If you aren't writing a mystery story, don't use mystery boxes. If audiences don't understand why story elements matter, why should they care about decisions made in relation to them.
In all fairness, Pulp Fiction and V for Vendetta never really needed to "open the box". The real issue is the fact that he's treating this theory as seriously as the narrative, when in reality, it's little more than a writing technique. That's like treating a hammer as if it's an integral part of a house, as if that hammer was the very foundation itself. Edit: ...For the people who keep bringing it up, yeah I know the box isn't important. That's kinda my point...
@@ridvanrizvanoglu5800 the star wars sequels: episode 7: -mystery box Rey -mystery box Rey's parents -mystery box Rey's powers -mystery box who is Snoke -mystery box Kylo's story/path/reason for disconnection -mystery box Han and Leia's separation -mystery box who the cantena woman-alien is who has Luke's lightsaber -mystery box why does she have Luke's lightsaber -mystery box Luke's reason for exile -mystery box rise of first order -meta mystery box: why is this a wishDOTcom version of episode IV ?!!!! episode 9: -literally the whole movie. it just moves so fast that you don't a second to breath and go... what?! The Cloverfield sequels are also just kinda... what?!
It's the ultimate lazy writer's tool. It allows him to avoid solving difficult writing problems and he can still go on about "how wonderful the mystery is." And then, if a much better writer comes along in a later movie and actually creates a clever, researched answer to his bullsh*t non-answer, he can pretend that was the plan all along.
I think he is missing a fundemental aspect of what makes mystery boxes satisfying though. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the contents of the box will live up to what is expected. In all the examples he listed, star wars, jaws, etc. The mysteries have an answer, or hints of one- that make sense. And there is always a sense that, while mysterious, there is something tangible and real behind the mystery. Every good mystery box in a film has to be built on smaller reveals that lend credence to the idea that the one big mystery does have an answer, even if that answer is never revealed. And it seems like in his own work he doesn't do a good job of that. If every small mystery is never satisfactorily explained, what foundation does the audience have that the larger mystery has any real significance? They don't. I love mysteries and unresolved plot points in many cases, but I hate cheap mystery boxes from the store. Specifically because past experience has taught me not to expect a result that matches expectation. Just like JJ Abram's films and shows. It doesn't matter if the mystery box is unopened... if the expectation and anticipation it is supposed to have is undermined by the rest of the movie/show.
His idea of a payoff is more like an Andy Kaufman joke. He laughs all the way to the bank while his audience asks themselves why they feel so dirty and violated.
jp3813 the ambiguity of the briefcase forces you to deal with the themes of the movie and adds to the rewatch value. Till this day I haven’t thought of the briefcase as anything significant outside of its intended purpose. Just like Cobb’s spinning top in inception isn’t actually his totem, it’s his wife’s, his totem is his wedding ring. Chances are that you wouldn’t notice if the film didn’t cut short of the top toppling. Just like I didn’t notice that someone gets saved at the end of each scene in pulp fiction. If it were cut linear that wouldn’t be the case. But the ambiguity of the briefcase forces us to dissect the themes. Joker is not a mystery box, his lies are no mystery, it adds to the depth of his psychotic nature. JJ writes a mystery with no answer, with no purpose other than it being a mystery. It serves no literary function than to withhold information. That’s the difference.
@@jp3813 But such mysteries are properly set up, and hyped respectively with clues throughout each film. By doing so the audience knows they were done intentionally, and assuring a significance to the overall understanding/perception of the themes that we can walk out of the theatre to think about and discuss. They are done properly in a way that increases the immersion.
@@aristarchusx1111 And none of them really happened, lol. People rag on JJ Abrams for this Mystery Box stuff, as clumsy of an analogy it is there is something of a point to it. It's just dumbed down immensely. JJ is still a pretty good director, mediocre writer, the dude has had more success then 95% of hollywood. He practically prints money, every movie he's directed has done remarkably well.
He doesn't realize the critical part of Tannen's Mystery Magic Box: Tannen knows what's in the box. The consumer doesn't. JJ Abrams is better suited to be an audience member of mysteries, not the creator of one.
@@raywilliams6717 I've both written and read better fanfic than that dreg. Seriously, the stories lacked inspiration and suspense. I just couldn't get invested in the characters, at no point any of them really mattered to me. With some of them I even didn't find a reason for their existence whatsoever.
It's actually scary that JJ doesn't understand his own style of writing. A mystery box is a metaphor for the creative writing process. It doesn't give all the information all at once, because if it did, there would be no reason to consume the story until the end. That's the whole concept of storytelling, to stay until the end so that the point- the reason you consumed the story in the first place- is revealed. In the meantime of getting to the end, the world, i.e. the setting, cinematography, special effects, basically all the things that ask you to suspend your disbelief, are there to sate your curiosity. The issue with JJ's style of writing is that he creates the mystery box and sets everything up, but then gets carried away with the special effects and forgets to actually make sure there's a point to the story. He then tries to pull a clever one by saying the mystery box didn't matter in the first place, because it never needed to be opened/explained. He fails to realize that the point of his own story from the very beginning was to open the box.
I feel the same. I would add that opening the box is not a yes or no kind of thing. You can open the box just a little bit, leaving room for imagination. Or a sequel, in Hollywood terms.
He understands it well enough toi get funds for his projects. Nothing else is needed. Man's a hack. His company is leaping from one franchise to another killin them in the process.
It would really help if the writer knew what's in the mystery box before presenting it to the audience. Also, is something a mystery just because the characters or the audience doesn't know it? A mystery implies there's some kind of puzzle or secret that people need to piece together clues to figure out. Just because someone doesn't know a thing doesn't make it a mystery. Obi-Wan's identity in Star Wars isn't a mystery because for one, Leia says that he was a general in the Clone Wars, and he pretty much just tells Luke who he is after they meet. No one needed to find clues or investigate his identity.
I totally agree!! thats what happened to Lost. He didn't know what the mystery was, he just kept on presenting unknowns and strange ideas that actually do NOT have an answer to. The premise was awesome. The ideas and mysteries presented were a catalyst for you to explore and think for all the possibilities of what the puzzle could be or the satisfaction it would wrought if it was solved. But in the end, we were given none of those. None of the answers. All we were given really were a sort of strangeness, a curiosity that was never really satiated. Which is just thee WORST. i expected from lost too much
What's funny though is that the both Yoda and Obiwon were way more explain in the OT than the orange girl in the ST, but they were more mysterious, because we add clues to construct their past. If you give no clues at all, then there's no mystery, there's too many things for them to be to be anything at all.
Here's how "Mystery Box" writing works. This is how JJ/Lindelof write ALL their movies: 1) Raise several questions, including one "deep" question and several boring questions. 2) When the time comes in the story to answer the "deep" question: a) Answer the boring question instead. b) Don't answer the question at all. c) Postpone answering the question. ("A good question. For another time.") 3) Audience remembers that you raised the important question. Thinks that the movie was "deep." Forgets that you didn't answer it. 4) Repeat forever. 5) Profit.
@@raywilliams6717 I agree that using the Mystery Box effect on movies is cheap and garbage, but although it sort of worked for Lost, it definitely worked well with The Leftovers. Television shows can use the Mystery Box well
Is that true though? Because the example people cite the most is Lost, and yet Lost DID answer all of its biggest questions. Right in the show. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t answer anything, the problem was that they answered things in such a realistic and methodical way that if you blink you miss everything, and based on how people reacted to the show, even if you caught everything you were likely to still miss everything out of misinterpreting things or refusing to accept certain answers. A lot of people had theories and refused to let go of them even when the show literally disproved them.
That would explain why his series begin really good, but gets more obsurd as the get to the fifth season. Fringe is still great, but thats probably because of John noble rest in peace, the rest of the brilliant cast, good writers and the focus on the enstranged father son relationship.
Yes!!!!!! Thank you! He's making movies for people who use them like toilet paper. Everyone needs to wipe their posteriors... it doesn't prove that he's avant-garde, a great philosopher or even an artist. He's just lucky to have an opportunity to point an expensive camera and lens flares. For anyone who doesn't have the mind of a 5-year-old, it should be obvious that his work lacks depth in exchange for quick thrills. Bad Robot or Monty Python's "Confuse A Cat" service? Makes me so angry that he can singlehandedly destroy Star Wars + Star Trek with no backlash from fans. www.dailymotion.com/video/x6qglem
Lindelof did this all through "Lost" In one episode he actually has a character say: _" What if I told you that somewhere on this island, there's a very large box. . . . and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it . . . when you opened that box . . . there it would be."_ And I thought, "my god, that is literally Damon Lindelof telling the audience how he writes these stories. That is masterful trolling, Damon. Well done."
So what I got from this was that: -Movies and stories are like a mystery box. They withhold information but slowly give you clues along the way to incite intrigue. -Today's technology makes it more easier and accessible for us to use the mystery box as well as big Hollywood productions. -Sometimes withholding information in your characters can give your film more layers of depth apart from the main narrative "ET, Jaws" -Never hurt Tom's nose
@@hopelessent.1700 I FULLY disagree. 100 percent disagree. First of all, the first one can't be compared to the other 6, the first one is a 'who done it' mystery, it's an not an action based film like 2-6 are. Second, my reasons for liking 3 far more than all the other are very basic, *IT'S NONSTOP ACTION* and good action too. You can count the minutes with no action on your hands. Every action scene makes sense, almost everyone of them done right (but from my memory, everyone of them was done right), every scene filmed right. The actors were amazing. Third, what takes me out of 4 and 5 is the terrible coms chat. The whole movie the actors are talking to each other through Bluetooth, and it affects their acting as they aren't acting with the actors they're talking to, they're talking to themselves reading a script and you can tell. None of them have as many great action scenes as 3 (but I do like the scenes in all of them). What's funny about this is 4 should be my favorite as it's directed by Brad bird, the guy behind The Incredibles (my favorite movie of all time) and has Jeremy Renner, a great actor. I researched all the mission impossible movies around the time fallout came out, but admittedly I skipped 2 because... well I don't remember it being anything but boring, and it's the lowest rated one. Now I feel I need to watch it to compare. Glad to talk to someone else passionate about the mission impossible films, and I'm glad to see there's other options out there; but in my eyes JJ made the franchise, as the first doesn't count (It wasn't marketed as an action film, but a mystery thriller.) The second was poorly rated and was said to have killed a sequel, but the third one introduced a plot point that's continued to the 6th film (his wife). And made the franchise what it is today, an action based thriller. MI is sooooooooooooooooooooo much cooler than bond.
