J.J. Abrams is a master of the technical side of filmmaking.
Is a master of making a movie look good, and sound good.
Is a master of making a movie catchy in a pop way, making it catch your attention- and catch your attention in a positive way.
He is a master of catchy pop hooks in movies.
But, all due respect to him as a fellow living being worthy of love and respect, he would't know good storytelling if it bit him on the face.
I am not upset at him. All love to him. With a scriptwriter who is a good storyteller, like Lawrence Kasdan (who wrote The Force Awakens, his last Star Wars script), he can make great movies.
The only reason that I bring this up is that he is so, so good at coming up with catchy pop hooks for a story- and doing it in a wonderful, fun, positive way.
Thank you, J.J. Abrams for all those fun, catchy pop hooks!
With a Lawrence Kasdan to write the script, J. J. Abrams can do great things. Without Lawrence Kasdan (who had already written two Star Wars scripts in the original Star Wars trilogy, and did not want to spend his entire career doing Star Wars), he was hopeless.
But J.J. Abrams is so, so good at coming up with catchy pop hooks for a story, and doing it in a fun, positive way. He just needs a Lawrence Kasdan to provide the real storytelling for him.
Which brings me to the main point of this. Lost and Alice in Wonderland. And dreams in good storytelling.
In Lost, J.J. Abrams did what he is so, so good at- coming up with one fun catchy pop hook story idea after another, and crafting it all to look so, so good.
But in the end, J.J. Abrams had no idea what to do with all these ideas that he had thrown into the story of Lost.
He had given us a lot of wonderful, fun ideas to think of- with no idea whatsoever of what to do with them, no idea how to craft them together into a wider story.
In the end, he gave us a cop-out, because he did not know what else to do.
The show had to end, to resolve somehow.
And so he told us that it was all a dream.
And this is a cop-out.
You don't have to actually do anything with those story elements.
That is where the real storytelling is- in connecting together the ideas, in making sense of them. And in having a deeper purpose to the story.
And so now we can ask:
What makes Alice in Wonderland any different?
Alice in Wonderland ends with us being told that is was all a dream.
What makes Alice in Wonderland any different?
Just this.
The heart of storytelling is in having a deeper storytelling purpose behind things.
In Alice in Wonderland, there is a purpose behind the dream.
The whole story is there to show us what we can do with dreams and dream experiences.
At the end we are told that we can hold on to the creativity and innocence of the dream, and enjoy it.
This does not need to be shown overtly through the Alice character, for we ourselves have enjoyed the story, and that is enough.
But there is another purpose to the dream, one that is shown through the Alice character.
Which is that through Alice, we see how we can learn logic and maturity, and the beginning of wisdom, through how we react to the dream experiences.
Just like Alice herself learns logic and maturity, and the beginning of wisdom, through how she reacts to the dream experiences of Wonderland.
This is the purpose behind it that makes Alice in Wonderland true storytelling.
Everything in the dream experience in Wonderland is a learning experience, and through this learning experience, Alice learns more and more logic, maturity, and wisdom.
Until at the end of the story, Alice is able to see through the charade of the Queen of Hearts- a charade that exists in our own reality.
Alice can not only see through the Queen of hearts.
She can see through Stalin and Saddam Hussein as well.
By the end of the story, Alice has learned lots of logic and maturity, and definitely some wisdom.
And that is what Alice in Wonderland is about.
And J.J. Abrams?
Let's hope he seeks out another Lawrence Kasdan in the future. With such a scriptwriter, he can do great things.
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson