I’ve been rewatching Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, Voyage Home (Skipped I & V- also garbage) And the Undiscovered country.
I’m coming off as a nerd, but the plots, the story arch nature of the films, pacing and just little things such as only using a phaser once in a Voyage home and it still be action packed and interesting, the fact that Kirk still wants to save Kruge life even after he murdered his son, and Kirks ability to maintain his composure after all that was thrown at him, plus the music is awesome too.
I never used to think this way, and I gave the new Star Trek a chance, but I have never wanted to rewatch the Abrams inspired ones, and after they remade Wrath of Khan, they were just mining old story lines for short term gain, and that turned me off watching any of them.
Maybe Trek doesn’t need to be revamped, and peaked in the 80’s and 90’s and that’s ok. They should move onto other stuff, I’ve mentioned this before.
Well, the Abrams Trek IS a total restart of the franchise, set in the same universe, sorta, but in a different dimension of that universe. So it makes sense that they would hit some of the major events of TOS. They aren’t mining for short term gain, they’re telling the story as it happened in a different dimension. Thus, not every story will be the exact same (The Wrath of Kahn was not the same at all as the TOS version). I would expect The Abrams Trek to be mostly divergent from TOS except for key events, perhaps things such as “The Corbimite Manuever” or “The City On The Edge of Forever” and of course at some point, Spock will have to go through Pon Farr
Reboots are tricky. The only one I can think of that really worked well is Battlestar Galactica. Although I suppose you could consider the early Trek films themselves a reboot to some degree. But as the OP said, number one was a stinker.
I imagine the people that attempt them are at least partially motivated by a near-certain amount of money to made from fans and the curious no matter how bad it is.
As I said at the time…Abrams stripped it for parts, and deconstructed Kirk to irrelevance.
“We’ll make him a horndog who chases green girls!!” (though his reputation is way overblown and is in fact called a stack of books with legs)
“If you cheated a test, you’d be court martialed!!”
“He beat Khan??? Thats ridiculous. We’ll make him utterly ineffective and give Spock the girl and the action”
“Let’s make him run and scream like a little girl, Also if you broke the Prime Directive, your ship would be taken away from you! Lets do that.”
“A guy who doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario would be constantly putting his crew in danger. Lets have him realllly fuck up and apologize to his bridge crew.”
Ans while we’re at it. Lets strip the space battles and ground combat of any kind of weight. Lets make all the sound effects go ‘vip vip vip’.
Many will be disappointed to know that a fourth Star Trek film has been put on the shelf. Paramount lost money on Star Trek Beyond and approached Chris Pine (Kirk) and Chris Hemsworth (George Kirk, James Kirk’s father) to renegotiate the contracts they had signed to act in a fourth Star Trek film. Both refused to take a cut in pay, so Paramount has indefinitely shelved the fourth film. This also includes the proposed film to have been directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Forbes blames the success of Disney’s new Star Wars films. Some of the blame can also be laid on Paramount for selling their rights to produce MCU movies to Disney, owner of Marvel Comics, and selling their DreamWorks animation studio to Fox.
The later parts of TNG and much of the later shows were done by people who seemed to never have watched Star Trek, and didn’t even seem to like Star Trek, but who were sure that they were smarter than this Roddenberry guy who created brilliant characters and situations no doubt by accident.
In the Star Trek universe there are thousands of new worlds and all kinds of opportunities for new stories, but coming up with them would be too much work for the ninnies in charge so they redo stories and stretch the Dominion War way beyond any reasonable level.
They think optimism about the future is naive and childish, so they lose no chance to run down Roddenberry’s optimism. Which was inspiring and welcome in 1966 and no doubt would be even more so today.
I admit I’ve only watched the first of the new movies, and will watch the second when I feel I need a new TV - because I fully expect I’d throw a shoe or coaster through the screen.
Nope. Anything Abrams has ever touched has been total shit, and the re-booted Star Trek is no exception. Shit direction, shit writing, shit acting, shit effects…total crapping on the legacy of a man I dislike intensely, but who had a stroke of brilliance once.
I’ll take cerebral over kinetic when it comes to Star Trek and the recent films have so thoroughly embraced the latter that watching them is like being simultaneously assaulted and insulted. They’re dumb, and I feel dumber for watching them.
And the single best “episode” in all of Trek history is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Not everybody hates them. The reboot movies have been pretty popular. Nothing Abrams has done has shit all over Star Trek’s canon, he has merely established a different canon, tied to the old one through the character of Spock.
I’m disappointed there won’t be a Star Trek 4. I do blame Paramount for signing Pine and Hemsworth to contracts before Star Trek Beyond had even started production, then reneging on those contracts when Star Trek Beyond wasn’t a profitable as they had anticipated.
The Phantom Menace was pretty popular too. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t shit.
Yeah, he found a way of throwing away the canon. But he also threw away the characters. And did it have to be kids.
Captain Kirk, there are two reports for you to sign, then you need to attend a promotion ceremony, then it is time for your nap.
There are plenty of time holes in ST - why not place the movies within them, the way ST:TAS and the comic strip did? You could revisit some of the places with loose ends, or come up with some new adventures. But that would take creativity, and while Abrams used to have it, it seems to have burned out. And no one will tell him.
You can’t very well continue with the TOS cast. Voyager was meh, TNG was good eventually but, again, the cast is aging out. Enterprise was sort of ok, better than Voyager and DS9 was sort of skirting the edge. I’m not at all familiar with TAS. I’ve seen bits and pieces of episodes here and there that’s it.
No matter how you slice it, you’re going to have to have a new cast. Since it’s already etablished that there are multiple versions of reality in the Star Trek Universe, why not reboot the entire franchise? Further, if the franchise is getting restarted in an alternate reality, why would you expect it to be the same? Why should the new version cater to those of us who grew up with TOS, TNG et al? It’s not really meant for us. It’s meant for those who didn’t grow up with those shows.
A side note regarding Discovery, I’ve never seen it as it has never been available to me. The reviews I’ve read for it though have been somewhat mixed, with mostly neutral “it’s bland boring forgettable” types, quite a few negative “how dare they call this Star Trek, spore drive wtf, this is nothing like Star Trek” and some positive. So, in that light, The Abrams Trek is, in my view perhaps more true to Star Trek than whats currently out there for consumption.
Not only that, but Patrick Stewart has signed to do another series as Jean-Luc Picard. I doubt CBS will want to dilute the show with another TNG movie. (Yes, Paramount distributes the ST movies, but CBS owns the franchise and has the final say, just as DC comics has final say on the Arrow-verse.)
I’m glad I’ve seen them. And I did enjoy them, but I won’t be re-watching them like a have at least a hundred times over with the original movies.
I’m not sure if it’s the nostalgia that carries all that weight or if the former films are actually better.
They are probably looking for the present generations to enjoy them not us old time TOS lovers. I didnt think Chris Pine could do Kirk, but, for me, he did well.
My favorite Trek movie was #4 The Voyage home.
No the new films, I wont be watching 10 times a year. Maybe once every few years…
