I liked the reboot, and will certainly see the sequel.
That said, the plot of the first movie was almost aggressively non-sensical. Since the plot wasn’t super important to why it was a good movie, I still enjoyed it, but still, you’d think if they were going to spend 100 million dollars making a film, they’d spend an extra couple hundred thousand to hire a competent screenwriter to come up with something that at least sort of hangs together.
I don’t care about continuity errors with other Trek movies/shows, or having a few plot holes for the sake of the “rule of cool”. But almost nothing anyone did in that movie made any sense.
I’m sorry - did you just link to a Greggggg Easterbrook article for a summary of your thoughts on a subject? Which consists of roughly 2,300 words on why he can’t suspend his disbelief (shocker) that science fiction stories sometimes utilize time travel as a plot device?
I have been and always shall be a friend of Star Trek.
Ever since I first sat down in front of my father’s TV to see the voyages of the starship Enterprise, I have been a devoted fan.
I was prepared to be disappointed by this newest incarnation, but I was pleasantly surprised instead.
The coming movie looks like it is going to be equally interesting.
Given the propensity in canon for multiple time-lines and parallel dimensions, it is not surprising to see the result of this in an entirely new manifestation of the Trek phenomenon.
But you still need starships to chart systems to beam people to. Are you just going to beam someone to a strange planet sight unseen?
A lot of things from TOS and TNG are still out there. V’ger, Nomad, the Doomsday Machine, the Borg, the Botany Bay, Trelane, the Guardian of Forever, the probe from Voyage Home, Zefram Cochrane living on a rock somewhere, Data’s head buried under San Francisco, on and on. Though there’s no guarantee that the Enterprise will be the one to stumble on any of it.
I’ll probably end up seeing the new movie eventually (saw the first one about a year ago), but not particularly excited about it, simply because its a remake. This isn’t even because I’m being precious about TOS, its just that I think 40 odd years of TV have pretty much done every possible story about Vulcans and Klingons etc. to death
This is pretty much my policy for everything Hollywood does these days. Expect me to pay for a ticket? Come up with something original for a change
Really not looking forward to a JJ Abrahms helmed Star Wars film. Considering who is out there these day, he was the pretty much the least interesting director they could have picked for the role (this side of George Lucas anyway).
I liked the new one. The biggest turn-offs were the unnecessary tie ins to the old stuff, ie. the parallel universe. The plot was kind of silly in other ways, but that was forgivable. If they can make a movie that stands on its own, I’ll probably be pleased.
When they make a new Sherlock Holmes/Robin Hood/Dracula/etc. movie series, there’s no need to come up with an elaborate explanation of why he’s not played by Basil Rathbone or whoever. Sometimes they throw in some Easter eggs for fans, but otherwise, it’s a new version of an old story.
Why is Star Trek different? Why does the story have to acknowledge the existence of other versions of itself? Can’t they just pick and choose what they want from the existing body of work? Does it matter if Data, or the Borg or that planet full of hippes never exist in this version? If the Klingons beat the Romulans in the Great Nebula Dust-Up of 3081? If nobody goes back to 1980’s San Francisco to steal some whales? As long as the story is good and it doesn’t look like crap, who cares?
It’s not different. But there’s a HUGE body of established canon. It would annoy many fans to chuck all of that out the window and tell them “forget all that stuff you memorized /worshiped for the last 40 years and get into this new stuff”.
It’s not even limited to Star Trek. Disney isn’t going to ‘reboot’ Star Wars. They’re going to expand on the existing corpus. DC and Marvel Comics frequently ‘reboot’ in large ‘universe-shattering’ events that tie the old universe to the new universe rather than starting fresh. Bryan Singer’s Superman movie was a direct sequel to Superman 2, rather than a complete reboot (though the upcoming “Man of Steel” actually is a reboot).
You can still restart from a fresh template, but, in this case, you risk alienating what might be the most vocal, hardcore fan base in the world. It’s better and easier to co-opt them, instead.
I see your point. How successful has the fanbase co-opt strategy been? It seems like the majority opinion is seething hate for the new movie. Assuming that they kept the canonical crossover in the picture, what kind of movie would have made the hardcore fans happy?
Meh. The reboot was stupid, the actors lousy, the plot inane and the whole idea risible. So anything they do from here on with the franchise won’t affect me in the least. I wash my hands of the whole universe and everything in it.
You’re always going to get the vocal minority against anything new. And that always skews perception.
But most fans actually seem ok with the reboot. The only potential problem I see (and only from Paramount’s POV) is that few Trekkies (or Treksters or whatever they call themselves now) appear to rabidly adore it like they did the series. So, while they didn’t entirely co-opt the hardcore fans, I think JJ Abrams and co did just enough to appease them while doing their own thing.
It hasn’t been posted in this thread yet, so here’s Mr Plinkett’s review of the 2009 Trek movie. It’s the same guy who did the hour long reviews of the Star Wars prequels.
I generally agree with him. His take was basically that he liked the movie just fine and that it served the intended purpose. And then, he goes into the expected nitpicks about why it’s not classic Trek and how it’s not really SF but an action flick dressed up as SF.
At the very least, it’s better than all the TNG trek movies (and yes, I do include First Contact and Generations here).
I was mostly OK with the reboot. I thought the actors were great and there was some pretty good action. My main issue with the movie was that they made Kirk too much of an assbag and then just handed him the Enterprise. I didn’t really feel that he matured for the command and earned it when there were other candidates (like Spock) who should have been ahead of him for the job. The only reason he got it was 'cuz he was s’posed to. The time travel and the red goo as well as having a brewery for main engineering was kind of weak, but I can shrug that off and move on.
I am hoping that they’ve gotten past the part of Kirk’s life where’s he’s an assbag – they need to temper the assbagery with his passion and desire to what’s right despite what those stuffed shirts back at Star Fleet says and mature him into his role. Take away that passion stuff and he’s just a mouthy assbag, as shown in the last movie.
