[QuickTidal]

Spoilsport Stonny, on 10 June 2013 - 03:15 PM, said:

Wonderful. I am happy to come to a gentlemanly agreement. No one likes to be branded a racist in a public forum, and I am no exception.

However I love the term "butthurt" and will continue to use it, but your concern is duly noted and I will try to refrain from using it in your company and on this board.

Small note: Just said the statement seemed racist to me, not that you were one as a person. I don't think that out of the gate with anyone. But people say things all the time in their lives that can be construed by others in unintentional ways. I'm no stranger to this. I think that's what occurred.

And feel free to use "butthurt" even when talking to me...just know that if we are having any kind of serious discussion and you use it, your stock drops a point. Just in the grand scheme.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

This is kind of on track with the discussion of the movie so I'll say it.

I have no issue with explosions. I like them and I like dumb movies. My issue is that its in a Star Trek movie, where I expect a certain level of intelligence and something more than just action and strung-together for the hell of it details of a story. Here we have a guy brought back from cold storage who was the subject of years of genetic manipulation and eugenics, designed to bring about a super race, and all we get is one-liners and the reanimated corpse of Leonard Nimoy. It could have been a great story done in the Abrams style, which I thought looked beautiful on screen, and I even felt the action was paced well. Its just that the pace didn't matter because of the random things that kept ocurring for no reason. Yeah, the big black spaceship was badass and looked insane, but how did Khan know how to build that? He's from 300 years ago! A little splainin' would help. How did they double cross him? Did they just say "Thanks for the ship! See ya!" and fly off? Why did the guy blow up the secret base *AFTER* Khan saved his kid? Why didn't he just go to the authorities? Things *just happened*, and that's ok, if it was GI Joe, or 2012, or Transformers. but this was STar Trek, and more thought could have gone into making people feel things other than an endorphin rush.

[McLovin]

Spoilsport Stonny, on 10 June 2013 - 03:34 PM, said:

Why did the guy blow up the secret base *AFTER* Khan saved his kid?

I'll take this one. Because Khan can always un-save (ie, murder) the kid if dad doesn't go through with it.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

Could he though? Then he's got another mission: Track down family, kill kid and dad. And then the movie doesn't have a reason for getting starfleet command together so he can shoot them all up, so they can track him down, so they can fire missles at a Klingon world that will start a war, but they aren't actually missles but his sleeping fellow superpeople, so will it start a war? Who knows?

[polishgenius]

For me (though unlike Stonny I did like it overall) the problem wasn't that it was a big dumb 'splodey movie. It was that it was a big dumb 'splodey movie that nonetheless introduced ideas and themes that needed thought and storytelling control than they got. Fast Six was huge, loud and very silly but it kept an internal cohesion and clearly thought about what any decisions made would do for the mythos and that (yeah, The Fast and the Furious has a canon now. Deal with it). Star Trek didn't.

Spoiler

On a practical level, like I probably said before, the transwarp thing (like some people have mentioned as well) totally messes up any tension and pretty much negates the need for ships. On a similar level, Khan's blood is gonna cause big problems for the belief in any real threat in later movies, or it's going to be ignored which will be an annoying thing in itself.
On a character/storytelling level, I think my annoyance with almost every aspect of Khan's death is on record.

That said, I think people are being overly harsh in some ways. Like what was wrong with

Spoiler

Khan's blood being foreshadowed? I mean the whole plot was stupid but coming out of nowhere it would have been a lot worse.
And suggesting that Kirk and Spock didn't have an arc seems inaccurate to me as well. I could buy the argument that it could have been done better, but Kirk taking responsibility and Spock coming to terms with friendship were definitely there.

I also think it's inaccurate to suggest that a film made with international audiences in mind must be worse for it. It's easier for a film with fewer culturally specific touchstones to be a worldwide smash, sure, but that doesn't mean it has to be stupid. Most of the Marvel films aren't. Daft, but not stupid. Harry Potter mostly wasn't (and was also not homogenised for international audiences at all, it must be said, though I suspect that such stereotypical Britishness has more appeal worldwide than Americanness at the moment). Anyway, the point is, it wasn't being aimed at international audiences that caused all the logic-holes.

But in terms of being aimed purely at box office audiences, it is worth noting that although it's made money, Into Darkness is more or less a failure compared to expectations and it's entirely possible that they won't go that way next time. In trying to position the franchise that way it's thrown itself under the wheels of the Marvel juggernaut and then been finished off by the already-built-that-way Fast and Furious franchise (despite being out earlier in the US it's already been overtaken by Fast 6 domestically and is being rampaged worldwide - and Iron Man 3 has gone screaming off into the distance).

