So the new movie in the Star Trek franchise is coming soon. I had given up on trek, really, because it became uninteresting. I knew that at the end of any episode in any of the series things would be back to the status quo. Only DS9 broke that mold and only barely. (Whixh is why IMO Babylon Five and Farscape were superior shows)
I liked Enterprise, especially the last season. The final episode sucked monkey balls, but I liked the fact that they toyed a bit with the history of the trek universe. Lets face it, some things have to be changed for the sake of good story telling, just plain making sense and the fact that society is a bit different from when the “canon” episodes were made. A lot of people bashed Enterprise because of this, but I liked it.
So we’re back to Kirk, Spock and McCoy and the rest. Assuming that the story is good I’m hoping they don’t fall into these traps that have plagued Trek in the past:
[ul]
[li]Don’t make Kirk into a parody of the “old” Kirk. While he shouldn’t be happy-go-lucky, Kirk had a ruthless nature that served him well in the original series. He wasn’t a thrill seeker, but he was confident and I guess arrogant in a way to throw the dice when backed into a corner.[/li][li]No time travel! I’ve read that Quinto’s spock is supposed to meet Nimoy’s spock. I don’t know if that is true. I’ll give that a pass because, Fuck, its Nimoy as Spock again! But if the overall plot revolves arounf time travel i’ll be pissed. ST has beaten time Travel into the ground. They should have a rule for all future installments of ST…no more time travel stories![/li][li]I hope they cut out the really dumb concepts like “We don’t use money in the future” and “Starfleet isn’t military”. They don’t make sense, and they remove potential storylines. How does the economy work without money? How can you have an armed force with powerful starships that are pledged to defend the federation and not call it a military? [/li][li]No dumbass technobabble solutions. TNG started this. Lets end it. Especially with the transporter being able to basically remove any diseases, viruses, etc. No more made up particle emmissions that can do anything when you reverse the polartity of the nuetron flow and run it through the warp engines while data plugs himself into the main compurt and reroutes the structural intregrity field to make a quantum warp time field bubble envelope thingie. [/li][li]If they’re really gonna try to reboot Trek I’d feel free to change things like first contact with the Romulans and other races as Trek has laid them out. I enjoyed the way enterprise laid things out with the Klingons. I think they could have done more but didn’t want to screw with the past continuity too much. Romulans were underused I think. There is a lot of potential for good stories with them, but they’d have to be willing to rewrite things that are considered “canon”. [/li][/ul]Now this is just off the top of my head but if I were asked for concepts for a new Star Trek TV series I’d place it between the time of TOS and TNG. I’d focus it on a tactical group rather than a starship. A group of Starfleet Special Forces if you will. They could conduct recon missions on strange new worlds and on federation enemies like the romulans and at that time the Klingons. Thats just my first thought, but i think itds worth looking into. What ideas do you have? I’d like to hear them. I think another series aboard a starship would be just more of the same.
You haven’t been paying attention to the recent Trek threads, have you? The time travel bit is fact, and the film’s supposed to follow Kirk from childhood to taking command of the Enterpoop.
I’m skittish about the Mustang convertible being driven by the young newKirk. It’s become a cliché, even within Trek, for there to be a character with a fixation on mid twentieth-century American pop-culture, be it Picard’s “Dixon Hill” thing; Riker’s dixieland jazz; Sisko’s baseball; Paris’ “Captain Proton” (and sports-car convertibles) hobbies…
I liked it better when oldKirk couldn’t even drive stick, because internal combustion cars were just so quaint and hokey.
Anyway, most of all I want to see Trek written for adults. Rough language is okay, violence, sexual content. Please; no cutesy aliens, no life-lessons, no morality in cod-liver doses…
Eh. It has already been conclusively demonstrated that the new Star Trek movie will suck because they’re using stick-welding to build the Enterprise. No further discussion needed here.