9:09 He says “withholding information, doing that intentionally” This is what he fails to exercise completely. He acts like he’s withholding information, but his mystery box is empty. Then when we’re ready to open it, he throws something in last minute. The intrigue of the mystery does not justify a story. The contents of the box justify the story. If your box is empty in the beginning, your story is also empty.
"What are stories but mystery boxes" is a gross over simplification. Investment is a tool but sometimes writting ideas without a plan can back fire. Vince gilligan when he wrote breaking bad explained he almost scraped the m60 machine gun because he created a mystery box and didnt know what was inside and he struggled to explain what walt would do with it and almost cut it out. Vince learned that if you set somthibg up without a plan it works best when you understand the charaters but a m60 machine gun is harder because its limited. Its not whats in the box or if theres a box its about meaning more to a story than investment.
6 лет назад+119
The problem with the "mystery box" approach is that, in the long run, you have to give some kind of explanation or closure to the audience, and most of the time they will be disappointed (Lost, anyone?). From the filmakers point of view, it´s great, because they make millions out thin air, from curiosity and mystery alone.
There are two ways to keep the lore-fanatics and theory-crafters coming to a franchise: Option 1: create a setting with deep, immersive world-building and compelling characters with well-defined personalities, ideals, goals, fears and relationships. Option 2: Create a vague world with characters that are near-blank slates but with lots of questions around every nook and cranny that may or may not get answered as the plot progresses.
Abrams says he does not open the box and it's in honor of his grandfather. It's a nice story and that's fine for sentimental reasons. However, his grandfather seems like the kind of guy that would have opened the box and explained how it all worked. Complicated or simple, it could still be impressive.
He's one of those, "I don't make mistakes, you don't understand art," kind of pretentious jerks. Even something as incredibly strange as Twin Peaks had information to put together and created a conscious flow in a narrative with all the odd twists and turns, it wasn't the free-for-all he's describing here. This is not how good writers think or create.
Elizabeth Athineu You obviously don’t know anything about Twin Peaks. It’s like the most improvised story ever. As for JJ Abrams, he is in no way pretentious, he’s always extremely humble. It’s not because you hate his work that you get to call him pretentious. Btw, David Lynch goes way deeper with this mystery box process. Just look at Blue Velvet. Had he done Star Wars and Lost instead of JJ Abrams, you’d hate him even more. JJ Abrams is a great writer, he chooses to leave more to your imagination in his work which makes sense because stories are supposed to make us dream, but the dream is over once you get to the end. He allows you to never stop dreaming about it. Seeing this as weak writing, as if he couldn’t do it any differently because he’s incompetent, is a really cynical view of things. I wish more people would get that. It’s not about being smarter than you all, it’s about having a more genuine approach with stories (if that makes any sense, I can’t tell since I’m french)
@@maulydieng6560 Actually J.J. is not a great writer, he only likes to start a story, raise questions and expect others to complete the story and answer those said questions. And when he does complete a tale or answer those questions, the result is so subupar to lackluster. EP.7&9 and proof of that. Ep7 is basically plagiarism, and Ep9 barely could be considered a coherent tale. The man is highly overrated, especially as a writer.
Emil Larsen I think this TED Talk already covers it: 1.) Present mystery boxes. 2.) Rip off stories that came before, but don’t rip off the shark/Death Star, rip off the angry kid and just make him be the bad guy instead of the good guy like A New Hope. 3.) Don’t ever open the mystery boxes, because the writer has no idea what’s in them...I mean come on, it’s about the mystery! 4.) Think about Grandpa...you know he was way cooler as Darth Vader and not as the guy who redeemed himself by killing the Emperor, so let’s think of him as Darth Vader since that’s way more fun. NVM...change #2 to just rip the whole thing off, including the lost droid on a desert planet and the Death Star...rip off the Empire too, and then have the twist be that after Han dies, Leia hugs Rey instead of Chewie...that should solidify the importance of my new character without her having to earn it...which is another mystery box!!! Yeah! 🙄🤦🏻♂️ His idea for Star Trek was...Use all the old jokes from TOS without the crew ever earning them, and then rip off Wrath of Khan with the twist that Kirk “dies” and Spock yells “Khan!” because their friendship has lasted almost as long as Han Solo was a father figure for Rey on this timeline. It’ll be a new mystery box for new fans and evoke nostalgia! Yeah! Rip off the emotion, and what’s more emotional than NOSTALGIA!!!
@@LeeHawkinsPhoto when it comes to Star Trek, a lot of time had passed between first & second movie so it's pretty okay to think Kirk & Spock became close friends. Abrams Star Trek was simply more action driven & punchy but nowhere as bad as the abomination Star Wars sequel trilogy is. This is mostly because Kelvin Star Trek started from a scratch so had a lot of wiggle room to establish. Sequel trilogy outright ignored everything from the past. Luke who convinced Darth Vader to leave his ways would want to kill Kylo Ren as a master? That was the worst thing in sequel trilogy.
If he really loved his grandfather don't you think he should have left the man out of this? Are we supposed to blame his family for his sins? Jar Jar A-Hole makes toilet paper. It's not 2-ply, it falls apart easily and can really chafe the sensibilities. The only mystery is why God hates us so much and wondering what we could have done as fans of amazing films to deserve this.
Mystery is great! I love mystery! But not endless on going, never ending mystery which prevent story and character arcs. My god, not everything needs to be a mystery. Aka, Rey, Snoke, Maz finding Anakin’s lightsaber, the rise of the First Order, the Knights of Ren, C-3PO’s bizarre and unknown red arm which is suddenly gone in The Last Jedi. The list goes on. Christopher Nolan can craft mystery in a Batman trilogy with story and character arcs, and still find an actual ending to his trilogy. I don’t think Abrams can or will do this with Star Wars.
Saul Grant Its not going to end. Disney wants to make and release a Star Wars movie every year. Disney is marking Star Wars the “forever franchise”. Besides, what is there to really wrap up? There is no story and character arcs.
I’m not Episode 9 because Jar Jar Abrams says “Those who didn’t like The Last Jedi are threatened by women” And he and Lawrence Kazdan push Luke Skywalker to the very end of the move because Luke was more interesting than the new characters.
I'm glad that skimming through these comments most people are super critical of this approach, because I absolutely hate it for mystery storytelling. Yes, mystery is great because of its endless potential/possibility, but making some kind of promise or setting up some kind of expectations around the answers to a mystery makes the mystery all the more enticing. Let's take his literal box. You pay $15 for a box of mystery items. Cool. But wouldn't it be even more exciting if you knew that your box had a one-in-a-million chance of also bundling in a rarity that you can't buy in stores? The anticipation would be heightened, you'd be inclined to buy more boxes and eager to tear into them. Even if you don't get the result you were hoping for, having some kind of expectation of what's feasible is way more encouraging than just a vague "Ooh! Mystery! Suspense! Let's tempt you but never open up!" Abrams never builds up any expectations for his mysteries, he just throws them around all over the place and thinks that's enough.
Only problem is when J.J. Abrams creates a mystery box in his movies and TV programs, he forgets to put anything in them, or he forgets where he puts them and they’re never opened. After three seasons of watching every episode of Lost, I became uninterested about what was going on after having strange mysteries on the island being revealed, only to find out they meant nothing. While mysteries in stories are good, they have to mean something, otherwise your audience will get up and leave and they won’t come back for more. The same thing is true with Star Wars. In Ep 7, our main character has a vision after touching the lightsaber that belonged to Anakin Skywalker, which Luke Lost when Darth Vader cut Luke’s hand of in Ep 5. What the vision is about and how Maz Kenata got the lightsaber now means nothing thanks to Rian Johnson. If you’re going to create a vision, it needs to be executed in it’s entirety, otherwise you’ll end up with disappointed moviegoers who will very likely to want to see the next movie.
He actually confuses gradual information reveal & story pacing with mystery. If a character gets introduced and we don't get their entire background immediately, that's not a mystery; that's just pacing. As a result he also misses rules of writing actual mystery, say a detective story with a secret murderer. Rules like, you have to give the audience a chance to guess at least some of the ultimate reveal or they'll will feel cheated, since they are following the investigation along with the detective, so hiding crucial information will make the resolution feel artificial. I think it'd greatly benefit JJ to have a go at writing a detective story taking lessons from Doyle, Agatha Christie etc.; since it'd force him to undertand how a fair mystery puzzle should work.
this mystery box, while useful at first, is how a large part of how this guy ruined episodes 7-9. you have to have a payoff. you have to have progress from start to finish toward that payoff. and you have to, eventually, OPEN the box! and if what's inside disappoints, that promise that you made at the beginning of the story is never fulfilled. and that's when r2d2 finally finishes reinstalling windows, gives you a deus ex machina for the story's original problem that you forgot even existed, and you hold a lightsaber in front of an old jedi after destroying a deathstar 2.0 whose name no one ever remembers, because we hardly cared to begin with.
But if it's over the course of several movies, or seasons of a tv show, it doesn't matter to these corporate hacks if they resolve the mysteries, *because they already have your money*. It's like a startup scam or a pyramid scheme.
How did he ruin 7-9? I mean I could see 7 even though your argument makes no sense. But he had nothing to do with the direction of 8 and 9 hasn’t even been released yet.
Lindelof does this all the time in his stories. He's great at setting up a mystery, but he completely sucks at answering them. In his stories, he will raise several questions and one of them will be this deep, "secrets of the universe" type question that you cannot WAIT to get the answer to. Later on, when the time comes in the story to answer that "deep" question he will always, always, ALWAYS answer the boring, mundane question instead. Here's an example: There's a scene near the end of "Prometheus" where they wake up the Engineer. Lindelof's been building up to this scene throughout the entire movie, raising questions about God and creation and the meaning of life. When the crew learn that the Engineer's ship is carrying bioweapons meant for Earth, Shaw asks the obvious audience questions, which are, "Why do you hate us? Why do you want to kill us?" You know what? I would LOVE to get the answer to that question. Think about it: you finally meet your Creators and learn that they want to KILL YOU. That's a profound, terrifying idea. A much more interesting idea than the answer Lindelof comes up with. We learn instead that Weyland wants more life, which he justifies to the Engineer with his "I created David so we are both like the Gods" speech. That's a terrible writing decision. Why are we answering the wrong question here? (Again?) And audiences fall for this bait-and-switch story writing all the time. They think that the "movie was deep" (because it asked a deep question) but they can't remember WHY it was "deep" (because that question was never answered). Lindelof isn't smart or talented enough to answer the deep question, so he answers the boring mundane question instead, and hopes you've forgotten about the deep question by the end of the movie.
