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Rank JJ Abrams directed movies from best to last

SkyMasterson

SkyMasterson

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,001
Jawmuncher said:
He really only directed 6 movies?

What was it that made him such a big deal? Just Star Trek?
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He co/created some of the biggest shows of the early 2000's(Lost being huge) and his directorial debut was a really well made, fun movie.
Then he brought back Star Trek from the dead, with another fun, well made movie(and in a time when Star Wars was long gone).

After Star Trek is when he kinda goes off rails a bit. I still enjoyed Into Darkness. Super was ok. It was worth a watch for sure, but didn't live up to the expectations of the trailer. TFA is a really well paced movie, but I personally was super disappointed after the initial screening. When I accepted it for what it was, I had fun with it after. Rise of Skywalker was just really dumb though. Again, in terms of production value and pacing, it wasn't awful, but just super disappointing story and character moments. He's a good bubble gum director for sure, who probably makes the mistake of handling too many IP's, when he should just keep doing original ideas.
 
Paquete_PT

Paquete_PT

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
5,331
He's one of the most overrated directors in my opinion. None of those movies was particularly great or remarkable for me.
 
Jeffolation

Jeffolation

Member
Oct 30, 2017
7,117
1. Star Trek
2. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
3. Super 8
4. Star Trek Into Darkness
5. Mission Impossible III
6. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
 
H2intensity

H2intensity

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
921
My list will be this:

1. Star Trek
2. Super 8
3. Mission Impossible 3
4. Star Trek Into Darkness
5 Star Wars: The Force Awakens
6. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Star Trek is his best effort, it really has best idea to make Star Trek back and become relevant again but sadly its the only decent Star Trek movie in modern era.

ST >>> S8 > MI3 >>>>STID> TFA >>>>>>>>>>>>>>TRoS
 
Dreams-Visions

Dreams-Visions

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
41,368
Miami, FL
Marcellus Wallace said:
Here is the list:

Mission Impossible 3
Star Trek
Super 8
Star Trek Into Darkness
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
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Is this really his whole filmography? Surely he's done smaller movies? I can't imagine he started with 100+m budget movies from the jump.

That said, of this list

Star Trek
The Force Awakens
MI3
Into Darkness
Super 8

*smile pile of doggie shit*




TRoS


And to be fair, I haven't seen Super 8 since it released. I really don't remember the movie at all. I just remember being unimpressed relative to the marketing and promo material which gave the movie a lot of hype.
 
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Chibs

Chibs

Member
Nov 5, 2017
4,506
Belgium
  1. The Force Awakens
  2. Star Trek
  3. Super 8
  4. Mission Impossible 3
  5. Rise of Skywalker
  6. Star Trek Into Darkness
Honestly it kinda breaks my heart how he made two great entries in two legendary franchises only to follow up with pretty bad sequels... It especially hurts with Star Wars.
 
Gay Bowser

Gay Bowser

Member
Oct 30, 2017
17,708
Dreams-Visions said:
ah. That's a lot of trust.
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He co-created Lost and directed the two-hour pilot before he got handed Star Trek. After that pilot he could probably pick and choose between film offers.

The only one that's really surprising is MI3, which he was actually offered before Lost came out because multiple directors had came and went at that point and Tom Cruise called him because he was personally a big fan of Alias.
 
Rosenkrantz

Rosenkrantz

Member
Jan 17, 2018
4,939
I mean, Joss Whedon (yeah, I know that he's a pos, but that's not the point) did Avengers with only Serenity behind his back. It's not so outlandish to imagine that dudes who were in the industry for as long as Abrams have enough connections to land in the director's chair of a blockbuster film.
 
Muitnorts

Muitnorts

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
2,144
1. Star Trek


2. Mission Impossible 3
3. Star Trek Into Darkness
4. The Force Awakens
5. Super 8
6. The Rise of Skywalker

I fucking love his first Star Trek movie. Genuinely one of my favourite films. It's a near perfect popcorn flick, fast paced, great cast, looks good… it's just really fun.

