You mean since he fraked with Star Trek?
Fraked?
GarandMarine - dude, personally I've seen enough of Scarlett Johansson. Don't need to shoe-horn her into Star Wars just because she looks like a woman from a series of books Disney have just said aren't canonical (hardly a coincidence with the timing of the cast being announced). What's with the dislike of Abrams? Everyone has their own opinions, but could he be any better/worse than say Lucas himself, or Richard Marquand?
It was an offhand comedic example of a classic Star Wars character, (Please note that games, comics, animated features, etc are included in the swath of the EU The Mouse just destroyed, not just the books.) more particularly, an extremely strong female lead character and bad ass that could have easily been folded into this reboot as opposed to one new female fortheloveofthegodsletherbealead character and... Carrie Fisher. Relax. Smoke a bowl. What ever you do down there to chill out. Play with poisonous snakes or something I guess, and of course it's not a coincidence. THAT WAS THE ENTIRE FRAKKING POINT!
As for Abrams he's just a shitty director. Ol'George's writing might have gone down hill on the Prequels but he's not a bad director (he only directed one Star Wars movie any way) his pre-Star Wars films prove his chops. THX-1138 his debut, in particular was quite good.
Abrams meanwhile has churned out a good movie NEVER. Seriously his entire filmography is shit unless you were big into Lost, which I always thought wasn't that good to begin with, and after the freaking travesty he committed against Star Trek... well I'm not exactly positive about Captain Lensflare's contribution to Star Wars.
Just remember this is the guy who took a show and universe based around the best things about humanity, an ideal future for us to look towards with hope*... and turned it into a standard issue action sci fi piece wearing the corpse of the former like a serial killer wearing a meat suit made of the flesh of his victims.
Seriously. Fuck that guy.
He's on the same level of filmmaker as the guy who did the Stallone era Judge Dredd.
Speaking of things that are a crime against it's source material...
*Yes I'm aware the series got significantly darker in and around DS9, but if you want to count that as a gritty reboot it's proof that good writers and directors can do gritty reboots of a franchise with panache and still keep the bright future caramel goodness at that heart of Star Trek in place.
Hmm. I do love a good toad-lickin'!
You of course, have an extremely valid point. I mean, I don't know, probably fired up and taking everything Star Wars a bit too literally when I posted that. Stay away from fan-forums, they fuck with your head. Mara Jade was, with Kyle Katarn, an extremely cool character. She was pretty much the one massive, strong female lead from the EU (although there is Dalaa, Mon Mothma, Bant and a slew of other more minor characters). In fact a
Winter character would do really well (think Brienne from Game of Thrones). I think there is still a female yet to be cast based on the casting call. Star Wars is in dire need of a good female character that doesn't only serve to be the love interest of one of the many male characters. Don't get me wrong, Leia and Padme are badass, but the new trilogy is going to need someone to be consistently strong. Mara Jade could've worked. I'm assuming they'll take that blueprint and run with it in the new trilogy.
Ventress? Really? She seemed like a kind of run-of-the-mill Sith to me, solely created to battle Jedi and act as a buffer between the jedi and Dooku.
As for Abrams' direction...I think the difference is he is a fan of Star Wars and did Star Trek for the money, I assume. He's extremely capable of fan-service (good/bad thing, take your pick) and yeah, his TV work has been up and down, and he's done some dodgey shakey-cam films (Cloverfield, Super 8 ) but I didn't think Star Trek or Into Darkness were bad, in fact, I quite liked them. But they weren't particularly shy about their using women for eye candy either, Uhura being the only exception.
Comparisons to Lucas will be inescapable - I didn't think much of American Graffiti to be honest. He's a story/screenwriter at heart. Direction...it comes second to his amazing ability to build believable worlds (Star Wars, Indy). And it's those worlds we'll be seeing again come 2015.