[Spoilsport Stonny]

Heard this on NPR this morning:

http://onpoint.wbur..../movie-industry

Very relevant to some of my thoughts as stated above. Here's to dredging up old shit!

[Spoilsport Stonny]

And in the tradition of dredging up old shit:

http://www.tor.com/b...tar-trek#384099

[QuickTidal]

Spoilsport Stonny, on 22 October 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

And in the tradition of dredging up old shit:

http://www.tor.com/b...tar-trek#384099

A decent article, but I personally think it's not really looking at the big picture.

First and foremost, in 2013 Trekkers/Trekkies are not even remotely the backbone of the film franchise (If there is another TV franchise, then absoltuely), if only because mainstream audiences enjoyed the first and 2nd film in a generic Sci-Fi way. When it comes down to sheer numbers, I'm thinking there just aren't enough Trek-fanboy/girls to make them the weighted end of the stick. I could totally be wrong, but I doubt it.

For the rest of the article, I'll break it down by their own headings.

Have Kirk Grow Up Already

I don't get that POV. Why can't this growth happen organically? He's certainly still hot-headed and emotional in STID, but not a scratch on the untested jerk he was in the first film...but I don't see anything wrong with having a character progression where everything isn't just "fixed" in Film 2. He can't go from childish emotion-man in Film 1 to tried, tested, stalwart commander in Film 2...it makes no logical character sense. It has to be gradual. So by the time he's got 5 years under his belt, he's grown to be the commander everyone loves and knows will do the right thing. He has nowhere to go if he's all grow'd up in Film 2. That's my opinion anyways.

Quit Trying So Hard To Be Sexy

Meh, sex sells. I don't see any reason why it can't stay sexy in the way it has. Aside from the gratuitous underwear scene in STID, the rest of the sexiness is just fine to be present.

Come Up With A Plot That Isn’t About Some Guy Seeking Revenge

This is where the article goes off the rails for me. STID plot isn't really about a guy seeking revenge. That's the facade that's been painted over the real plot, which is about warmongering, and power trips. Khan is a part of the story, but this really is just basically the Space Seed ep of TOS (barring the ending cribbed and flipped from TWOK), and in that vein, this is not remotely the last encounter Starfleet will have with Khan, it's an opening salvo. The main thrust of STID plot is that of Colonel Marcus and his warmongering, and that's been liberally sprinkled with Khan's revenge/genetic supremacy plotline. If the article author was going for "This is the same plot as the first movie", then they have failed. It's really not if you look at it even remotely closely. The author of the article also chooses to vocalize comparisons to TWOK, and that's KIND of unfair when this film only borrows a couple of items from that film and mixes them up into a new bowl that is actually mostly SPACE SEED anyways. We haven't really arrived at the Khan VS Kirk moment in JJ's Star Trek Universe.

Try Something New

I get why they think this is an ideal thing to strive for plot-wise, but a fun part of having a skewed/alternate universe with these characters is getting to see them make a few of the same mistakes with a few of the same people populating things in different ways. I'm strongly of the belief that as they now start their new 5-year mission we will see some new plotlines arise out there...but I don't see anything wrong with having Khan established early on like this...since everyone was going to expect it at some point anyways, why not get it out of the way early? It's not as if they were never going to have Kirk's greatest nemesis not show up in Alt-verse. Personally I'd have been annoyed if he showed up in two movies time or something. Plus, we got to see the magnificent Benedict Cumberbatch play a really beloved villain. He chews all the scenery in STID and steals the show.

Discover Strange New Worlds

The first bit of the paragraph complains that STAR TREK is not an action franchise. No, not historically it hasn't always been...but the movies have always had scads of action in them. Not one of the Star Trek films in the whole franchise has ever really been like (for example) one of the thinker or scientific episodes of the TV show. That's because you don't really have the time to do that in 2hours that is also going to entertain the masses at large.

Look, there is a reason that Star Trek movies were failing at the Box Office (with GENERATIONS and FIRST CONTACT being the only real drops into the success bucket, Post-TOS films) since probably STAR TREK IV...people got tired of the same old tropes from the show being trotted out, polished up with a bigger budget and effects. That's not what they'd hoped for from a movie version of TV characters. They hope for something fresher and move movie-experience-like. That translates to a good story, lots of action, and lots of strange worlds, species and such. The exploration scientific angle/conceit of the show worked because they had a season of 24 episodes of breathing room to do that. A 2hour film has no such luxury. Case in point: One of the major plot points of STAR TREK: INSURRECTION was about violating the Prime Directive when investigating a primitive world and how it's not a good thing to intrude on them as a a futuristic space-faring species...unless you HAVE to to save them...right? It was a bad movie, and spent the better part of two hours telling that story. Why was it so bad? Because STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS achieved the exact same point in a much slicker and efficient way in the clean 10 minute opening to the film with the volcanic eruption planet and its prehistoric species.