MI3 is really solid and put the franchise on track after the first sequel. Without it the series wouldn't be where it is today. It has easily the best MI main villain too.

Into Darkness isn't amazing. It's a big step down from the first but it's still fun and still has the cast.

TFA is fine. Another retread of a film but like his Star Trek film it zips from scene to scene and has likeable characters. Not great by any means but still by far the best of the new Star Wars movies.

Super 8 is a well made but dull Spielberg pastiche. I didn't hate it but didn't particularly like it either.

The Rise of Skywalker is a complete mess. It looks nice but that's all it has going for it. I guess I appreciate that it wasn't a boring failure at least, they went for it when they made it awful.
 
Xun

Xun

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,319
London
It's also worth noting that his parents were producers in the industry, which no doubt gave him a massive leg up.

Also I haven't seen Super 8, but I'd rank the rest like so:

1. TFA
2. Star Trek
3. MI3
4. Into Darkness
5. TROS
 
cognizant

cognizant

Member
Dec 19, 2017
13,756
An impossible task for me, I think they're all equally terrible. Yeah, he's no Uwe Boll. But he's not a competent storyteller either.

I think people are basing their ranking of MI3 on hazy memory. It's not a good movie. Or to paraphrase myself from years back in some other thread:

MI3 is a movie much like any other JJ directorial effort: a house of cards that falls apart when you spend a minute thinking about it. (instead of enacting an incredibly convoluted infiltration into the Vatican, why didn't Ethan just accompany Luther underground?)

More irritatingly, instead of showing Ethan physically get the rabbit's foot (you know the entire point of these movies is to get the macguffin), we cut to two characters outside that we don't give a shit about, in a half-assed attempt to give them depth. We're already over an hour into the film and JJ decides to give these characters breathing room now?

JJ Abrams, coming off of TV, decides to film a big budget rival to James Bond spanning multiple exotic continents with shaky cam and close-ups. It almost felt like the entire film is shot with close ups! Ethan's failed parachute jump out of a skyscraper as an example, constant close-ups of his face instead of wide shots to show us how much peril he's in.

It's pretty telling the only thing I actually remembered about the film before I last rewatched it was Cruise running in the climax in Shanghai. It's the only lengthy and consistent shot which isnt a close up or shaky. There is something tangible and effective about Cruise running his arse off and the camera not cutting away from that. It's the only good shot in the whole film.
 
ElectronicOldMen

ElectronicOldMen

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,275
Edinburgh, Scotland
1. Star Trek
2. The Force Awakens
3. Mission Impossible 3
4. Super 8
5. Into Darkness
6. The Rise of Skywalker

Star Trek '09 is pretty great, TFA is OK-to-good, MI3 and Super 8 are OK, Into Darkness and TROS are actively terrible.
 
NekoFever

NekoFever

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,009
Star Trek
The Force Awakens
MI3
Super 8

A gigantic chasm in quality…

Into Darkness
Rise of Skywalker
 
Tavernade

Tavernade

Tavernade
Moderator
Sep 18, 2018
8,630
Into Darkness felt like it was specifically insulting me as a person but was functional as a movie and didn't ruin anything, while TROS botches every good idea it has and retroactively makes the prior two films worse... BUT would be far easier to fix than Into Darkness is... BUT I actually like Scotty's stuff and the evil Enterprise in Darkness...
 
gilded_Pb

gilded_Pb

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,195
Wow count me in as another person surpised that these are all the films hes directed. Guess I always thought he was one of those guys that made a bunch of smaller films before getting into the blockbusters.
 
matrix-cat

matrix-cat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,284
beyond_death said:
Wow count me in as another person surpised that these are all the films hes directed. Guess I always thought he was one of those guys that made a bunch of smaller films before getting into the blockbusters.
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Abrams is a big Hollywood nepotism case. Both his parents were TV producers and he was writing scripts that were getting made into movies straight out of college. MI3 was his first movie as a director but he'd already been around for 15+ years as a writer/producer/showrunner.
 
