11 Times JJ Abrams Couldn't Even

JJ Abrams directed Star Trek. Boom. Crazy right? But then a very large corporation saw he could make them marginally more money and maybe not ruin their precious money machine by competently directing space battles and was like, "come over to the dark side" ha ha. That Very Large Corporation was Disney, and they own...Star Wars. Yeah. So this guy's like, I'm directing Star Trek AND Star Wars? 

I'd wager a quarter he could. Not. Even. Here are 11 more times, all of which involve Star Trek and Star Wars and ignore his other creative outlets, that JJ Abrams could not even. 

1. That time he was at Comic Con and was like, "the Starship Enterprise is like THIS big whoa man."

He also may have been talking about the Millennium Falcon idk when this is from, but it's not as big. Not THAT big. 

2. That time he taught R2-D2 how to read and was like, "I'm teaching a robot how to read WTHeck where did that fish come from"

3. That time he was doing some charity stuff in the desert and was like, "man, this camel muppet looks STONED haha I can't even"

4. That time ball droid wouldn't sit still so he could teach him/her how to read and was like "I'm just trying to give you the gift of literacy please I can't even"

5. When he got the job for this thing he hated as a kid and was like "I'm gonna punk all of you and make you hate the hedgehog guy through cultural saturation haha so many emotions"

6. That time he ruined a man's camera just becasuse he's a big hollywood director who hated Star Trek as a kid and he can't even handle all this attention right now

7. "I have a spaceship AND a spaceship chauffeur I can't even FATHOM this oops sorry Jeeves"

8. That time he used is directorial/dictatorial powers to invade the Walt Disney World Resort and Theme Park so he and his family could have a good time. Couldn't handle that at all

9. JJ Abrams is the creator/co-creator of many original properties such as Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe, all of which have large fan bases and have give many hours of entertainment to a very wide range of audiences. All you'll see here are Star Trek and Star Wars gifs. Other properties he did not create have taken over his life. How little even he must have I don't know

10. TFW you get those sweet sweet Jon Stewart applauses 

11. That feeling when you'll never win an Oscar for your work because it involves furry space men but at least you can stand next to a guy who's won one and then you look into the light. You've been dead this whole time.

All hail the new king of content. 

Frankenstein and Ex Machina

I can't get the novel Frankenstein out of my head. I read it months ago and it just sits in my brain, rolling back and forth, trying to connect with every bit of culture I consume. It's a book I long thought was simply an early piece of horror that inspired movies and pop culture so far removed from the actual story that they literally only share a name. Then I read the book.

Holy crap. And I don't think there's a book out there that speaks more to the relationship between science and humanity than any fiction out there. Well, I've only read maybe a handful of books that would fit that description, but Frankenstein may be the quintessential one.

Which brings me to Ex Machina.  It's a remarkable sci-fi film, and though it feels small because of it's setting and the number or characters, it is bigger and bolder than any of the effects-laden Marvel movies or recent space operas (note: I love the Marvel movies and have seen the last 7 in theatres). It carries the existential weight of Frankenstein and puts it in the 21st century. It is what Frankenstein, in my brain, was looking for.

That "existential weight" is the creation of something human through artificial means- something that can think and feel without the need to have been born through the same process as the average person. In Frankenstein, it's Adam, Victor Frankenstein's monster who was cobbled together out of body parts and jolted into life (through "galvanism", where electricity "galvanizes organisms into life"); in Ex Machina, it's Ava, the artificially intelligent robot brought to "life" by Oscar Isaac's character Nathan. With Ex Machina, though, is not really a horror movie, though I think the horror of Frankenstein is lost over the ages and the more extreme takes on it. Actually, and here are some spoilers for Ex Machina, the movie ends on a more horrific note: Ava tricking Caleb, the man brought in by Nathan to see whether or not she passes the Turing Test, into letting her out, killing Nathan, leaving Caleb sealed in the home where she was trapped, and taking the last chopper out. Adam in Frankenstein is actually begins as a sensitive soul, his murderous rage coming from the realization that he will be inherently rejected by society and his creator. Ava puts on a mask and becomes human; Adam has no recourse, and the monstrous life he earned just as rightfully as his creator, is doomed.

