I take it that you never saw The Cloverfield Paradox, a pretty bad movie that Abrams decided to link in to the Cloverfield franchise midway through production. Turns out the monsters come from an orbital particle accelerator that opens up a portal to the monster dimension. The movie is set in 2038, but, per Wikipedia
I’ll hand this to him: he really DID find a cinematic way for future events to affect the past. The Cloverfield Paradox retroactively made me like Cloverfield less, just as Rise of Skywalker made me like The Force Awakens less.
One recurring thought I keep having about his work is his propensity for destroying things.
I remember being viscerally angry that we got introduced to Maz Katana’s place and then it was destroyed twenty minutes later. That’s twenty minutes interspersed in the manic JJ way with the other plot perspectives, so we probably didn’t get 10 minutes with it total.
To put it into perspective, imagine if they had destroyed Mos Eisley in the first film. How much content was made for the next 40 years using Mos Eisley, and how rich the whole franchise is because of all the places like that they have to work with? Maz Katana’s place was a whole culture to work with, and for JJ Abrams it was just something to blow up after 10 minutes of bad exposition.
Maybe it comes from being a director on effects movies and being desensitized to making beautiful sets and then destroying them. Maybe he’s just an asshole that doesn’t care anything more than making his umpteen million dollars off this one movie. Whatever it is, I wish he’s just stick to original franchises and leave the rest alone.
Remember: Seeking immortality makes you evil; whereas having it sort’ve gormlessly happen to you is good.
Aside: are we ever going to learn exactly how Palpatine went about remotely knocking up Shmi Skywalker? and did it involve any purple lightning at all?
I’m just saying that like Palpatine’s “peturn”, there are plenty of lazy writing arcs in the MCU that cheapen it’s experience as a cohesive universe which diminish it’s long term viability. For example, the arc reactor went from absolute necessary to keep Tony Stark alive, to being walked back to be a sorta handy device to keep his cell phone charged when streaming Spotify. He goes from destroying every robot, every suit, every bit of Iron Man tech he possesses, only to have rebuilt all of it (and more) by Age of Ultron.
For me, Star Wars canon has been so abused it’s almost not watchable. I’ll agree with you that the MCU isn’t there yet, but with Disney corporate in charge, I fear it will be soon.
I actually liked this concept - it should have been the concept from day one, none of this Snoke baloney. But the whole sequel story line got cludged together by too many cooks, zig zagged in direction, dumped and refocused characters. In general - just missed their mark.
The comic mini series, Dark Empire, had clones of the Emperor as a plot line and was, IMO a fantastic sequel to the films.
It’s basically the story line for Captain America foe Arnim Zola in the comics, where Zola himself, the Red Skull, and even Hitler had their minds downloaded into a variety of bodies (in the Skull’s case, once in a perfect clone of Steve Rogers’ body).
This was explained in the films. He got his heart fixed at the end of Iron Man 3 through conventional surgery. From that point on the arc reactor ceased to be a life support measure and became just a fancy battery for his suits.
