The J. J. Abrams Reboot Playbook

A lot has already been written about how The Force Awakens is really just a reboot of the original Star Wars Trilogy rather than a sequel — so I’m not going to spend time going over territory that has already been covered. But what I find interesting is that how similar The Force Awakens is to Abrams’ Star Trek movies.

Abrams’ challenge with Star Trek was that he wanted it to have a very different tone than Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek and the spinoff shows — action/adventure movies vs. science fiction being used as a metaphor to explore contemporary issues — but didn’t want to alienate the fans given that they represented a lot of ticket buyers.

So to appease the fans Abrams crammed Star Trek with callbacks to favorite Trek moments, such as: Turning the Kobayashi Maru test in a major plot point for Act I; the Orion Slave Girl (green alien woman); Captain Pike; disclosing knowledge from the future with Scotty; and so on.

The purpose of the callbacks is to let fans know that Abrams is there
for the Trekkies; their sacred source material will be protected — it’s a
wink and secret handshake. 

Abrams, though, knew that callbacks wouldn’t be enough, so everyone’s favorite Star Trek actor, Leonard Nimoy, appears as Mr. Spock with a fairly large role — large enough that it qualifies as one last Spock adventure.

In the sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, Abrams takes things even further by bringing back the all-time fan favorite villain and recycling a key sequence from Wrath of Khan: Spock sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise, but flipping things so it’s Kirk who makes a selfless act. So for the fans, even though Star Trek has radically changed from Roddenberry’s vision, they still feel catered to, getting familiar characters, plots, actors, and of course, all of the callbacks.

So that takes us to The Force Awakens where everything Abrams did and learned with the first two Star Trek movies is further refined into a much more polished product (let’s be honest, Star Trek Into Darkness was pretty “blah”).

I’m only just beginning to realize and appreciate the full impact of what Abrams did in Star Trek.

Both Jurassic World and Terminator Genesis very closely mimicked Abrams’ Star Trek reboot playbook (especially considering that the previous attempt to reboot the Terminator franchise went in a completely different direction).

As studios resurrect old properties we’re going to see this template used more and more.

Now you probably enjoyed all of these movies I mentioned — except for Terminator Genesis — and think that I’m nothing more than a Debbie Downer.

Fair enough.

But the problem with this method of filmmaking is that you are never going to experience the thrill of seeing something that’s new and unexpected. For all of George Lucas’ flaws, he was once a visionary filmmaker.

People like J. J. Abrams are certainly skilled craftsmen, but they will never create anything new that captures your imagination.