This explains a lot. Honestly this is genius for producing a lot of scripts in a small amount of time because you don’t need to know where the story is going to go. It explains why most movies and shows that use this technique are both all over the place and have such poorly executed endings $50 worth of tricks for $15 indeed. Only if the box stays closed
Even if there's 50$ worth of magic tricks in jjs mystery box its all the stuff that never sold because no one wanted it. The loser candy of starter tricks.
It’ll be explained in a stupid comic or visual dictionary because having a script that isn’t lazy is less important than lore and bonus knowledge that ends up being useless
HOPELESS Ent. it wasn’t in the movies, so it absolutely doesn’t fucking matter. You know why? Cause basic essential plot points need to be shown on the story itself, otherwise, why bother putting them? It’s not like even 30% of the audience will search on secondary sources
You can knock this man's writing all you want. But you've gotta admit: that talk he did in 2008 about how he has no idea is actually a brilliant way to foreshadow the rest of his career!
Let me save you 18 minutes. Abrams was invited to give a TED talk, but he doesn't have anything of value to say, so the night before he threw a bunch a shit together hoping that he could just charm and bullshit his way through it. He's Shia Lebeouf, basically.
The problem I’ve noticed here, is that eventually you do come to the third act. You have to open the mystery box eventually. There’s a point where the thing inside the mystery box can’t just be another mystery box. And Abrams, it seems, is never able to come up with a good answer as to what that is.
Exactly. He never thinks about the endings and then wraps with mystery. He just put random mysteries and forgets about them... One day when he is obligated to write the last act, he improvises an answer, which makes a lot of plot holes, because a lot of stuff happened before which would prevent the solution... Or he just forgets that the mystery existed and the end it's very empty. If he thought "okay, the end is this, the mystery box is filled with this. Now we make a story" it would be good. He is short sighted in writting, and that's why nothing that he writes has a satisfactory ending. Just mystery after mystery that are forgotten or have poor explanations. But the money that he did already is in his pocket.
I love the part where he says when people do sequels they rip off the things that don't matter, and not the things that are important. He should have re-watched this again before re-making the Star Wars movies.
Ignorant audiences enable those hacks They have no reverence for the classics, foreign cinema Important films are considered "problematic" for X or Y reason It's sickening, the Sight & Sound 2022 [Critics' Poll] is just plain wrong
That sums it up quite nicely. Don't get me wrong, mystery is great, but there are 2 crucial things to keep in mind when writing a mystery: First, you, the writer, should know what is really going on and second, you do eventually reveal it to your audience. The first is crucial to stay coherent. The second is crucial so they stay invested. An audience that finds out that there isn't anything behind your mystery will invariably go "pfft, why bother?"
Is it or is it not a legit way to raise questions on the Island? As long as you know the answers, you can do whatever you with how you give it to the audience
So you think it’s ok to steal the plot of better shows and nope Star Wars is not a Mystery box you know nearly every thing from the start the only thing that is a reveal is that you know luke I am your father
If you ask a writer what they have in mind for a story and he/she responds with "Well there are infinity possibilities." Just Walk away, the story was going to be crap if you don't even know what your writing.
Cheap answer, you can write about a journey. And on the other side stories when characters are just on rails are boring, sometimes it's amazing to live the journey with the writer
"Go make your movie! There's nothing stopping you from going out there and getting the technology..." This is a common sentiment, and though it is true that from a technology standpoint, the means of production have become increasingly affordable over time, there are other potentially insurmountable factors in the equation that he leaves out: The cost of locations, actors, and crew members. It is not always possible to get access to desired locations free of cost, for example. Towns, cities, institutions, and even private individuals often want money to use a location, and some require big insurance policies. And then you have the cost of actors and crews... and typically, the greater the talent, the more it's gonna cost. Those are the hard facts. You can risk getting arrested for 'stealing a shot' on a location that requires fees, permitting and insurance, or you can write a "Lifeboat" script that makes no-budget movie making feasible by making the story dialog dependent and/or having it take place in a single, cheaply accessed location, but the notion of "There's nothing stopping you" because the technology is affordable... That notion can be very misleading.
That part were he says sequels and rip-off movies rip-off the wrong thing hurt my deeply in away that I am incapable of describing. "Okay, Star Wars, what’s it about? Well, planets get blown up so let’s blow up some planets. There’s a desert planet so let’s make a desert planet. We’re doing the third movie, let’s blow up another planet and go to a different desert planet. BAM! We made some Star Wars movies!" Like I’ve seen some clips of this before, but I’ve never that part before, so I’m surprise it hasn’t been used more when criticizing the Sequel Trilogy. Now let’s point out the problem with the way he talks about Star Wars A New Hope. "This woman, with these droids, who is she? She’s looking for Obi-Wan Kenobi, he’s her only hope, okay who is he?" I just want to say to him "JJ, those questions are answered by the end of the movie. They are not left dangling for two years for fans to theorycraft about just for a different director to come in and say ‘Doesn’t matter LOL!'" There are certain things not answered by the end of ANH, like who this Emperor guy the bad guys kept talking about, but ANH is largely a complete stand alone movie, with none of the mystery aspects you seem to think there were. Yeah, those things he mentioned are there to intrigue and draw in the audience, but again all those questions are answered by the movie’s end. The only real Mystery Box the Original Trilogy had was when Yoda said "No. There is another." And George Lucas certainly knew in his head when he wrote that that Leia would turn out to be Luke’s sister. It really is a shame to me that Mystery Box has become a joke term, because it can be done well. Attack on Titan has one of the best payoffs to a Mystery Box ever, and thus shows it can work. Because the author know what was in the basement that served as the Mystery Box, know where they wanted to take their story, and thus know how to lay crumbs of clues to the truth. So that when you get to the basement and learn the truth, you can look about at everything that’s happened up to that moment and go "Yup, that lines up perfectly with everything I’ve seen so far." Thing is I think there is some truth to what he’s saying. There is something to said about leaving things to the audience and a less is more kind of philosophical. But when your making a big Trilogy with a beginning middle and end, you kinda need to know what the end game for that is, and not just wing it. Cause like some people here have pointed out already, JJ is a little too in love with the mystery part to even think of what’s in the box himself, and he doesn’t seem to realize, people will actually want to open the box, they wanna know the truth. So by the time he realizes that it’s "Um. Uuuh… Palpatine’s granddaughter, I guess?"
My favorite part of the whole talk is (17:50) when, after talking obliquely about magic for 20 minutes, the camera shows a quick shot of the audience giving a standing ovation and The Amazing Randi is front row center.
yeah, the fact that the hacks in the audience gave the hack on the stage a standing ovation for doing nothing but scam them for almost 20 minutes says it all.
I heard so much about JJ Abrams and his nonsense about his mystery box. So I finally forced myself to watch this TED talk. I cannot believe it. If you watch this TED talk, you know to never hire this guy to do anything that requires at least college degree. Let alone put him in charge of a 4+ billion dollar franchise.
Episode 9 is going to be verrrrry interesting considering it is the last movie of the trilogy. Will he still try to pull more mystery box bs in this film? Kind of difficult for him to do that since it is the end of the trilogy.
@@WwZa7 to his credit, JJ tried to save the wreckage that SW had become after Rian Johnson ran a wrecking ball through all of it, but it was not enough. The original sin is still in TFA undoing the original trilogy.
@@gameoverinsertcointocontin8102 Thank you for reminding me that I made this comment, It aged so well. And yes, I agree, EP7 was so flawed that there was no way of going out of this mess.
J. J. Abrams: Explains Star Wars's mystery box in ANH. Me: watching ANH again: -_- Seeing Leia being addressed as to who she was along with Ben after his first appearance on screen. Uncle Owen addressing the harvest season of moisture evaporators. There is so much information that was explained in the brief dialogue in that film that it is a self contained story. No need to question the movie by the credits because everything is explained. Unless if you want to count Chewbacca's medal then even that is explained when Luke tried to cuff Chewie... JJ Abrams has a weak understanding of consistency and only makes up smokey mirrors only to never clean them or leave them partially opaque.
Doofenshmirtz Evil That’s what I mean. He stepped down to produce these movies and hired competent hands, Brad Bird and Christopher McQuarrie and brought back Mission Impossible to the mainstream.
The box represents your film (if you are a filmmaker) and inside the box represents how your story or idea will be constructed. When James Cameron was being interviewed on the Actors Studio, he said the exact same thing when he was talking about making Terminator. He will disect the story split it apart and see how it will work. There is a science in making a great movie or any project, it's not from a book or course, but just observing from the inside how it will work.
The thing about mysteries, is that of course they are enjoyable and stimulating to the imagination. But sometimes -- or quite often -- they must be solved, and the answer(s) should be surprising, and make sense; be consistent with what came before. Science is an excellent example, a metaphor for fiction: We have theories, conduct experiments, and eventually find the answers = the "Plot." The essential nature of Gravity is still a mystery. What the heck are Dark Energy and Dark Matter...? But science -- i.e., Life -- is ongoing, while works of fiction -- stories -- have to have definite endings, explanations, closure. Of course there is room for nuance. And there can be ambiguity, such as the multiple origins of the Joker in the Dark Knight.
If I were an untalented writer with ambitions greater than my skill set, I'd love the mystery box as well. It is so easy to pile up a couple of mysteries, stretch them out over 3 movies or 7 seasons, leave most unresolved and haphazardly try to conclude some of them so you can pretend you have actually produced a working narrative. What a hack!
Somewhere near the end of season 3 of "Lost" I realized the show's writers had no idea where they were going and lost interest in the show. This video explains everything. What's sad is that JJ talks about investment in character and yet he doesn't know how to do it himself. Plus, investment in character only works when you give that character a good arc, and to do that you really do need to know how your story is going to end. Also, big mysteries do need a satisfying explanation. Sherlock Holmes can't tell Watson at the end of the story, "I have no clue why the dog didn't bark. I caught the killer, probably. Let the lawyers worry about the details."
"There are three things that you don't want to do, number 2 is hurt Tom's nose" What's number one ? And number 3 ? And if this is random, why choose number 2 ? Mistery box right there.
I didn't care too much for jj abrams in the past. but after force awakens... I am loving this guy. I'm so thankful for the way he brought star wars back better than ever. and that is something I thought would never happen in my lifetime. kudos to abrams! he's a great talent.
I think a mystery box storytelling structure is excellent BUT ONLY IF you have a satisfying solution to the mystery. You need to know the end goal that you are working towards. And thanks to the sequels trilogy, we know what happens if you don't start with a plan, you end up with the colossal failure that is Rey Skywalker.
The irony with his Mystery Box, is that if he did open it, he would most likely be disappointed -- just as many fans have been with his works... Lost, Star Trek, TFA, etc.
