RUMOR: Disney Wants J.J. Abrams Back To Direct “Star Wars: Episode IX”
This story has been making the rounds this week that J.J. Abrams may be returning to direct “Star Wars: Episode IX.”
From Latino Review:
Despite his absence from the production team on the next installment, his commitment to other ongoing franchises and early rumors of disagreements between him and the Disney Team, there’s a good chance that J.J. Abrams will be back to direct Star Wars: Episode IX.
There are enough conversations about J.J. Abrams returning to direct Episode IX that we’ve been able to independently verify it four times that his name is the front-runner for the last trilogy installment.
From Making StarWars:
There was also another rumor going around that Abrams was reviewing Rian Johnson’s work and they were worked out a final outline for the final installment in this trilogy because VIII is getting tighter and more refined (it should shoot with some overlap with Rogue One). That makes sense and it kind of a “of course they would do that” kind of thing. He is the executive producer. There is another rumor that Rian Johnson is not totally out IX but the production timeline makes it seem nearly impossible and from what I have seen that appears to be true about the timeline aspect.
That rumor about Abrams is going around Latino Review reported today. I personally don’t think its really worked out yet. But here’s the big thing for me. J.J. Abrams executive producing the rest of the trilogy might have been agreed upon before he ever signed. But it probably also means Abrams is doing a kick ass job with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Bob Iger and Kathleen Kennedy are pleased with his work (which is not surprising but still good to hear).
The good thing here, if this is true, is that Disney has seen very early cuts of the film and they are loving what they have seen and they want Abrams back.
My personal opinion is let’s see what Abrams does with the “The Force Awakens” before we get too excited. I’ve been burned before with the promise of a new “Star Wars” movie and probably what affected the movie the most was bad directing by George Lucas. I have no problem saying that I am not a fan of The Prequels. The Prequel Trilogy had many problems but this always bothered me the most. You had actors such as Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, Samuel L Jackson, Christopher Lee, Brian Blessed and Hayden Christensen (he was OK in “Jumper”) and they were all horrible? This has to be the result of Lucas’ poor directing skills. These are actors that I have seen in many other movies where they have given some great performances. But now you put all of these actors together in a movie trilogy and all of their acting is wooden, boring and lifeless. That’s not the actors fault, it’s the director’s. I know people will debate me on this but they all acted horribly in the Prequels. Even Yoda was bad, and he was great in The Original Trilogy!
My point is that it’s not always a good thing to have the same director doing ever single movie of a trilogy. You also dont want to give one man to much power in which he feels he has free reign to do whatever he wants. I felt that having Peter Jackson direct all of the films in “The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy” worked very well but look what he did to “The Hobbit Trilogy.” To me the best Star Wars movie was “The Empire Strikes Back” and a huge part of it was because Irving Kirshner directed the film instead of George Lucas. If Lucas would have directed that film, it would have been a completely different film. Lucas has said that “Empire” is his least favorite “Star Wars” film.
I really need to see what J.J. Abrams does with his first “Star Wars” movie before I can be excited or disappointed with the thought of his return. And I cant wait….but I hope it’s good!