pikachief

pikachief

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,526
I think you meant best to worst, but his last movie is also his worst so it works out in the end.
 
hiredhand

hiredhand

Member
Feb 6, 2019
3,151
Super 8
Star Trek
The Force Awakens
Mission Impossible 3
Into Darkness
Rise of Skywalker

He is a really mediocre director. Even the best of those are like 7/10 and all his films are incredibly derivative of older better works.

That being said, I don't see anything especially weird about his career development. After Alias, he was a very logical choice for MI 3. He also had several screenwriting credits for feature films at that point. There many people who have gotten a blockbuster gig with much less experience. Joseph Kosinski has one directorial credit on IMDb before Tron and it's a 1 min Gears of War commercial. Simon McQuoid (director of Mortal Kombat reboot) also has only one 1 min short on his IMDb page before MK.
 
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Spiderman

Spiderman

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
3,995
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Mission Impossible 3
Star Trek
Star Trek Into Darkness
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Super 8
 

NuclearCake

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,867
Huh, that's a pretty underwhelming track record.

I just came in here to see if there was anything that I like but there doesn't appear to be
 
ReginaldXIV

ReginaldXIV

Member
Nov 4, 2017
7,801
Minnesota
MI:3 is the only one I would recommend without caveats. Though I think Star Trek is good, but it has a very stupid story. Everything else he does is just alright to me. Though Rise of Skywalker is horrible.
 
J_Viper

J_Viper

Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,725
Star Trek
MI3
Super 8
Into Darkness
Rise of Skywalker
Force Awakens

Yes, I honestly find the rushed sloppiness of ROS more interesting than TFA. At least it's doing something

Disney was clearly so terrified to take any risks with TFA, and it shows in the final product. Incredibly well made on a technical front, but completely empty.
 
Naijaboy

Naijaboy

The Fallen
Mar 13, 2018
15,292
Great tier:
Star Trek
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Good tier:
Super 8
Star Trek Into Darkness

Decent tier:
Mission Impossible 3

Garbage tier:
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
 
Gay Bowser

Gay Bowser

Member
Oct 30, 2017
17,708
J_Viper said:
Disney was clearly so terrified to take any risks with TFA, and it shows in the final product.
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I don't know. I mean, they did make a Star Wars film with three new leads, none of which was a white male. That's not nothing. And they killed off Han. And Luke isn't even in it until the final scene! All of those are risks.

Not taking risks would be making another "Luke, Han, and Leia save the galaxy" film.
 

Deleted member 9241

Oct 26, 2017
10,416
J_Viper said:
Disney was clearly so terrified to take any risks with TFA, and it shows in the final product. Incredibly well made on a technical front, but completely empty.
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Disney entrusted Star Wars to the wrong creative team, with JJ being one of the biggest offenders. Thankfully, this is something they are slowly fixing.
 
Ridley327

Ridley327

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,490
Georgia (the state, not the country)
Man, when you lay it all out across the six films he has directed, it's kind of incredible that he has the clout that he does in the realm of big budget filmmaking. Star Trek is the only film of his that I'd call good without terribly major caveats (or ones that are that detrimental, even as the story is kind of big stupid), Mission: Impossible 3 has a couple of bright spots in an otherwise slapdash production, and from there you have to contend with varying dosages of lethal nostalgia poisoning. I guess TFA pisses me off the least of the rest, if only because it's so boring and uninspiring in comparison, but I honestly do feel that Super 8 doesn't get called out enough for being such vapid Spielberg cosplay, especially as it's so proud of how horseshit its entire premise and enterprise is by the end of it.
 
tidewatersouthern

tidewatersouthern

Member
Nov 27, 2020
4,257
His filmography is aggressively mediocre. MI:3 is okay, and set that film series on a different path that it's still on today, but it's nothing special. Super 8 is a pretty standard Spielberg homage that's been done better. Star Trek is a fun, but Stupid (with a capital S) movie, that ultimately shits all over the character of Kirk. Into Darkness is somehow even WORSE. TFA, while pretty good, is ultimately a retread of other, better movies in the series. TROS is back to the Stupid (with a capital S).