@@fathergabrielstokes4706 No, it became obvious that the showrunners were lying to the audience: they were indeed making it all up as they went along, and had no "master plan," as they had said. This was quite clear by how the series ended.
@AKAbrownPudding I beg to differ. A season or two in, there was a writer briefly hired (I'd have to check my files for his name), who said he'd learned that they explicitly had no ultimate plans... they didn't know what the smoke monster was, etc. I believe in the middle of the 1st season JJ Abrams wanted to have the hatch... and Lindelof had to insist they figure out what was inside it first. (Another example of Abrams' Mystery Box.) The past event in the Hatch, when the key wasn't turned in time, actually caused the plane to crash on the island. This wasn't even planned at the pilot stage! It is very clear to the discerning viewer that for the last season they tried to fit everything together, and left out many answers. The statue, for example. The ending was unsatisfying to many people. (Of course, not to everyone.) That "it was always about the characters, not the mystery..." is absurd. Yes, the backstory and arcs of the castaways was fascinating, but you simply do not present so many confounding mysteries and leave them unanswered for the audience. That is terrible and unfulfilling writing. JJ's Mystery Box at its worst. Even Young Adult novels, like Harry Potter present things early on that are revealed and answered. If you can site your Source, that would be great. Yes, while it was airing, they continually claimed there was a Master Plan -- but they lied. I believe they actually later admitted this in an interview. Thanks for your reply. ^_^
I think the biggest issue here is that everyone ask JJ what's in the box, but the thing with JJs style is that HE doesn't know what's in the box either. The new Star Wars trilogy proved the box is just a device that can keep the audience interested even if nothing's inside it, like a bike shaped present actually just being forks
@@fathergabrielstokes4706 I'm not talking about the star wars comments but those pointing out how is one size fits all storytelling mysterybox is not suitable for all films.
The theory of "what is X?" as a driving point isn't bad on its own, but spending the majority of the story of wondering what is actually is, without developing the characters and lore (the things that make us care), only to have "X" be nothing of real importance, is a slap in the face to the audience that invested their time and money into your story. That's the problem with his newer works. His earlier works at least spent time on the characters and the story, but they ended up detracting so far from the mystery box by distracting you with subplots and plot twists that, despite all that, the story ended up going nowhere, not to mention the hype for the mystery box was at fever pitch at that point that there was no way expectations were gonna be met.
J. J. Abrams is a great director. I absolutely loved Lost and I love the way he directs. His style of incorporating mystery in cinematography is really refreshing and I am excited to see what he does with Star Wars (but also hoping he doesn't ruin it because I am also a huge Star Wars fan)
I feel like Abrams shouldn't really be giving talks on story telling. The man is a very competent director but name a film he's made that isn't in some way ripped off from something else. Star Trek Into Darkness/Wrath of Khan, Force Awakens/A New Hope, Super 8/any Stephen King or Steven Spielberg story. The man is essentially a hack, a talented hack no doubt who's made some good films but a hack nonetheless.
Only thing JJ Abrams demonstrated that his technique is good way to ball rolling & get people interested in the idea. Most likely why he gets so much attention in Hollywood since you don't really care about a definitive ending you can go anywhere. Keep hinting things to keep them in.
He's good at setting up and hiding mysteries, there's no doubt there, but the downside it feels hollow when there's nothing but a piece of string in the box. Lost was a great ride up to the finale which retroactively ruined the whole thing. Learn from that weakness, have something in the box worth waiting for.
Exactly. A con-man just like Shyamalan who learned only one idea (that movie should contain a twist) and overusing it as a "golden hammer". Two damn idiots.
@@christianschmidt8476 If directing were solely about making dynamic scenes, Michael Bay would be the greatest director of all time. The man can put together a long string of dynamic scenes like nobody else, but it doesn't seem like he has a bigger picture of why he's doing that. JJ Abrams suffers the same problem, but to a lesser extent.
J.J Abrams: "Sometimes it's best NOT to open the box. In my experience the mystery of leaving a woman unfulfilled is superior to accomplishing the actually goal at hand." Okayyyyyyyyy
when he says' Mystery is the catalyst for Imagination...@ 5:44 "Mystery is more important than knowledge" same quote from Albert Einstein "Imagination is more important than knowledge" awesome line!
To everyone asking "Yes but what's really in the box"
JJ Abrams: "A good question. For another time"
Brad Pitt knows what’s in the box.
"The mystery box is all of us"
The real mystery box is the friends we made along the way.
Difference between a hack and a good writer is that the good writer actually knows what is in that "mystery box."
If you aren't writing a mystery story, don't use mystery boxes. If audiences don't understand why story elements matter, why should they care about decisions made in relation to them.
Bingo.
The problem with this style of writing is that sooner or later you have to open the box
Oh look, another box!
@@daron9229 It's Boxes all the way down.
In all fairness, Pulp Fiction and V for Vendetta never really needed to "open the box". The real issue is the fact that he's treating this theory as seriously as the narrative, when in reality, it's little more than a writing technique. That's like treating a hammer as if it's an integral part of a house, as if that hammer was the very foundation itself.
Edit: ...For the people who keep bringing it up, yeah I know the box isn't important. That's kinda my point...
That why we a a sequel to answer it!.. Oh wait a minute
And when you open it, all you find is bad jokes, awful pacing and a plot that is just a thinly disguised repackage of Episode VI.
This is a man admitting he has no idea for 20 minutes.
"Let's give him movie rights!"
@G Ren To be fair if she was looking just at the Chris Pine film from 09 then that would make so much sense.
Cow tools.
i love you
@@DanielaRusso221 i love you too princess
JJ Abrams: The master of making mysteries without thinking about anything.
The boxes are as empty as his head
@@BP-dn9nv I think I forgot, which movie boxes was empty?) or useles? remember me please
@@ridvanrizvanoglu5800 the star wars sequels:
episode 7:
-mystery box Rey
-mystery box Rey's parents
-mystery box Rey's powers
-mystery box who is Snoke
-mystery box Kylo's story/path/reason for disconnection
-mystery box Han and Leia's separation
-mystery box who the cantena woman-alien is who has Luke's lightsaber
-mystery box why does she have Luke's lightsaber
-mystery box Luke's reason for exile
-mystery box rise of first order
-meta mystery box: why is this a wishDOTcom version of episode IV ?!!!!
episode 9:
-literally the whole movie. it just moves so fast that you don't a second to breath and go... what?!
The Cloverfield sequels are also just kinda... what?!
@@kayjay7585 Hmm I was thinking he is doing that in different movies. It was interesting. But star wars I even didn't watch))
It's the ultimate lazy writer's tool. It allows him to avoid solving difficult writing problems and he can still go on about "how wonderful the mystery is." And then, if a much better writer comes along in a later movie and actually creates a clever, researched answer to his bullsh*t non-answer, he can pretend that was the plan all along.
I think he is missing a fundemental aspect of what makes mystery boxes satisfying though.
There has to be a reasonable expectation that the contents of the box will live up to what is expected.
In all the examples he listed, star wars, jaws, etc. The mysteries have an answer, or hints of one- that make sense. And there is always a sense that, while mysterious, there is something tangible and real behind the mystery.
Every good mystery box in a film has to be built on smaller reveals that lend credence to the idea that the one big mystery does have an answer, even if that answer is never revealed.
And it seems like in his own work he doesn't do a good job of that. If every small mystery is never satisfactorily explained, what foundation does the audience have that the larger mystery has any real significance?
They don't.
I love mysteries and unresolved plot points in many cases, but I hate cheap mystery boxes from the store. Specifically because past experience has taught me not to expect a result that matches expectation. Just like JJ Abram's films and shows.
It doesn't matter if the mystery box is unopened... if the expectation and anticipation it is supposed to have is undermined by the rest of the movie/show.
His idea of a payoff is more like an Andy Kaufman joke. He laughs all the way to the bank while his audience asks themselves why they feel so dirty and violated.
There were no reveals for Marsellus Wallace's briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Same thing w/ Joker's backstory in The Dark Knight.
jp3813
the ambiguity of the briefcase forces you to deal with the themes of the movie and adds to the rewatch value. Till this day I haven’t thought of the briefcase as anything significant outside of its intended purpose.
Just like Cobb’s spinning top in inception isn’t actually his totem, it’s his wife’s, his totem is his wedding ring. Chances are that you wouldn’t notice if the film didn’t cut short of the top toppling.
Just like I didn’t notice that someone gets saved at the end of each scene in pulp fiction. If it were cut linear that wouldn’t be the case. But the ambiguity of the briefcase forces us to dissect the themes.
Joker is not a mystery box, his lies are no mystery, it adds to the depth of his psychotic nature.
JJ writes a mystery with no answer, with no purpose other than it being a mystery. It serves no literary function than to withhold information. That’s the difference.
The original Star Wars was a hero journey
@@jp3813 But such mysteries are properly set up, and hyped respectively with clues throughout each film. By doing so the audience knows they were done intentionally, and assuring a significance to the overall understanding/perception of the themes that we can walk out of the theatre to think about and discuss. They are done properly in a way that increases the immersion.
He has mastered the art of selling hot air to Hollywood and the audience. I'm amazed that he still gets work.
All movies are hot air, if you really think about it.
@@KarazolaX What do you mean? There are movies that set a mystery and solve it in an elegant interesting way. Those are not "hot air".
@@aristarchusx1111 And none of them really happened, lol. People rag on JJ Abrams for this Mystery Box stuff, as clumsy of an analogy it is there is something of a point to it. It's just dumbed down immensely.
JJ is still a pretty good director, mediocre writer, the dude has had more success then 95% of hollywood. He practically prints money, every movie he's directed has done remarkably well.
@@KarazolaXIs that you JJ? Your movies suck btw.
It really is a mystery...
box
He doesn't realize the critical part of Tannen's Mystery Magic Box: Tannen knows what's in the box. The consumer doesn't.
JJ Abrams is better suited to be an audience member of mysteries, not the creator of one.
Exactly.
Ha. Fanfiction doesn't change if you throw hundreds of millions of dollars at it.
@@raywilliams6717 I've both written and read better fanfic than that dreg. Seriously, the stories lacked inspiration and suspense. I just couldn't get invested in the characters, at no point any of them really mattered to me. With some of them I even didn't find a reason for their existence whatsoever.
It's actually scary that JJ doesn't understand his own style of writing.
A mystery box is a metaphor for the creative writing process. It doesn't give all the information all at once, because if it did, there would be no reason to consume the story until the end. That's the whole concept of storytelling, to stay until the end so that the point- the reason you consumed the story in the first place- is revealed. In the meantime of getting to the end, the world, i.e. the setting, cinematography, special effects, basically all the things that ask you to suspend your disbelief, are there to sate your curiosity.