…[li]I hope they cut out the really dumb concepts like “We don’t use money in the future” and “Starfleet isn’t military”. They don’t make sense, and they remove potential storylines. How does the economy work without money? How can you have an armed force with powerful starships that are pledged to defend the federation and not call it a military?..[/li][/QUOTE]
Imagine the Coast Guard merged with the NOAA Corps in outer space. Throw in the State Department, Interior Department, Justice Department, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation depending on the episode.
Well, excuse the heck outta me and my slow computer that can only play trailers in teeny-tiny windows. Twentieth-century tech sucks and anybody from from the 2200s who likes it will be an idiot.
I despise the 20th Century fixation so many of the character seem to have as well. Even though I came to enjoy it later, the Vic Fontaine holosuite adventures was an incredibly blatant example.
You know, if people stopped shelling out money for just anything with the Star Trek name attached to it, they might, just might stop spitting out so much drek. Just a thought.
But the problem is, they tantalize us. Every once in a while, something comes out that’s really cool, and we get all excited again. A lot of people seem excited about the trailer for the new one (but not me.) So a lot of people will go and see it, and even though it’ll probably suck horribly it’ll make serious piles of cash regardless.
And thus the dreck continues. Hopefully alternating will cool stuff.
The estimated costs for this flick are around $200 million, which means that using Follywood’s bizarro accounting methods, the film has to take in $400 million just to breakeven. If it doesn’t do better than $50 million on opening weekend, it is not going to be viewed as a success, unless there’s a huge take the following weekend. If, as some times happens, there’s a big opening weekend, followed by a dramatic drop in subsequent weeks, it’ll be considered a flop, even if it does turn a profit once you factor in things like overseas box office and DVD sales.
Paramount picked Abrams for this project because he’s currently Follywood’s “Golden Boy,” but in many ways, he’s a lot like M. Night Shamalamadingdong, in that he’s a good (if not great) director, who’s scriptwriting ability is weak at best. He’s going to have problems, sooner or later.
If this film flops, or does poorly, it’ll be difficult to get the next one made (like Superman Returns is presently having trouble getting a sequel made), and eventually, you’ll see someone trying to do a good job with the franchise.
I’ve never understood this - a profit is a profit is a profit, surely? If the film makes more money than it cost to make within a reasonable timeframe (say a year) then surely it’s a success? Why does the opening weekend takings matter? Word of mouth films count for a lot, a slow start can turn into a success.
I look forward to your responses after you have actually seen the movie.
Early buzz says it’s fantastic. I am surprised people are dismissing it based on almost nothing at all.
(I remember when people thought Lord of the Rings, and Pirates of the Caribbean were going to be terrible - very few people continued to think so after actually seeing them)
What a hysterical mischaracterization of my opinion. Oh, wait, its not funny at all. If you notice, I’ve stated repeatedly Abrams storytelling “abilities” disincline me to expect the film to be worth my time. If its a good film, I’ll have no trouble admitting my misgivings were misplaced.
If I see it. So far, nothing I’ve seen has made me willing to consider watching the film, even as a rental.
What early buzz is that? The only commentary I’ve seen on the film has been based on a few segments shown, and the response has been “Well, it looks like it has potential.” There’s one exception that, but its from one of the guys who does the Trek fanfilms. He was completely opposed to it, until Abrams gave him a walk-on role in the film, and then he suddenly loved it. That does not inspire confidence in me at all.
My memory is that in the case of Pirates, people failed to see how they could make a movie out of the ride, then turned out to be pleasantly surprised when the first film didn’t suck. (The opinions of the sequels have been mixed, trending towards negative.) With LOTR, there was puzzlement that they picked Jackson to direct the movie and lots of “Please Gawd, don’t let the films suck.” I only saw the first LOTR film, and it bored me to tears (Yes, I’ve read and enjoyed the books, but I’d have been happy if they’d have cut a bunch of the dialog out of the film.)
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