JJ ABRAMS & STAR TREK
JJ ABRAMS is a clever creator of smartly-made, often just-dumb-enough roller coaster style entertainment with character driven stories generally in action and science fiction genres. You might not love his priorities as a creator, but it's hard to not be impressed by his skill and craft. He has a huge body of work, much of it I'm unfamiliar with. I missed LOST in its initial run and while I had a fair amount of respect for the guy it took me until 2012 to genuinely warm up to what he does, and only in 2013 have I started to actively think about it.
Most of what I want to talk about revolves around the JJ Abrams Star Trek films, I'll maybe talk about LOST in a separate post at some point (I'm still watching it, currently in the midst of Season 2).
Star Trek (2009) is a Star Trek flavored blockbuster entertainment product. It's an action film in a shiny world of the future, it spends no time exploring or contemplating any science fiction concepts. The film has a character driven plot, various things happen so that characters can be in various locations saying various things. The events themselves don't seem to matter, there is no particular meaning to gleaned from the story.
My impression of JJ Abrams before seeing this film was informed by what little I knew of LOST, a show he co-created that is known for its uniquely mysterious vibe and strong characters. I had seen the JJ-directed Mission Impossible III (2006), his first feature as director, an unremarkable but capable action film. I had seen the JJ-produced Cloverfield (2008), a kind of first person monster movie, ingeniously made. My perception of JJ's work was that he's clearly a notable talent, who is immensely productive and whose output is generally very positively received, but I felt his output wasn't for me.
When I first saw JJ's Star Trek I was saddened by how little of what I valued about Star Trek and science fiction was represented in the film. The original show sought to push the envelope, and tackle interesting, thorny questions. Gene Rodenberry conceived of a setting where humanity had grown up and had overcome sexism (to a point) and bigotry and racism. Sure it was goofy, and sure it doesn't look super progressive in retrospect, but Star Trek was Martin Luther King's favourite TV show… and that's a big deal. Many of the stories involved characters being faced with perplexing otherworldly scenarios and then grappling with them, and the characters are put into situations where they have to broaden their worldview, where they are forced to evaluate their assumptions and shift their perspectives, creating little epiphanies and memorable, hopeful moments for the audience to be inspired by.
By contrast, this new film jettisoned these priorities in favour of presenting sexy, charming characters in shiny locations surrounded by constantly exploding spaceships. In terms of its gender, race and sexual orientation it was less progressive than the 60s show. As an action film, violence and combat is glorified without much in the way of self awareness, and the politics of the film are very much rooted in the 'who gives a shit' of the post-post 9/11 era. So in these ways, and in its conceptual vapidity or lack of epiphanic ambition, I was disappointed… but I could certainly see the film's high quality from an entertainment product perspective, and I certainly noticed that the film had managed to attract and engage a broad audience who had long since given up on Star Trek (the franchise was in disarray before this film). Still, I couldn't quite let the film into my heart and admit that I actually liked it.
A little later on I saw JJ Abrams's film Super 8 (2011), which is an accomplished imitation of an 80s Steven Spielberg film. It's charming, it's smart but also pleasantly dumb, and it has heart. Like Star Trek it's an imposter, it's jj abrams 'doing' 80s spielberg in the same way that he is 'doing' 60s star trek, replicating and re-inventing someone else's concept and style with a high level of craft and cleverness, but i enjoyed the film… and interestingly (to me), I warmed up to JJ's shiny lens flare heavy style. With Star Trek, my mindset being what it was, I thought it was too much, too garish, too much razzle-dazzle covering for a lack of anything substantive, and I think that's probably still true, but I started to really enjoy them anyways.
Having at this point finally accepted JJ's approach, I found myself re-watching Star Trek, this time with an open mind, my earlier criticisms noted but put aside. I enjoyed it. Sure it's still a noisy, vapid film that undermines Gene Rodenberry's vision while it seems to celebrate it… but that aside, I found myself fascinated by the way in which the film was put together, how it keeps things moving, how the characters are presented. I missed out on a lot of the last ten years of popular high-production-values character driven genre tv shows like Heroes and LOST, but re-watching Star Trek I felt like I finally started to 'get' why those shows worked. It's a very specific style, rooted in solidly-defined characters in various well understood conflicts and relationships. I was also able to perceive dozens of very smart touches sprinkled throughout, little nods and references for people like me with a history with the Star Trek franchise.