The issue with JJ's style of writing is that he creates the mystery box and sets everything up, but then gets carried away with the special effects and forgets to actually make sure there's a point to the story. He then tries to pull a clever one by saying the mystery box didn't matter in the first place, because it never needed to be opened/explained. He fails to realize that the point of his own story from the very beginning was to open the box.
I feel the same. I would add that opening the box is not a yes or no kind of thing. You can open the box just a little bit, leaving room for imagination. Or a sequel, in Hollywood terms.
He understands it well enough toi get funds for his projects.
Nothing else is needed. Man's a hack.
His company is leaping from one franchise to another killin them in the process.
Abrams is a human parasite.
Witholding information is not the point of storytelling. This is a terrible argument.
It's because he has nothing to say.
It would really help if the writer knew what's in the mystery box before presenting it to the audience.
Also, is something a mystery just because the characters or the audience doesn't know it? A mystery implies there's some kind of puzzle or secret that people need to piece together clues to figure out. Just because someone doesn't know a thing doesn't make it a mystery. Obi-Wan's identity in Star Wars isn't a mystery because for one, Leia says that he was a general in the Clone Wars, and he pretty much just tells Luke who he is after they meet. No one needed to find clues or investigate his identity.
I totally agree!! thats what happened to Lost. He didn't know what the mystery was, he just kept on presenting unknowns and strange ideas that actually do NOT have an answer to. The premise was awesome. The ideas and mysteries presented were a catalyst for you to explore and think for all the possibilities of what the puzzle could be or the satisfaction it would wrought if it was solved. But in the end, we were given none of those. None of the answers. All we were given really were a sort of strangeness, a curiosity that was never really satiated. Which is just thee WORST. i expected from lost too much
What's funny though is that the both Yoda and Obiwon were way more explain in the OT than the orange girl in the ST, but they were more mysterious, because we add clues to construct their past. If you give no clues at all, then there's no mystery, there's too many things for them to be to be anything at all.
Well said. Ignorance is not mystery.
Here's how "Mystery Box" writing works. This is how JJ/Lindelof write ALL their movies:
1) Raise several questions, including one "deep" question and several boring questions.
2) When the time comes in the story to answer the "deep" question:
a) Answer the boring question instead.
b) Don't answer the question at all.
c) Postpone answering the question. ("A good question. For another time.")
3) Audience remembers that you raised the important question. Thinks that the movie was "deep." Forgets that you didn't answer it.
4) Repeat forever.
5) Profit.
In short: he's a complete tool.
I'm somewhat disgusted that he was involved with Fringe. Jack Dorsey must be a supergenius to make up for this moron.
@@raywilliams6717 I agree that using the Mystery Box effect on movies is cheap and garbage, but although it sort of worked for Lost, it definitely worked well with The Leftovers. Television shows can use the Mystery Box well
What those two write in isn't creative writing. It's called finding a creative way to be lazy.
6) get your name written in history as the guy that ruined Star Wars forever
7) still find wotk somehow, maybe because you have social skills
Is that true though?
Because the example people cite the most is Lost, and yet Lost DID answer all of its biggest questions. Right in the show. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t answer anything, the problem was that they answered things in such a realistic and methodical way that if you blink you miss everything, and based on how people reacted to the show, even if you caught everything you were likely to still miss everything out of misinterpreting things or refusing to accept certain answers. A lot of people had theories and refused to let go of them even when the show literally disproved them.
So essentially, JJ's movies are just giant epic click-baits.
bingo
That would explain why his series begin really good, but gets more obsurd as the get to the fifth season. Fringe is still great, but thats probably because of John noble rest in peace, the rest of the brilliant cast, good writers and the focus on the enstranged father son relationship.
Yes!!!!!! Thank you!
He's making movies for people who use them like toilet paper. Everyone needs to wipe their posteriors... it doesn't prove that he's avant-garde, a great philosopher or even an artist. He's just lucky to have an opportunity to point an expensive camera and lens flares.
For anyone who doesn't have the mind of a 5-year-old, it should be obvious that his work lacks depth in exchange for quick thrills.
Bad Robot or Monty Python's "Confuse A Cat" service? Makes me so angry that he can singlehandedly destroy Star Wars + Star Trek with no backlash from fans.
www.dailymotion.com/video/x6qglem
@@technofeeliak Actually, there is a growing backlash from fans -- but whether their voices can outweigh the masses, is another question.
Lindelof did this all through "Lost" In one episode he actually has a character say:
_" What if I told you that somewhere on this island, there's a very large box. . . . and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it . . . when you opened that box . . . there it would be."_
And I thought, "my god, that is literally Damon Lindelof telling the audience how he writes these stories. That is masterful trolling, Damon. Well done."
Anyone else kinda laugh when he started talking about Star Wars?
the force is strong with this one
Now that his version of Star Wars has been released I thinks you'll get nervous laughter and tears.
Uncomfortably, yeah.
Well, to quote the Joker, nobody is laughing now
Would have been nice if he applied his TED Talk speech to his Star Wars movies…
Michael Bay has a box too... it explodes all the time though.
Tim Burton has a box called Jhonny Depp.
Woody Allen has a box called really boring movies.
Tarantino has a box... Uma Thurman's bare feet.
What screenplays have you written?
keiseyku LMAO!!! One of the best comments I've seen in a while.
Does the box represent... a new hope?
+Bruce Wayne Plot twists can now be expected. Big Yes to that question.
+Bruce Wayne But the force has awoken
+Bruce Wayne .....for Star Wars after the Prequels......??
+Bruce Wayne um i'll show you the door that pun was just sorry but just no
*The box is about remakes and reboots and how it's the only thing Hollywood wants to do now.*
So what I got from this was that:
-Movies and stories are like a mystery box. They withhold information but slowly give you clues along the way to incite intrigue.
-Today's technology makes it more easier and accessible for us to use the mystery box as well as big Hollywood productions.
-Sometimes withholding information in your characters can give your film more layers of depth apart from the main narrative "ET, Jaws"
-Never hurt Tom's nose
+Fractorification For me the the lesson I learned was that Star Wars the Force Awakens is going to be epic!
+Fractorification If your going to copy or make a sequel copy the right things the emotion not the shark.
+Fractorification And its not just in movies, it can be in books too!
+Fractorification Don't forget that you don't need great technology to make things work. Sometimes you can make Tom shove the gun up his own nose.
+Fractorification The problem is that the mystery must have an answer worthy of the wait. JJ ignores that most of the time...
Amazing : just like everything JJA has ever put on screen, this talk went absolutely nowhere. Sure explains a lot.
best comment ever rofl
In his defense, mission impossible went somewhere, and it's an amazing film.
Mission impossible 3 is the best mission impossible, it's also one of the best action movies.
It set up the sideplot for the next 3 films.
@@TheBoxingNinja I love Fallout more than three. Three is good but compared to the original and including four and five it's a low bar.
@@hopelessent.1700 I FULLY disagree. 100 percent disagree.
First of all, the first one can't be compared to the other 6, the first one is a 'who done it' mystery, it's an not an action based film like 2-6 are.
Second, my reasons for liking 3 far more than all the other are very basic, *IT'S NONSTOP ACTION* and good action too. You can count the minutes with no action on your hands. Every action scene makes sense, almost everyone of them done right (but from my memory, everyone of them was done right), every scene filmed right.
The actors were amazing.
Third, what takes me out of 4 and 5 is the terrible coms chat. The whole movie the actors are talking to each other through Bluetooth, and it affects their acting as they aren't acting with the actors they're talking to, they're talking to themselves reading a script and you can tell. None of them have as many great action scenes as 3 (but I do like the scenes in all of them).
What's funny about this is 4 should be my favorite as it's directed by Brad bird, the guy behind The Incredibles (my favorite movie of all time) and has Jeremy Renner, a great actor.
I researched all the mission impossible movies around the time fallout came out, but admittedly I skipped 2 because... well I don't remember it being anything but boring, and it's the lowest rated one. Now I feel I need to watch it to compare.
Glad to talk to someone else passionate about the mission impossible films, and I'm glad to see there's other options out there; but in my eyes JJ made the franchise, as the first doesn't count (It wasn't marketed as an action film, but a mystery thriller.) The second was poorly rated and was said to have killed a sequel, but the third one introduced a plot point that's continued to the 6th film (his wife). And made the franchise what it is today, an action based thriller.
MI is sooooooooooooooooooooo much cooler than bond.
9:09 He says “withholding information, doing that intentionally”
This is what he fails to exercise completely. He acts like he’s withholding information, but his mystery box is empty. Then when we’re ready to open it, he throws something in last minute. The intrigue of the mystery does not justify a story. The contents of the box justify the story. If your box is empty in the beginning, your story is also empty.
"What are stories but mystery boxes" is a gross over simplification.
Investment is a tool but sometimes writting ideas without a plan can back fire. Vince gilligan when he wrote breaking bad explained he almost scraped the m60 machine gun because he created a mystery box and didnt know what was inside and he struggled to explain what walt would do with it and almost cut it out. Vince learned that if you set somthibg up without a plan it works best when you understand the charaters but a m60 machine gun is harder because its limited.
Its not whats in the box or if theres a box its about meaning
more to a story than investment.
The problem with the "mystery box" approach is that, in the long run, you have to give some kind of explanation or closure to the audience, and most of the time they will be disappointed (Lost, anyone?). From the filmakers point of view, it´s great, because they make millions out thin air, from curiosity and mystery alone.
There are two ways to keep the lore-fanatics and theory-crafters coming to a franchise:
Option 1: create a setting with deep, immersive world-building and compelling characters with well-defined personalities, ideals, goals, fears and relationships.
Option 2: Create a vague world with characters that are near-blank slates but with lots of questions around every nook and cranny that may or may not get answered as the plot progresses.
if you were dissapointed by lost, you didnt understand it
Is Gwyneth Paltrow's head in the box?
AWWWW WHATS IN THE BOXXXXXXXXX
Kevin spacey knowz
Abrams says he does not open the box and it's in honor of his grandfather. It's a nice story and that's fine for sentimental reasons.
However, his grandfather seems like the kind of guy that would have opened the box and explained how it all worked. Complicated or simple, it could still be impressive.
What a hack. The “mystery is more important than knowledge”, he’s the king of setting up dead ends and go nowhere stories.
you mean ryan johnson
@@chromaticv1 nope JJ
He's one of those, "I don't make mistakes, you don't understand art," kind of pretentious jerks. Even something as incredibly strange as Twin Peaks had information to put together and created a conscious flow in a narrative with all the odd twists and turns, it wasn't the free-for-all he's describing here. This is not how good writers think or create.
