J.J. Abrams

Macey J. Foronda / BuzzFeed News

J.J. Abrams began his film career as a kid, making his own movies around his house in Los Angeles. Before he graduated from college at Sarah Lawrence, he had sold his first screenplay (1990's Taking Care of Business), and by the end of the ’90s, he had co-created The WB's Felicity— the start of Abrams' extensive success in television. (It was also the kickoff of his professional directing career: Abrams directed a two-part episode from Felicity's first season, in which Felicity's cheerful stalker from home gets hit by a bus right in front of her.)

Abrams has many years of work ahead, but directing Star Wars: The Force Awakens does represent a culmination for him: of his adoration of film, and for these films in particular. Abrams talked with BuzzFeed News at the recent Force Awakens press junket about what led him here, what he's learned from his past movies, and what he could have done better.

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Tom Cruise and Michelle Monaghan.

Paramount Pictures

The first Mission: Impossible, directed by Brian De Palma, was released in 1996, and made nearly half a billion dollars worldwide; the second film, this time by John Woo, came out in 2000, and increased that total.

But developing the third entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise appeared to fall under a curse in the early 2000s, first when David Fincher dropped out as director, then when Fincher's successor, Joe Carnahan, also quit: bitterly. By 2005, Tom Cruise, was in Oprah-couch-jumping free fall — and there had even been a report in the New York Times that Paramount was considering killing the movie entirely.

Cruise, a fan of Alias, approached Abrams, who had never directed a feature before. "I was so excited," Abrams said. But when he read the existing script, he realized, "I just could never have directed it — it just wasn't something I would have known how to do." He told Cruise and producer Paula Wagner that he instead wanted to write a more personal story about Ethan Hunt. "I pitched the idea of getting to know who Ethan Hunt was when he wasn't the superstar spy," Abrams said. "What is he like as a man? What is he like when he's home?"

Paramount Pictures

And so, Abrams co-wrote that version with his frequent collaborators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Of course, it had, as Abrams put it, "crazy chases and action adventure and all sorts of cool gadgets and all the things you need in Mission: Impossible," but he also introduced the character of Julia (Michelle Monaghan), the love of Ethan's life, to whom he is lying about his job (until she becomes imperiled by it). It wasn't dissimilar to Alias, actually — a spy has to choose between having a personal life and their job, with potentially deadly stakes. "I've often tried to play with intimacy and character drama and comedy — and then spectacle," Abrams said.

There was plenty of spectacle, with massive action sequences, the likes of which Abrams had not experienced previously. "The learning curve was significant in some ways because it was the first movie I ever did, and it was a lot to learn quickly," Abrams said. "But it was also learning with some of the best in the business, and someone, in Tom Cruise, who is just such a driven and knowledgeable force of nature."

Paramount Pictures

Abrams remembered in particular planning the scene in which Ethan and Luther (Ving Rhames) are in a convoy transporting the film's villain, Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Virginia. The bridge is attacked by Davian's allies from the air, and they eventually free him — but not before Ethan tries to thwart their plan. Instead of relying solely on CGI and shooting the scene on a soundstage with green screen, Abrams found a h