Ex Machina also comes out in a society where cloning and artificial intelligence are household words; in Mary Shelley's time, there were far more unknowns in science, and the word "scientist" wasn't even coined yet ("natural philosopher" was the term of the day). It makes sense, then, that they both create unease in different ways, Ex Machina with its grounded possibilities and Frankenstein with the sheer unlikeliness of it happening. After all, AI is something many are voicing real concerns about nowadays; nobody ever wanted to reanimate the dead.

But it's the weight of being the creator that weighs heaviest; "not the history of man, [the] history of gods," Caleb says in Ex Machina. Victor Frankenstein created Adam in the stereotypical mad scientist fashion, not thinking of the consequences. He couldn't take the weight and decided to flee, hoping his creation would just... disappear, I guess. He didn't really think anything through. Nathan had to contain it, because he knew the potential danger of his creation, and while he's probably madder a scientist than Frankenstein was, he's more paranoid of the unknowns. He had history behind him. He had Frankenstein.

These two stories are very important fables for today. There are still unknowns in the world of science, and maybe Ex Machina will help people step back and look at the wider issues associated with AI. I know it'll be there whenever I read a cautionary article in the future.

Sharknado and bad movie culture

I am not the most well-versed bad movie watcher: I haven’t seen Troll 2, Birdemic, or A Talking Cat!?, and my friends and I don’t gather to watch bad movies and joke out a running commentary a la Mystery Science Theatre 3000. But I have seen a number of MST3K episodes, and, more importantly, I do listen to a ton of bad movie podcasts. These podcasts, and the communities that have sprung up around them, show how bad movie watching has become a cultural phenomenon. It’s small, but, given the schedule of SyFy, it’s proven to be powerful.

But Syfy is doing its best to ruin this phenomenon.

Bad movie podcasts are a dime a dozen these days – The Flop House, How Did This Get Made?, and We Hate Movies are some of the more notable examples, but just look through iTunes and you’ll have a plethora of commentary on garbage cinema. What all these podcasts try and do is find the gold within this garbage, movies that are not terrible to sit through because they are enjoyable in their awfulness. A movie like The Room is one such example of gold: a straight-faced attempt to make a film that fails on every level, and whose failures are fun to watch and laugh at.

The Room’s creator, Tommy Wiseau, thinks he’s a great filmmaker; every convention appearance and statement he's made only reinforces his self-delusion. Though it sounds mean-spirited, this is what makes for a great bad movie – a sincere attempt at hitting all the bases of a successful movie, and tripping over every base even when the ump has called the hitter out. The Room is described as a “romantic drama”, but from the way people talk about it, it’s one of the great comedies of the 21^st century.

Syfy’s Sharknado series is the anti-Room. It is a bald-faced attempt to cash in on what makes The Room and its ilk likeable, to try and manufacture its own cult status. It knows what it’s doing and that what it's doing is stupid, and this is a cardinal sin of bad movie watching. For a film to be self-aware sucks the fun out of trying to find something to laugh at, like it’s elbowing the audience in the ribs the entire time, until the viewers’ ribs are thoroughly bruised.

But what’s worse is that it’s a manufactured part of a genuine, grassroots cultural phenomenon. Sharknado is making bad movies for the uninitiated, not for those who’ve waded through the piles and piles of garbage to find a laugh. When you listen to a podcast like The Flop House, which rates movies as Good-Bad, Bad-Bad, or A Movie You Kind Of Liked, more often than not you will get a bad-bad rating. It takes time and energy to find something that will end up being entertaining. Sy-Fy takes all the guesswork out by telling you their intentions through a stupid premise, D-list cameos, and tongue-in-cheek voice-overs. The only intent is to make something “bad”, and in this way they fail.

They made something that is just bad.