Elizabeth Athineu You obviously don’t know anything about Twin Peaks. It’s like the most improvised story ever. As for JJ Abrams, he is in no way pretentious, he’s always extremely humble. It’s not because you hate his work that you get to call him pretentious. Btw, David Lynch goes way deeper with this mystery box process. Just look at Blue Velvet. Had he done Star Wars and Lost instead of JJ Abrams, you’d hate him even more. JJ Abrams is a great writer, he chooses to leave more to your imagination in his work which makes sense because stories are supposed to make us dream, but the dream is over once you get to the end. He allows you to never stop dreaming about it. Seeing this as weak writing, as if he couldn’t do it any differently because he’s incompetent, is a really cynical view of things. I wish more people would get that. It’s not about being smarter than you all, it’s about having a more genuine approach with stories (if that makes any sense, I can’t tell since I’m french)
@@maulydieng6560 Actually J.J. is not a great writer, he only likes to start a story, raise questions and expect others to complete the story and answer those said questions. And when he does complete a tale or answer those questions, the result is so subupar to lackluster.
EP.7&9 and proof of that. Ep7 is basically plagiarism, and Ep9 barely could be considered a coherent tale. The man is highly overrated, especially as a writer.
J.J. Abrams doesn't age
Indeed
+Super Smash Joe He also does not learn.
Yup, he still looks 30ish.
If only he could use that immortality to learn how to write.
He doesn't have to. Too busy to do so
J.J. Abrams next TED talk: How to kill a franchise in one movie or less.
Emil Larsen I think this TED Talk already covers it:
1.) Present mystery boxes.
2.) Rip off stories that came before, but don’t rip off the shark/Death Star, rip off the angry kid and just make him be the bad guy instead of the good guy like A New Hope.
3.) Don’t ever open the mystery boxes, because the writer has no idea what’s in them...I mean come on, it’s about the mystery!
4.) Think about Grandpa...you know he was way cooler as Darth Vader and not as the guy who redeemed himself by killing the Emperor, so let’s think of him as Darth Vader since that’s way more fun. NVM...change #2 to just rip the whole thing off, including the lost droid on a desert planet and the Death Star...rip off the Empire too, and then have the twist be that after Han dies, Leia hugs Rey instead of Chewie...that should solidify the importance of my new character without her having to earn it...which is another mystery box!!! Yeah! 🙄🤦🏻♂️
His idea for Star Trek was...Use all the old jokes from TOS without the crew ever earning them, and then rip off Wrath of Khan with the twist that Kirk “dies” and Spock yells “Khan!” because their friendship has lasted almost as long as Han Solo was a father figure for Rey on this timeline. It’ll be a new mystery box for new fans and evoke nostalgia! Yeah! Rip off the emotion, and what’s more emotional than NOSTALGIA!!!
Mystery boxes and subverting expectations
I think Rian Johnson should give that talk.
@@LeeHawkinsPhoto when it comes to Star Trek, a lot of time had passed between first & second movie so it's pretty okay to think Kirk & Spock became close friends.
Abrams Star Trek was simply more action driven & punchy but nowhere as bad as the abomination Star Wars sequel trilogy is. This is mostly because Kelvin Star Trek started from a scratch so had a lot of wiggle room to establish.
Sequel trilogy outright ignored everything from the past. Luke who convinced Darth Vader to leave his ways would want to kill Kylo Ren as a master? That was the worst thing in sequel trilogy.
or less?
JJ is nothing more than a successful George Costanza character.
i just love boxes
can i direct star wars now
Yes, but are you into flimsy boxes that fall apart? That's what's being sold here? Terrible isn't it?
No your parents aren’t rich
You need to. JJ Abrams ruined SW.
Now this is a snake oil salesperson
@The Bounty Hunters it's a real serious ilness
Considering his love for his grandfather.... Do you think he based Kylo Ren on himself?
Hey Seamus never thought I’d find you here after coming from a Peter McKinnon Video... you’re a great RUclipsr inspiration.
Same wierd this platform ey
since Kylo is the only character in TFA that's even remotely genuine, probably lol
If he really loved his grandfather don't you think he should have left the man out of this?
Are we supposed to blame his family for his sins? Jar Jar A-Hole makes toilet paper. It's not 2-ply, it falls apart easily and can really chafe the sensibilities. The only mystery is why God hates us so much and wondering what we could have done as fans of amazing films to deserve this.
I agree with that.
This guy’s career is a mystery box.
Mystery is great! I love mystery! But not endless on going, never ending mystery which prevent story and character arcs. My god, not everything needs to be a mystery. Aka, Rey, Snoke, Maz finding Anakin’s lightsaber, the rise of the First Order, the Knights of Ren, C-3PO’s bizarre and unknown red arm which is suddenly gone in The Last Jedi. The list goes on.
Christopher Nolan can craft mystery in a Batman trilogy with story and character arcs, and still find an actual ending to his trilogy. I don’t think Abrams can or will do this with Star Wars.
Saul Grant Its not going to end. Disney wants to make and release a Star Wars movie every year. Disney is marking Star Wars the “forever franchise”.
Besides, what is there to really wrap up? There is no story and character arcs.
I’m not Episode 9 because Jar Jar Abrams says “Those who didn’t like The Last Jedi are threatened by women”
And he and Lawrence Kazdan push Luke Skywalker to the very end of the move because Luke was more interesting than the new characters.
The red arm is only explained in a comic, so that makes it even more irrelevant for the story
The red arm, was to sell the The Force Awakens version of C-3PO toys.
I'm glad that skimming through these comments most people are super critical of this approach, because I absolutely hate it for mystery storytelling. Yes, mystery is great because of its endless potential/possibility, but making some kind of promise or setting up some kind of expectations around the answers to a mystery makes the mystery all the more enticing.
Let's take his literal box. You pay $15 for a box of mystery items. Cool. But wouldn't it be even more exciting if you knew that your box had a one-in-a-million chance of also bundling in a rarity that you can't buy in stores? The anticipation would be heightened, you'd be inclined to buy more boxes and eager to tear into them. Even if you don't get the result you were hoping for, having some kind of expectation of what's feasible is way more encouraging than just a vague "Ooh! Mystery! Suspense! Let's tempt you but never open up!" Abrams never builds up any expectations for his mysteries, he just throws them around all over the place and thinks that's enough.
Only problem is when J.J. Abrams creates a mystery box in his movies and TV programs, he forgets to put anything in them, or he forgets where he puts them and they’re never opened. After three seasons of watching every episode of Lost, I became uninterested about what was going on after having strange mysteries on the island being revealed, only to find out they meant nothing. While mysteries in stories are good, they have to mean something, otherwise your audience will get up and leave and they won’t come back for more.
The same thing is true with Star Wars. In Ep 7, our main character has a vision after touching the lightsaber that belonged to Anakin Skywalker, which Luke Lost when Darth Vader cut Luke’s hand of in Ep 5. What the vision is about and how Maz Kenata got the lightsaber now means nothing thanks to Rian Johnson. If you’re going to create a vision, it needs to be executed in it’s entirety, otherwise you’ll end up with disappointed moviegoers who will very likely to want to see the next movie.
A mystery box is a promise. Saying that you plan to never open them basically means you already plan to break your promise before you make it.
The EA of movies.
He just calls them mystery box instead of lootbox
Still ea can create a original storyline once in a while
@@lorddiethorn And when you loot JJ's mystery box, you get nothing, unlike the EA lootbox.
And not all ea games have loot boxes
@@lorddiethorn Yikes! Lol
On Episode 7 and 9 of Star Wars: "Who. Wrote. This."
In MauLer's voice, accompanied by an image of Carl Weathers?
He actually confuses gradual information reveal & story pacing with mystery. If a character gets introduced and we don't get their entire background immediately, that's not a mystery; that's just pacing. As a result he also misses rules of writing actual mystery, say a detective story with a secret murderer. Rules like, you have to give the audience a chance to guess at least some of the ultimate reveal or they'll will feel cheated, since they are following the investigation along with the detective, so hiding crucial information will make the resolution feel artificial. I think it'd greatly benefit JJ to have a go at writing a detective story taking lessons from Doyle, Agatha Christie etc.; since it'd force him to undertand how a fair mystery puzzle should work.
this mystery box, while useful at first, is how a large part of how this guy ruined episodes 7-9. you have to have a payoff. you have to have progress from start to finish toward that payoff. and you have to, eventually, OPEN the box!
and if what's inside disappoints, that promise that you made at the beginning of the story is never fulfilled.
and that's when r2d2 finally finishes reinstalling windows, gives you a deus ex machina for the story's original problem that you forgot even existed, and you hold a lightsaber in front of an old jedi after destroying a deathstar 2.0 whose name no one ever remembers, because we hardly cared to begin with.
But if it's over the course of several movies, or seasons of a tv show, it doesn't matter to these corporate hacks if they resolve the mysteries, *because they already have your money*. It's like a startup scam or a pyramid scheme.
How did he ruin 7-9? I mean I could see 7 even though your argument makes no sense. But he had nothing to do with the direction of 8 and 9 hasn’t even been released yet.
Lindelof does this all the time in his stories. He's great at setting up a mystery, but he completely sucks at answering them. In his stories, he will raise several questions and one of them will be this deep, "secrets of the universe" type question that you cannot WAIT to get the answer to. Later on, when the time comes in the story to answer that "deep" question he will always, always, ALWAYS answer the boring, mundane question instead. Here's an example:
There's a scene near the end of "Prometheus" where they wake up the Engineer. Lindelof's been building up to this scene throughout the entire movie, raising questions about God and creation and the meaning of life. When the crew learn that the Engineer's ship is carrying bioweapons meant for Earth, Shaw asks the obvious audience questions, which are, "Why do you hate us? Why do you want to kill us?" You know what? I would LOVE to get the answer to that question. Think about it: you finally meet your Creators and learn that they want to KILL YOU. That's a profound, terrifying idea. A much more interesting idea than the answer Lindelof comes up with. We learn instead that Weyland wants more life, which he justifies to the Engineer with his "I created David so we are both like the Gods" speech. That's a terrible writing decision. Why are we answering the wrong question here? (Again?)
And audiences fall for this bait-and-switch story writing all the time. They think that the "movie was deep" (because it asked a deep question) but they can't remember WHY it was "deep" (because that question was never answered). Lindelof isn't smart or talented enough to answer the deep question, so he answers the boring mundane question instead, and hopes you've forgotten about the deep question by the end of the movie.