So yeah, let's get on with the exploration angle now that they've ventured on their 5-year mission. Absolutely. Tell new stories, and see new species ect. But we can't forget that whatever this franchise was in the past, it's changed now and has more of an action quotient because audiences like that sort of thing in their Sci-fi in 2013. And there is nothing wrong with a franchise organically growing and morphing from its roots. If Star Trek continued to stagnate in the same rules and regulations it had as a show in the 1960's (or hell, even the 1990's) it would have become something to bemoan, instead of something to celebrate with freshness and vitality.

I get WHY Star Trek fanboys/girls are upset. This is never going to be the same franchise they grew up with, but that's kind of like asking the band you loved as a teen to never do different things, and continue releasing Pearl Jam - Ten over, and over, and over again.

JJ is doing STAR WARS next (and that's always been my fave), but I fully expect it to be a totally different beast filmicly to what's come before. I expect it to grow and mutate into his vision of what STAR WARS is in 2013. I'm cool with seeing what he brings to the table to freshen it up.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

Yeah I can't say that I disagree with you. You certainly make valid counterpoints to this blogger's issues. My problem with the new movies was one of writing and plot development, which were also TERRIBLE for the last 2 or 3 TNG movies, where they were able to just do away with well-developed character traits for the sake of telling a (boring) story.

I also know that the goal of movies now is to make a killing at the box office first, and tell a great story second. Which means that action and sfx will dominate. I'd hardly consider myself a Trekkie, but I am more than just a passing fan. I would love to bottle whatever magic it was that made TNG such a great and amazing show and throw that up on the screen, but they tried that and it didn't really work. So I agree that unless they do a new show, the Trekkies are going to continue to be displeased with the tone the movies will take.

I suppose they could make a really good movie that eschews the bombast of the reboots, but it would only please the die hards. And I just don't see any studio, especially Paramount, reversing the trend just to please a bunch of fickle uberfans.

However, here's my take on the authors points:

1. Kirk will grow up in time. Lets hope that time is sooner though. Risk taking is definitely part of his character, but so are other things like loyalty, quick thinking, resourcefulness, wits, leadership and a nice glossy chest with hair on it. Gimme the grown-up version of that.

2. Sex sells, indeed. But Kirk is no lecher. Its just the thing that Utopian alpha males do. They could afford to tone it down and still be effective. Wouldn't it have been an interesting take on the alternate reality thing if Kirk was celibate?

3. I kinda get his revenge point here. And I see your point too. Ehhh... you're both right. I think my problem with STID was that the plot wasn't guided by logical course of events. They can do revenge all they want if the sequence makes sense to me and the cause-effect is plausible. From my pov, they could stand a bit less convolution and a smidgen more lucidity.

4. I'm not as taken with Cumberbatch as many others. He's a fine actor and yes he rules the screen when he is on it. nevertheless, I have no issue with re-examining the old stuff, but the tribble connection was weak. Just no more of that stuff, please. And please god, no more Alt-verse Spock. Its too cheesy.

5. Lets have something a little more "spacey" next time. Like a crab nebula with feelings or a moral quandary of some kind. Lets see the Federation in its glory. It doesn't always have to be about about the corruption of the supposed good guy which leads to having to clean up his mess. Yes, leaders are always trying screw the little folk. But what if once we were able to see the discovery of a civilization that benefits from the Federation's involvement? I think much could be said from that POV. There can still be action and lasers. Just throw in a small Klingon invasion fleet so that it makes sense and have them be the big bads. Hell the big bad doesn't even need to be the main focus of the good guys. Maybe they're after some kind of defector who's tagging along with Enterprise, or who is an officer in the Federation, like Worf. They never did him justice in TNG anyway.



All in all, I still think that no matter what, the Trekkies will always turn out for a new Star Trek movie. If they survived Insurrection, they can survive the reboots. But it wouldn't hurt for writers/producers to throw them more of a bone, either. And not in the form of tribbles and Nimoy, either.

[QuickTidal]

Yeah, I think you make some very good counterpoints.

The best thing they can do moving forward is try to blaze some new ground with the franchise, whilst still honoring what came before. Hopefully they can find a balance that pleases the general audience, and the Trekkers.

Oh, I like Alt-verse Spock. I can't help but smile when he shows up.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 22 October 2013 - 08:17 PM