Jorge is a fantastically creative guy. He needs limitations on that creativity, but he is undeniably a foundation of ideas.

JJ Abrams mostly regurgitates without having any truly unique ideas. Anything unique he does have is either a subversion or an unfinished mystery concept that’s film student tier. Especially in Star Wars and Trek, he took a bunch of the most surface level aspects from the franchises and threw them in without really doing anything with them.

Wait, is that what J. J. stands for?

I’ll add that this didn’t start with the SW prequel movies either. The various essays on the topic typically focus on The Phantom Menace to make this case (see: Red Letter Media); we do love to hate on that movie. But if you look to early drafts of the very first Star Wars movie script, it’s clear that it took a village to make it more than B-movie material. Also, the making-of stories are complete with every kind of move-making person improving and adding to our producer’s vision, right down to salvaging the whole mess in the editing room. It’s been a problem the entire time.

Now I wonder if THX-1138 and American Graffiti have similar war-stories behind them.