Director for Plastic Have you read the reviews on episode 9? 🤮
This explains a lot. Honestly this is genius for producing a lot of scripts in a small amount of time because you don’t need to know where the story is going to go. It explains why most movies and shows that use this technique are both all over the place and have such poorly executed endings $50 worth of tricks for $15 indeed. Only if the box stays closed
Even if there's 50$ worth of magic tricks in jjs mystery box its all the stuff that never sold because no one wanted it. The loser candy of starter tricks.
Long story short: We'll never learn how Maz Kanata found that Lightsaber.
and it doesn't matter according to his theory... mystery for sake of mystery is more important than knowledge.
Medalion Nah we Star Wars fans need to know everything
It’ll be explained in a stupid comic or visual dictionary because having a script that isn’t lazy is less important than lore and bonus knowledge that ends up being useless
@@mungus5273 It actually was explained. Maz got it at a space pawn shop....
HOPELESS Ent. it wasn’t in the movies, so it absolutely doesn’t fucking matter. You know why? Cause basic essential plot points need to be shown on the story itself, otherwise, why bother putting them? It’s not like even 30% of the audience will search on secondary sources
JJ during Rise of Skywalker writing: awwww crap I actually have to write an ending? I’ve never had to do that before 😮
Who would've thought that 7 years later, after speaking about Star Wars in TED, this very man would destroyed that honorable saga?
Julias ceasar wanst killed by one man.
Kathleen kenedy, rian, bob played a hand
You can knock this man's writing all you want. But you've gotta admit: that talk he did in 2008 about how he has no idea is actually a brilliant way to foreshadow the rest of his career!
Rise of Skywalker forced him to open the mystery box known as his career and it turns out it's empty
Let me save you 18 minutes. Abrams was invited to give a TED talk, but he doesn't have anything of value to say, so the night before he threw a bunch a shit together hoping that he could just charm and bullshit his way through it.
He's Shia Lebeouf, basically.
Read your comment at 17:30. Wish I read it earlier and saved myself the time
Mystery box as substitute for creativity and clever exposition of a complex story.
Soo in short Story telling, in his eyes, is confusing the audience by teasing them about non existant plot details.
But the LORE... >_>
The problem I’ve noticed here, is that eventually you do come to the third act. You have to open the mystery box eventually. There’s a point where the thing inside the mystery box can’t just be another mystery box. And Abrams, it seems, is never able to come up with a good answer as to what that is.
His answer is a terrible one: another box, followed by one more and so on.
Exactly. He never thinks about the endings and then wraps with mystery. He just put random mysteries and forgets about them... One day when he is obligated to write the last act, he improvises an answer, which makes a lot of plot holes, because a lot of stuff happened before which would prevent the solution... Or he just forgets that the mystery existed and the end it's very empty.
If he thought "okay, the end is this, the mystery box is filled with this. Now we make a story" it would be good. He is short sighted in writting, and that's why nothing that he writes has a satisfactory ending. Just mystery after mystery that are forgotten or have poor explanations. But the money that he did already is in his pocket.
I love the part where he says when people do sequels they rip off the things that don't matter, and not the things that are important. He should have re-watched this again before re-making the Star Wars movies.
Dude when it came to him defending TFA on being a NH ripoff, he claims he tried to give us something different and knew.
@@Deuteromis His lack of self-awareness just floors me.
Ignorant audiences enable those hacks
They have no reverence for the classics, foreign cinema
Important films are considered "problematic" for X or Y reason
It's sickening, the Sight & Sound 2022 [Critics' Poll] is just plain wrong
The problem with JJ's mystery boxes is that there's nothing in them.
That sums it up quite nicely.
Don't get me wrong, mystery is great, but there are 2 crucial things to keep in mind when writing a mystery: First, you, the writer, should know what is really going on and second, you do eventually reveal it to your audience.
The first is crucial to stay coherent. The second is crucial so they stay invested. An audience that finds out that there isn't anything behind your mystery will invariably go "pfft, why bother?"
Why does JJ Abrams think a mystery is simply withholding vital info?
Because he is a hack
Is it or is it not a legit way to raise questions on the Island? As long as you know the answers, you can do whatever you with how you give it to the audience
Julio sorry no he is a hack it’s a lazy form of story telling he is a hack he steals and rips off other shows
I don’t know... I prefer this over genre formula
So you think it’s ok to steal the plot of better shows and nope Star Wars is not a Mystery box you know nearly every thing from the start the only thing that is a reveal is that you know luke I am your father
If you ask a writer what they have in mind for a story and he/she responds with "Well there are infinity possibilities." Just Walk away, the story was going to be crap if you don't even know what your writing.
Cheap answer, you can write about a journey. And on the other side stories when characters are just on rails are boring, sometimes it's amazing to live the journey with the writer
"Go make your movie! There's nothing stopping you from going out there and getting the technology..." This is a common sentiment, and though it is true that from a technology standpoint, the means of production have become increasingly affordable over time, there are other potentially insurmountable factors in the equation that he leaves out: The cost of locations, actors, and crew members. It is not always possible to get access to desired locations free of cost, for example. Towns, cities, institutions, and even private individuals often want money to use a location, and some require big insurance policies. And then you have the cost of actors and crews... and typically, the greater the talent, the more it's gonna cost. Those are the hard facts. You can risk getting arrested for 'stealing a shot' on a location that requires fees, permitting and insurance, or you can write a "Lifeboat" script that makes no-budget movie making feasible by making the story dialog dependent and/or having it take place in a single, cheaply accessed location, but the notion of "There's nothing stopping you" because the technology is affordable... That notion can be very misleading.
"Go make your movie...just make sure both of your parents are prolific, powerful producers first."
He saying "mystery is better than knowledge"
Star Wars TFA's ending is the perfect example #NoSpoiler
Feynman showed us all decades ago why this is delusional. Abrams is an uneducated tasteless hack.
That part were he says sequels and rip-off movies rip-off the wrong thing hurt my deeply in away that I am incapable of describing.
"Okay, Star Wars, what’s it about? Well, planets get blown up so let’s blow up some planets. There’s a desert planet so let’s make a desert planet. We’re doing the third movie, let’s blow up another planet and go to a different desert planet. BAM! We made some Star Wars movies!"
Like I’ve seen some clips of this before, but I’ve never that part before, so I’m surprise it hasn’t been used more when criticizing the Sequel Trilogy.
Now let’s point out the problem with the way he talks about Star Wars A New Hope.
"This woman, with these droids, who is she? She’s looking for Obi-Wan Kenobi, he’s her only hope, okay who is he?"
I just want to say to him "JJ, those questions are answered by the end of the movie. They are not left dangling for two years for fans to theorycraft about just for a different director to come in and say ‘Doesn’t matter LOL!'"
There are certain things not answered by the end of ANH, like who this Emperor guy the bad guys kept talking about, but ANH is largely a complete stand alone movie, with none of the mystery aspects you seem to think there were.
Yeah, those things he mentioned are there to intrigue and draw in the audience, but again all those questions are answered by the movie’s end.
The only real Mystery Box the Original Trilogy had was when Yoda said "No. There is another." And George Lucas certainly knew in his head when he wrote that that Leia would turn out to be Luke’s sister.
It really is a shame to me that Mystery Box has become a joke term, because it can be done well.
Attack on Titan has one of the best payoffs to a Mystery Box ever, and thus shows it can work.
Because the author know what was in the basement that served as the Mystery Box, know where they wanted to take their story, and thus know how to lay crumbs of clues to the truth. So that when you get to the basement and learn the truth, you can look about at everything that’s happened up to that moment and go "Yup, that lines up perfectly with everything I’ve seen so far."
Thing is I think there is some truth to what he’s saying.
There is something to said about leaving things to the audience and a less is more kind of philosophical.
But when your making a big Trilogy with a beginning middle and end, you kinda need to know what the end game for that is, and not just wing it.
Cause like some people here have pointed out already, JJ is a little too in love with the mystery part to even think of what’s in the box himself, and he doesn’t seem to realize, people will actually want to open the box, they wanna know the truth.
So by the time he realizes that it’s "Um. Uuuh… Palpatine’s granddaughter, I guess?"
My favorite part of the whole talk is (17:50) when, after talking obliquely about magic for 20 minutes, the camera shows a quick shot of the audience giving a standing ovation and The Amazing Randi is front row center.
yeah, the fact that the hacks in the audience gave the hack on the stage a standing ovation for doing nothing but scam them for almost 20 minutes says it all.
I heard so much about JJ Abrams and his nonsense about his mystery box. So I finally forced myself to watch this TED talk. I cannot believe it. If you watch this TED talk, you know to never hire this guy to do anything that requires at least college degree. Let alone put him in charge of a 4+ billion dollar franchise.
He's gonna do EP 9 of Star Wars.
Brace for impact, we're gonna have a flood of drama youtubers cashing in onto that.
Episode 9 is going to be verrrrry interesting considering it is the last movie of the trilogy. Will he still try to pull more mystery box bs in this film? Kind of difficult for him to do that since it is the end of the trilogy.
jj sucks at ending a series
@@WwZa7 to his credit, JJ tried to save the wreckage that SW had become after Rian Johnson ran a wrecking ball through all of it, but it was not enough. The original sin is still in TFA undoing the original trilogy.
@@gameoverinsertcointocontin8102
Thank you for reminding me that I made this comment, It aged so well.
And yes, I agree, EP7 was so flawed that there was no way of going out of this mess.
J. J. Abrams: Explains Star Wars's mystery box in ANH.
Me: watching ANH again: -_-
Seeing Leia being addressed as to who she was along with Ben after his first appearance on screen. Uncle Owen addressing the harvest season of moisture evaporators. There is so much information that was explained in the brief dialogue in that film that it is a self contained story. No need to question the movie by the credits because everything is explained. Unless if you want to count Chewbacca's medal then even that is explained when Luke tried to cuff Chewie...
JJ Abrams has a weak understanding of consistency and only makes up smokey mirrors only to never clean them or leave them partially opaque.
2019: Star Trek dead, Star Wars dead, Watchmen dead, Lost was a 6 year lie. The destroyer of franchises
this
Well Mission Impossible is better than ever
@@madcapmakov2 Mission impossible died in the third movie. Brad Bird resurrected the franchise.
Doofenshmirtz Evil That’s what I mean. He stepped down to produce these movies and hired competent hands, Brad Bird and Christopher McQuarrie and brought back Mission Impossible to the mainstream.
I saw the first episode of Watchmen and *hated* it. Did it get any better in any sense?
