While everyone is celebrating the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it's easy to forget that the entertainment powerhouse that is J.J. Abrams has been working steadily to fuel our imaginations, our dreams, and sometimes our tears, for almost two decades! If you've got four minutes, you can relive the most popular years of J.J. Abrams' career in a flash with the video below.
Thanks to The Nerdist and Vimeo user Jason Rusch, this masterfully put together montage of JJ Abrams' greatest hits as director/show runner/producer, as well as some of his not so successful ventures, is here to improve your day. Unless you consider shows like Undercovers or Revolution as successes. In which case, there's only smiles here. Naturally, the entire video leads up to, you guessed it, the inclusion of Star Wars: The Force Awakens' wildly popular teaser trailer.
It's hard to believe only 16 years ago that Abrams had his first huge hit with his WB show Felicity, which then opened up the door to his success with ABC's Alias, as well as his long chain of films and TV shows that have made a gigantic, almost Spielbergian dent in the popular culture that dominated the beginning of the 21st century. If you want to go one step further, it's only been eight years since J.J. Abrams started his directorial career with the loads of fun Mission: Impossible III.
So a 16 year career of hits, with only half of them spent working in the film market, and Abrams has now been handed the keys to one of the most iconic sci-fi franchises ever. To some, that might not make sense, but those neigh-sayers should be reminded that it was only three years into that very directorial stretch that Abrams made his first huge splash with the Star Trek revival. Fan or not, you can't argue that the box office results helped bring Star Trek back to life and back to the Hollywood conversation, which could lead to bigger and better efforts in keeping the series alive.
Looking back on the career of J.J. Abrams, you can see how he primed himself for such cherry gigs. After all, between the references, influences, and direct lifts that Abrams implemented in his various TV shows, it's no surprise that he'd even be considered for gigs like the Star Wars revival. And while Abrams has mostly moved into the realm of movie making, his influence can still be felt on TV any time someone tunes into an episode of Person Of Interest or reads another list of the best episodes of Lost. With a list of producer credits that keeps growing by the year, it's not a hard stretch of the imagination that J.J. Abrams is gunning to be the next Steven Spielberg. (As if Super 8 wasn't enough of a hint.)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters on December 18, 2015. Person Of Interest airs on CBS Tuesday nights at 9 PM EST.