Above all though, the reason the JJ Abrams Star Trek film is interesting to me is because it was a blockbuster, a bona fide mass market hit, it wasn't offensive or bloodily violent, it pleased a lot of old timer fans, and a lot of people who knew nothing about the series. That's pretty impressive! I don't like a lot of what the film represents about the state of culture and entertainment, proof that I'm officially a curmudgeon, but as someone who aspires to create entertainment in the science fiction vein, entertainment that I fondly hope will resonate with a broad audience, not just the niche of people like me, I want to keep the example of JJ Abrams in mind, I want to learn from him and integrate these learnings into my own strategies.
I recently saw the second JJ Abrams Star Trek film, it has the subtitle 'Into Darkness'. I went with my expectations calibrated and with an open mind, and while there were some decisions early on that rubbed me the wrong way, I ended up enjoying the film quite a bit. The story twists and turns and reveals itself pretty expertly. The tone moves around, it begins with a kind of over the top exuberant action scene, moves to a series of character building scenes some of which are light hearted, others are intended to tug at heart-strings, and then it bobs and weaves through romantic arguments and action scenes and anything else you could think of. It's constantly switching things up and for a while it seems as if the film doesn't know where it's going or what it's about but it turns out it knows exactly where it's going. The politics at the start of the film are very worrying, with a variety of post post 9/11 thinking on display, but this turns out to be kind of a ruse, and in a not-too-credible way the film ends with a rejection of this darkness a return to the more optimistic values Star Trek used to epitomize.
This was JJ's second and final Star Trek film, and he wanted to wrap it up, to celebrate the high notes of the franchise and end the film with an excited forward-looking spirit, and I would say he achieved those goals. JJ chose to revisit a beloved villain character and a plot line from the original series and movies, and he creates a plot structure that intentionally mirrors it, and amplifies it, and twists it. Many of these decisions made will fall flat with fans of the old series, but on the whole I thought it was all very well handled, even if it was all facade, lacking the depth, sincerity and intended meanings of the original stories (not that I'm claiming the original stories are literature, mind, but they were more sincere).
I realized that as absurd as the plot lines are, the characters are presented with a high enough degree of integrity, they are true to themselves. This isn't Shatner playing Kirk, but it is still very much Kirk. Spock comes across differently, he's a different Spock, but he's still Spock, and his relationship with Kirk seems genuine. Many of the supporting characters come through in a way that the original actors might be proud of. These are well cast films, in the same way that LOST was well cast, but much of the credit goes to the folks behind the scenes, thinking these characters through and then creating scenes and dialogue that feel right, setting things up perfectly for the actors.
So how do these Star Trek films relate to this new project? Here are some take-aways (writing is in progress).
1. lens effects. shiny sets, shiny materials.
I'm convinced that a lot of art direction effort in these directions will yield a very distinct and impressive look, and I believe that if we develop a language of lens effects we can use that language to communicate subtle things about the world and the player's status. So step one is to apply glows, flares, shines and anything else we can imagine to everything in the world to make it all pop. Step two would involve going back through and orchestrating these elements to better communicate aspects of the game. eg. Imagine a very specific and iconic lens effect representing sunlight. Now imagine this lens effect changing in character depending on time of day, angle, cloud cover and weather. The player depends on sunlight to see, and the player's ship depends on sunlight as a power source, so the player must remain aware of the power of the sun, and this lens effect, if designed correctly, will be an integral visual/information element.
2. moments of exuberance, silliness. moments that earn a beastie boys soundtrack.
