects in the works as a producer,
but what comes next? SUPER 8 showed the
world how creatively awesome your brain really works (not to mention “Lost”,
“Alias”, etc.); everything after that has gone bigger and better.
Hopefully, Hollywood won’t pigeonhole you into being the
Grandmaster of Reboots. If you are
unfortunate enough to hit such a roadblock, might I suggest your next project
be to figure out how to have a test tube baby with GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
writer/director James Gunn? If that
works, please allow the child to be raised by MAD MAX guru George Miller.
Yours, always,
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