There was a time, based on his TV producing work that I'd be excited to see his name on a project. Now? I'm completely turned off if he's involved.
 

mAcOdIn

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,978
Now what's your rankings for McG films?

I think Abrams sucks, but, I'll say I think it's unrealistic to never let someone who hasn't proven themselves direct something, otherwise you'd never get new directors.
 
H.Cornerstone

H.Cornerstone

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,724
HMm, I haven't seen MI3, but the ones I have seen it would be:
1. Star Trek 09
2. Super 8
3. TFA
4. ROTS
5. Star Trek Into Darkness

I absolutely abhor both ROTS and Into Darkness, so which one to put last was a tough call, but ended up going with Into Darkness because the fact that they white washed a character in the star trek franchise is completely inexcusable to me, especially with what Star Trek is supposed to stand for. And in General everything they did with Khan was stupid.
 
Pharaun

Pharaun

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,052
MI:3
Star Trek
TFA
Into Darkness
Super 8
RoS

I honestly feel like MI:3 saved the franchise after how bad 2 was. It has some great set pieces and it's a great story arc for Ethan.

Star Trek was a ton of fun and I like Abrams take on the future tech look.

TFA is fine but doesn't quite feel like Star Wars.

Into Darkness is an interesting case. There are so many times where Abrams decided to throw the established rules of the Trek verse out the window, but I also had a ton of fun with just the spectacle of it all.

Super 8 is whatever to me, neither good or bad.

RoS had so much potential and it just never came together into a cohesive whole.
 

4CornersTHSA

Member
Jun 13, 2019
1,555
Of the five I've seen;

Star Trek
Force Awakens


Super 8



Rise of Skywalker/Into Darkness

I can't really separate the two bottom ones much. If pressed, I disliked Into Darkness far more as I watched it in the theater vs waiting for ROS to come out on D+ and was prepared to be disappointed out gate. I love Cumberbatch, but holy shit that was tone deaf casting.
 
jett

jett

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,658
What a crappy filmography this guy has.

Anyway,

Star Trek
MI:3
Into Darkness
TFA
Super 8
TROS
 
Dennis8K

Dennis8K

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
20,161
Imagine making 6 movies and each one is progressively worse than the one that came before.
 
J_Viper

J_Viper

Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,725
Gay Bowser said:
I don't know. I mean, they did make a Star Wars film with three new leads, none of which was a white male. That's not nothing. And they killed off Han. And Luke isn't even in it until the final scene! All of those are risks.

Not taking risks would be making another "Luke, Han, and Leia save the galaxy" film.
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I mean sure on the surface, that's right.

Great to see a black male lead in a Star Wars film. Not so great when he isn't given much of anything to do except run away from an octopus.
 
TheXbox

TheXbox

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 29, 2017
6,559
Star Trek
M:I 3
TFA
STID
Super 8
TROS

It is weird that JJ commands as much clout as he does, based on his filmography. I have no problem calling that top three good movies, but that's all they are, on top of being middle entries in established, successful franchises. His track record as a film producer certainly isn't august either. I guess his main credentials are in television?
 
J_Viper

J_Viper

Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,725
TheXbox said:
It is weird that JJ commands as much clout as he does, based on his filmography. I have no problem calling that top three good movies, but that's all they are, on top of being middle entries in established, successful franchises. His track record as a film producer certainly isn't august either. I guess his main credentials are in television?
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Connections.

and I like JJ quite a bit, but him and his family clearly have some very beneficial friendships in the industry.
 
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