Science fiction epics and space operas can slow down to a ponderous pace and inflate with self importance, weighed down by gravitas and big ideas. 2001 is unwatchable to many due to its grand, glacial pace. One of the best examples of this slow paced space opera syndrome is the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which drags on and on and on in an attempt to convey cosmic majesty. JJ's Star Treks move briskly along, and the films intentionally include moments of pure fun and exhilaration, giving the audience an opportunity to smile. Notably: In the first Star Trek we meet a young James T. Kirk, a boy, driving a stolen car across a desert with the Beastie Boys' 'Sabotage' on the radio. He is pursued by robot cops or some such. It's a funny scene, it tells us about young Kirk's attitude, and the Beastie Boys vibe keeps everything grounded. This ain't no space opera. It's a good contrast. Similarly in the second Star Trek, the film opens with an over-the-top caper in progress, with Kirk and Bones running through a bright red forest, pursued by white and yellow natives, while Spock is skydiving into a volcano to active some widget. It's basically an amped up Star Trek cartoon, and it's funny.
3. slow scenes are ok, so long as the audience can hit the 'action' button
Sometimes things need to slow down, but in all of Star Trek, and most noticeably in the JJ films, there's always some threat on the way that will interrupt whatever's happening and send the story in a new direction. In the second JJ Star Trek there's a scene where our heroes Kirk, Spock and Uhura are off on some top secret mission, piloting a spaceship into unknown territory, and a kind of comedic romantic argument erupts between Uhura and Spock, and argument that eventually ropes in Kirk. Just as this scene has played out, wouldn't you know it, they're under attack and off we go, evading baddies and flying through tight spaces. This interruption could've happened at any time. This seems like a useful device for an interactive experience! In a videogame there are sometimes 'cutscenes', scenes where the player simply watches and listens, and in many video games these 'cutscenes' are skippable, all the player has to do is press a button and boom they're back in the action. I like the idea of there being (optional) scenes that kind of slow down, get quiet, getting into some detail or some subtlety, maybe slowing to a snails pace, but with the push of a button the player can initiate something that gets things rolling again. I'll try and think this through and conceive of some specific examples.
4. characters with integrity. characters with a history together.
Star Trek has a leg-up because while the actors are new to their roles, their characters have a long history. I often wonder what it's like for someone unfamiliar with the series watching these films. I suspect that the way the characters have been handled in the JJ films, the audience knows enough about them, and they can intuit the history and the relationships. This history of the characters are an asset, deployed carefully. By contrast, the Star Trek film immediately preceding the JJ reboot, a film called 'Nemesis', was so mired in the history of the series that it was impenetrable, even to someone like me who knows way too much about the series. In that case, the history of the world and its characters was a serious liability, excluding all but the most dedicated fans.
I don't know how to concoct this kind of history for newly-conceived characters and world, but I guess a good first step is just thinking about this, carving them out conceptually, eventually finding people, maybe voice actors, to step in and 'be' those characters to some degree.
5. having a master plan
having a master plan, a story with twists and turns, many of which aren't revealed until late, twists that shake what you thought the story was about, that question some of the assumptions made in the early part of the story.
6. smart but dumb enough
stay true to our goals and sensibilities, but aim for big, simple explosive and satisfying mass market entertainment...
the result will be a mix
if we aim for smart, intellecutally interesting and subtle... we'll lose a lot of people
with sworcery we aimed for the biggest, broadest, most resonant thing we could think of
but the way it turned out, it had its own peculiar personality and sensibility
i think we want to keep some of this jj abrams star trek stuff in mind, keep the strategies in mind, keep the audience in mind
and i'm not worried we'll end up with anything derivative, because our philosophes are coming from such a differnt place
7. tackling some big idea
my primary criticism of the star trek films is that they aren't about anything, they aren't attempting to create an epiphanic moment, they aren't attempting to use a science and nature inspired concept to create an interesting morality play, and other than a few scenes late in 'into darkness' they seem completely unconcerned with the progressive humanism that so defined gene rodenberry's vision. so the takeaway is that for this project we do need the vision to be defined by a progressive humanism, we do need to engineer various epiphanic moments, and we do need to take science and nature inspired concepts to create interesting situations with various philosophical implications.