My lack of posts is directly due to my boredom towards my selected topic. Also, I'm assuming my fellow classmate have become bored as well. Due to all this boredom I have decided to change my blog topic in hopes to increase your interest, but more importantly, my interest in my own blog. I am a fan of spontaneity so I have decided to write about random thoughts that I experience.
The first random post of my new blog is about J.J. Abrams' tendency to recycle plots, actors and music. I never noticed this until I became of fan of his later work, more specifically, Alias and LOST. J.J. Abrams also does this in his films, MI3 and Star Trek.
I have been a huge fan of Abrams since I first watched Felicity. To my knowledge, Felicity was his first television series, or at least successful one. There's a love triangle, time travel (4th season) and a lot of Sarah Mclachlan music. For Alias, Abrams hired Jennifer Garner (she played Hannah in Felicity) as the lead for his new series. Additionally, his school buddy, Greg Grunberg, has a small part in Alias (He had a supporting role in Felicity). Since I am a Felicity nerd I also noticed that Felicity's art teacher has a very small role in one of the episodes during the first season. Abrams also uses a lot of the same music including Mclachlan and Ryan Adams. Also, similar to Felicity, there is somwhat a love triangle between the girl, the guy best friend and her soul mate.
This love triangle also occurs in LOST, a show that Abrams co-created. Like Felicity, there is also time travel. Except LOST's use of time travel is a lot more intricate than in Felicity. Greg Grunberg also shows up as the Pilot in one of the first episodes. The man who plays John Locke had a role in Alias as a CIA agent.
As for his films, there is time travel in Star Trek and the woman who played Megan on Felicity has a small role. In MI3, Keri Russell (Felicity) is killed in the first 15 minutes.
This probably is not important to most of you, but perhaps fellow Abrams fans will find his reuse of everything interesting. I'm not sure whether I would say that these are Abrams TV and film "signatures" or whether Abrams is just a loyal guy who likes what he likes. Maybe he's a bit of both.
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Or maybe, when he finds a formula that works, he is afraid to deviate from it. Other writer/directors do the same thing. Someone once told me that we each have only one story to tell, and we tell it over and over again in different ways. Maybe that's what's going on here.
ReplyDeleteMaybe J.J. Abrams is from the future, and he's making all these shows about time travel because something terrible is going to happen. He needs to teach us the rules of time travel so we can prevent it somehow.
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