JJ Abrams: Proof that I’m Not Completely Pompous

Despite what it may look like by my writings, I try to be completely open minded about movies and TV show. There are a very, very select few of them that I dislike so much that I think anyone who likes them is a complete idiot. Now this isn’t going to turn into me saying that I think anyone who like JJ Abrams is an idiot. Far from it, this is about me thinking JJ Abrams is a painfully over rated writer even though I’ve never seen anything he’s written/worked on, and yet I have had people agree with me when talking about him. People who think I have seen his stuff.

His big burst onto the scene was Alias (yes he worked on things here and there before this), which brought Jennifer Garner into our hearts, and eventually Ben Affleck’s bed. Now when I first heard about the show I really wanted to see it, but I got busy and before I knew it had ended up missing the first few seasons. But I did catch commercials from time to time and noticed something: Everyone in the show is lying and everyone changes from bad guy to good guy seemingly every season, giving a sense that no one knows where they want the show to go. I ran this past some people who I knew watched the show, and they all agreed with how contrived that bit of the show was.

Then came Lost, one of the highest rated network television shows ever. When I first heard about this show I again was really curious, but that’s because I originally thought it would be a mini-series. As soon as I found out it would be a regular series I didn’t even try to watch it. Why? Because the premise of the show is people trapped on an island. That’s it. Yes there’s weird stuff going on, but right away I knew that there’s no way they ‘d answer all the questions within the first season, and by halfway through the third season I would find myself yelling “I get it! They’re trapped on an island! Now tell me why!” Now despite the good things I’ve heard about the END of the third season, it appears (at least according to friends I have who are fans of the series) that they found themselves yelling "I get it, just tell me what's going on." And now they’re going to stretch it out to five seasons. I can’t imagine how many people will die from embolisms from the frustration before the series finale.

And now for the mother of it all. My most recent discovery where JJ Abrams makes me never want to give any of my time to anything he’s worked on. No not Mission Impossible 3 (which I heard was just painfully underwhelming). No, not his new unnamed monster movie (what kind of asshole takes this long to just tell people what his movie’s officially called!). No not even his new Star Trek movie about a young Captain Kirk. As it turns out, before Bryan Singer gave us a horrible Superman movie, JJ Abrams wrote a script that made Singer’s version look like the freakin’ Citizen Kane of super hero movies.

Now his planned Superman movie has been long leaked to the world, and blasted by the likes of Peter David, Kevin Smith, Stan Lee, and Mike Mignola, so I will actually not comment on it too much, but it needs to be known by more people just how bad it was. I will say however, if it weren’t a Superman movie, it’s actually a pretty intriguing idea.

In a rather large nut shell: Kal-El (Superman) is the son of Jor-El, the ruler of Krypton (this makes Superman a prince), is rocketed to earth so that one day he can return to free Krypton (which doesn’t get destroyed) from the evil Kryptonians and their robot army. He grows up normal on Earth until he discovers a container that holds a symbiotic battle suit (like Venom in Spider-Man, but it’s Superman’s costume) that gives him all of his powers (so he puts it on and takes it off a lot). As he appears on the scene, FBI Agent Lex Luthor, head of an FBI division that specializes in strange phenomenon (like in the X-Files) tries to convince his superiors that Superman is a dangerous alien who will turn on Earth and take it over, so they need to capture him. Luthor’s desires are shot down, in the meantime a couple evil Kryptonians finally track down Kal-El and show up on Earth. Luthor confronts them to reveal that he himself is a Kryptonian agent sent to gather information on Earth so that Krypton could conquer it with ease. So they team up and Superman must fight all three of them. Then there’s a big climatic fight scene at the end where an army of good and evil Kryptonians fight in the skies above earth. Not just fight, but using a form of Kryptonian flying martial arts, Sky-Fu if you will (I came up with that when going on this rant out loud one time. Feel free to use it).

One of the best things is that after getting blasted mercilessly, Abrams tried to defend himself saying that he didn’t want to make a Superman movie that was based on the comics. It’s freakin’ Superman!!! Show the S-shield to some kid in Malaysia and he’ll say “Superman!” He’s a global icon for THE good guy! Unless someone was pointing a gun to your head, there is no excuse for calling something that insipid, Superman.

Now do I think Mr. Abrams is completely incompetent? No. Just that up until this point he’s been ridiculously lucky. Heck, this “Cloverfield” and Star Trek movie could actually be good. But it’s sad how right I have been so far without ever seeing anything he’s worked on.