The box represents your film (if you are a filmmaker) and inside the box represents how your story or idea will be constructed. When James Cameron was being interviewed on the Actors Studio, he said the exact same thing when he was talking about making Terminator. He will disect the story split it apart and see how it will work. There is a science in making a great movie or any project, it's not from a book or course, but just observing from the inside how it will work.
The thing about mysteries, is that of course they are enjoyable and stimulating to the imagination. But sometimes -- or quite often -- they must be solved, and the answer(s) should be surprising, and make sense; be consistent with what came before.
Science is an excellent example, a metaphor for fiction: We have theories, conduct experiments, and eventually find the answers = the "Plot." The essential nature of Gravity is still a mystery. What the heck are Dark Energy and Dark Matter...? But science -- i.e., Life -- is ongoing, while works of fiction -- stories -- have to have definite endings, explanations, closure. Of course there is room for nuance. And there can be ambiguity, such as the multiple origins of the Joker in the Dark Knight.
If I were an untalented writer with ambitions greater than my skill set, I'd love the mystery box as well. It is so easy to pile up a couple of mysteries, stretch them out over 3 movies or 7 seasons, leave most unresolved and haphazardly try to conclude some of them so you can pretend you have actually produced a working narrative.
What a hack!
Using this tactic even I could write good stories full of mystery. The problem is that I could not finish the story... Neither him.
This has aged worse and worse every year I come back to it
Somewhere near the end of season 3 of "Lost" I realized the show's writers had no idea where they were going and lost interest in the show. This video explains everything.
What's sad is that JJ talks about investment in character and yet he doesn't know how to do it himself. Plus, investment in character only works when you give that character a good arc, and to do that you really do need to know how your story is going to end. Also, big mysteries do need a satisfying explanation. Sherlock Holmes can't tell Watson at the end of the story, "I have no clue why the dog didn't bark. I caught the killer, probably. Let the lawyers worry about the details."
Too bad cause the last episodes of lost season 3 are probably one of the most beautiful ever written
It was cemented as nothing to me when Mr. Eko died.
"There are three things that you don't want to do, number 2 is hurt Tom's nose"
What's number one ? And number 3 ? And if this is random, why choose number 2 ?
Mistery box right there.
If you watch it at x1.5 speed for a little bit, and then put it back to normal speed, it sounds like it's still sped up
I didn't care too much for jj abrams in the past. but after force awakens... I am loving this guy. I'm so thankful for the way he brought star wars back better than ever. and that is something I thought would never happen in my lifetime. kudos to abrams! he's a great talent.
The mystery box is literally everything I hate about JJ Abrams and his writing style.
You're way, way more forgiving than me.
His stupid mystery box went to a galaxy far away and destroyed it.
So in other words, he's a big fan of writing half of a story and then quickly making up a conclusion years later.
Half a story?! You're giving him to much credit.
I think a mystery box storytelling structure is excellent BUT ONLY IF you have a satisfying solution to the mystery. You need to know the end goal that you are working towards. And thanks to the sequels trilogy, we know what happens if you don't start with a plan, you end up with the colossal failure that is Rey Skywalker.
Hello There
You said chewy
This interview is the key of understanding Lost phenomenon
The irony with his Mystery Box, is that if he did open it, he would most likely be disappointed -- just as many fans have been with his works... Lost, Star Trek, TFA, etc.
Lost was good.
@@fathergabrielstokes4706 No, it became obvious that the showrunners were lying to the audience: they were indeed making it all up as they went along, and had no "master plan," as they had said. This was quite clear by how the series ended.
@AKAbrownPudding I beg to differ. A season or two in, there was a writer briefly hired (I'd have to check my files for his name), who said he'd learned that they explicitly had no ultimate plans... they didn't know what the smoke monster was, etc.
I believe in the middle of the 1st season JJ Abrams wanted to have the hatch... and Lindelof had to insist they figure out what was inside it first. (Another example of Abrams' Mystery Box.)
The past event in the Hatch, when the key wasn't turned in time, actually caused the plane to crash on the island. This wasn't even planned at the pilot stage!
It is very clear to the discerning viewer that for the last season they tried to fit everything together, and left out many answers. The statue, for example.
The ending was unsatisfying to many people. (Of course, not to everyone.)
That "it was always about the characters, not the mystery..." is absurd. Yes, the backstory and arcs of the castaways was fascinating, but you simply do not present so many confounding mysteries and leave them unanswered for the audience. That is terrible and unfulfilling writing. JJ's Mystery Box at its worst.
Even Young Adult novels, like Harry Potter present things early on that are revealed and answered.
If you can site your Source, that would be great. Yes, while it was airing, they continually claimed there was a Master Plan -- but they lied. I believe they actually later admitted this in an interview.
Thanks for your reply. ^_^
To think they gave this man the keys to not only Star Trek..... but Star Wars and he somehow crashes both spectacularly
Sad thing: JJ & BFF Alex are still ruining Star Trek.
it's nice hearing him referencing starwars with any conception there even being a sequel.
This was like watching LOST again. The process he is supposed to reveal here being itself an unseen mystery left unexplained.
The world consists of two types of people: those who enjoy JJ movies, and those worth talking to.
Relax bro wtf
I'm here because of Peter Mckinnon . Great speech
Me too !
Me too haha.
me too. :)
Always loved this talk, but Peter reminded me of it :)
Ah same!
This explain's so much about how Star Wars episode 7 is being marketed
And how bad Episode IX was, as well.
I think the biggest issue here is that everyone ask JJ what's in the box, but the thing with JJs style is that HE doesn't know what's in the box either. The new Star Wars trilogy proved the box is just a device that can keep the audience interested even if nothing's inside it, like a bike shaped present actually just being forks
Worse than him not knowing what's in the box is that he doesn't care.
The mystery box killed Star wars and doctor who
This video has the best comments thread on this entire site love how people are (rightfully) roasting him on his crap.
Basically a bunch of crybabies sad that he ruined some Star Wars film??
@@fathergabrielstokes4706 I'm not talking about the star wars comments but those pointing out how is one size fits all storytelling mysterybox is not suitable for all films.
@@AK47_Aki I agree
The theory of "what is X?" as a driving point isn't bad on its own, but spending the majority of the story of wondering what is actually is, without developing the characters and lore (the things that make us care), only to have "X" be nothing of real importance, is a slap in the face to the audience that invested their time and money into your story. That's the problem with his newer works.
His earlier works at least spent time on the characters and the story, but they ended up detracting so far from the mystery box by distracting you with subplots and plot twists that, despite all that, the story ended up going nowhere, not to mention the hype for the mystery box was at fever pitch at that point that there was no way expectations were gonna be met.
"Die Hard was about divorce". More like divorce was one aspect of the movie and you're exaggerating its importance to make yourself sound smart.
If you never open the mystery box, you’re never disappointed by what’s inside.
referencing Star Wars, and now that's his latest project!!
And how do you feel, 3 years after making that comment ?
Probably disheartened
Distraught that they let a complete moron continue to ruin a decent story from the past
JarJar Abrams: destroyer of franchises.
WHAT'S IN THE FUCKING BOX
+Freddy Fogleman COME ON WHAT'S IN THE BOX?!
+Freddy Fogleman PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX
AWWWW WHAT'S IN THE BAAAAX
+Freddy Fogleman What's in the box, what's in the box! What's in the box today? WHATS IN THE BOX!!!1
THEY HIDE IN METAL BAWXES!!!
J. J. Abrams is a great director. I absolutely loved Lost and I love the way he directs. His style of incorporating mystery in cinematography is really refreshing and I am excited to see what he does with Star Wars (but also hoping he doesn't ruin it because I am also a huge Star Wars fan)
Sarah Mica
So what’s your opinion on JJ right now.
I feel like Abrams shouldn't really be giving talks on story telling. The man is a very competent director but name a film he's made that isn't in some way ripped off from something else. Star Trek Into Darkness/Wrath of Khan, Force Awakens/A New Hope, Super 8/any Stephen King or Steven Spielberg story. The man is essentially a hack, a talented hack no doubt who's made some good films but a hack nonetheless.
I've seen LOST, and that makes me think that even JJ doesn't know what's in that thing...
This hasn't aged well, lol
And to think you wrote this BEFORE Episode 9 came out!
@@brendanw8136 well, to be honest, it didn't take a great prophet to foretell that Ep9 would be train wreck, no later than when Ep8 hit the screens.
Only thing JJ Abrams demonstrated that his technique is good way to ball rolling & get people interested in the idea. Most likely why he gets so much attention in Hollywood since you don't really care about a definitive ending you can go anywhere. Keep hinting things to keep them in.
Coming here in 2024 to confirm that JJ is basically saying "here's his to be a fucking hack writer that ruins everything you touch"
JJ invented his own genre "Hype"
He's good at setting up and hiding mysteries, there's no doubt there, but the downside it feels hollow when there's nothing but a piece of string in the box. Lost was a great ride up to the finale which retroactively ruined the whole thing. Learn from that weakness, have something in the box worth waiting for.
Game Theory?
+TheBlueBlurCentral Sent me Film theory did *Nods*
nah, film theory
+TheBlueBlurCentral Nope not a game theory, A Film Theory. Thanks for reading.
+TheBlueBlurCentral film theory, yeah
Yup
JJ Abrams might be the only professional writer who has never heard of a thesis statement.
Shamelessly admitting he only knows one trick and is terrible at making movies
I would say he is a good director. He can give a lot of scenes much dynamic and power. But he truly sucks at writing.
Exactly. A con-man just like Shyamalan who learned only one idea (that movie should contain a twist) and overusing it as a "golden hammer". Two damn idiots.
christian schmidt as a fan of JJ, you are exactly on point!! He’s an amazing director, he makes 100 from 1, but he can’t make 1 from 0.
@@ma-tanica Shyamalan is the Ghandi of moviemaking compared to this hack.
@@christianschmidt8476 If directing were solely about making dynamic scenes, Michael Bay would be the greatest director of all time. The man can put together a long string of dynamic scenes like nobody else, but it doesn't seem like he has a bigger picture of why he's doing that.
JJ Abrams suffers the same problem, but to a lesser extent.
Trouble is JJ, there is *nothing* in your fucking box!
J.J Abrams: "Sometimes it's best NOT to open the box. In my experience the mystery of leaving a woman unfulfilled is superior to accomplishing the actually goal at hand."
Okayyyyyyyyy
when he says' Mystery is the catalyst for Imagination...@ 5:44 "Mystery is more important than knowledge" same quote from Albert Einstein "Imagination is more important than knowledge" awesome line!
MatPat from Film Theory sent me.
ikr
+Kaylem Godinez What episode was that
The Star Wars one about how Luke could be Kylo Ren.
I love seeing him talk about Star Wars before TFA