Remember the rule of three

It took me actually reading the script of Super 8 to finally realise what always irks me about J. J. Abrams' movies -- and why it doesn't necessarily irritate everyone. Here's a storyteller who (whether through directorial choices or the script he writes) doesn't care much for the rule of three, and pays only the meanest mind to foreshadowing.

The most glaring example (also the least in this argument, but I'll include it because J. J. was still responsible for the final product) was Star Trek Into Darkness, where Khan's super-blood is discovered by Bones to have healing properties because of his testing it on a dead tribble. The only tribble seen beforehand was the painfully ham-handed inclusion of Bones saying "I'm testing Khan's super-blood on a dead tribble because I think it might have healing properties." Cheers Orci and Kurtzman -- as though the rope afforded to a Noo Star Trek ("no longer sci-fi but an action movie instead") is also enough to have a poorly constructed denouement, even for a bad action movie.

Lucky, for fans of his other strengths, Mr Abrams isn't quite so brazenly bad at setting up plots, but in his own self-written movies we still see a lack of respect for the rule of three and foreshadowing. Take Super 8: the reason I decided to write this rant in the first place. Now those of us who dislike the end third of this film share a variety of story and thematic reasons for why it doesn't work -- chief among these (thanks Film Crit Hulk) being how the movie itself lacks evidence in its own understanding of what it wants to do with character resolution and themes. But the movie actually does know what it wants to say: it's just that there's not enough evidence that it does.

At the moment during the end when the alien picks up Joe, according to the shooting script the look it gives him with suddenly human-like eyes is 100% a callback to the Joe and Alice watching home movies scene (where she revealed her father's involvement in Joe's mother's death).

Here's the rub: if you want a particular idea (in this case "the eyes that see within") to sink in, you repeat it. This, in narrative language, highlights to the audience an intentional foreshadowing, rather than world-building or character filigree. You could in fact set aside other major problems with the ending of Super 8 ---

1. the tired cliché of human-like features cluing the audience to "oh, the scary alien's not so bad" (by gum, DOGS do this to us, it's not the most inventive idea), and

2. the fact that Joel Courtney's portrayal of Joe on screen (while captivating) is nowhere close to the suffering, loner tween that the final money shot needed him to be (thanks again to the Hulk -- the contrast between pre-letting-go-of-the-locket-Joe and the theoretical "better" Joe we hope for after the end of the movie just isn't there, he's too well adjusted) --

--- if you had just followed the rule of three, we'd be more inclined to believe "the eyes that see within" was reminiscent of Joe's mother. In other words, the ending of this still-flawed film could have been improved dramatically if the story had just used the rule of three for foreshadowing.

STAR WARS EPISODE VII SPOILERS INCOMING

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You can see the effect of following the rule contrasted with breaking it in the villain and hero of The Force Awakens -- Kylo Ren's struggle with the light sticks to the rule and so it is believable that in remedying his struggle he takes action, because we have had the issue first introduced, then developed at least once before it becomes important. Rule of three.

Conversely, all around the Internet, the detractors of Rey's arc cry foul at how improbably powerful she becomes during the final battle. A moment that was telegraphed when Maz Kanata tells her, part way into the film, that the Force is calling to her: that she has huge potential and she only needs to close her eyes and let it in. (Funny, I just realised that both this and the Super 8 example are "the eyes". Perhaps a running motif in Abrams' work, like super-blood in Orci and Kurtzman's?). You have to remember, and this part is well established, that Rey is not familiar with even hearing the word "Force", and so when Kylo offers to teach her in its ways, it is the mention of the word that causes Rey to recall Maz's teaching. Even with the other key developments with her use of the Force, between Maz and the climactic duel we never have that middle dialogue reference to "letting the Force in" that is necessary for the rule of three.

If the mention of the Force calling to Rey and her needing to let it in was developed before it became important once more in the fight with Kylo, I am fairly convinced that there would be fewer complaints about the apparent "ass pull". After all, one of the more acclaimed positives was Kylo's aforementioned struggle, which had the appropriate development.

For all we know, the infamously cut "Maz goes to the Resistance Base" sequence might have given us the developing mention of letting the Force in. In the final product, however, it doesn't matter because (and I'm being quite presumptuous here), Abrams cares more for pace, energy and ruthlessly propulsive editing than he does for whether or not viewers pick up an important motivational cue; one that can massage potential plot holes and appease narrative dorks like myself.