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Crusher Crushed from Nemesis
Ant sent in a link to Wil Wheaton's weblog where he writes a surprisingly heartfelt piece on being cut from ST:Nemesis. Its a strangely bittersweet little entry that really speaks volumes, especially considering Wil's fairly public disagreements with
Rick Berman. Apparently Wil's bit was cut along with 48 whole minutes of the flick- its just the nature of filmaking. But
I guess if nothing else, they've got tons of stuff for the DVD now!
Because not everyone reads Fark. If slashdot never posted a story which anyone else linked to, it would never have any news. Sometimes there's a delay, but what do you expect?
Maybe I'm being horribly naive or stupid or both but I can't understand how they managed to find 40+ minutes of unimportant material to cut out AFTER they've already filmed it! Shouldn't they be trimming stuff out of the story while they're refining the script? Whenever I write something I start by letting my ideas flow onto the paper (actually word processor). Then I make several passes through the story to make the logic and dialogue stronger. I also cut out non-essential stuff if I feel the story is too long. It's not difficult at all. Given how much money it costs to make a movie, shouldn't these guys in Hollywood work hard to make sure the script is really "tight" and there's no fluff in it BEFORE they start the shoot?
As I said, I know nothing about the filmmaking business but the fact that they were able to find 40+ minutes of stuff they could cut out it sounds an awful lot to me like they didn't plan things very well and were just in a rush to get another poorly-thought-out Trek product to market.
Insightful responses welcome...
GMD
watch this
What the hell is wrong with people? Wesley wasn't a bad character. He had his annoying moments (largely in the earlier years,) and I'm not entirely certain I ever believed he was as brilliant as the scripts made him out to be, but he was a reasonable part of the show.
And Wil Wheaton isn't Wesley Crusher. He's a seemingly levelheaded, decent guy. I wish people could get past their hangups and insecurities and be nice people.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Wil, you da man. Few people ever grow up to be as sound a person as you've had to become. Cheers- and what you will accomplish after 30 will far outshine what you accomplished before 30 :)
When did it happen? Or is it just the usual array of socially inept geeks, snickering behind the cuffs on their black trenchcoats that make it seem that way? This guy poured his guts into this essay of his. He was obviously stunned by the news, disappointed, hurt even, though he denied it in his story. He had to know it was coming, but it sounds like that knowing didn't help. I was sincerely touched by this.
I was just as annoyed as anybody at Wesley Crusher, but I think Wil Wheaton did the best he could when he was handed what were, frankly, pretty insipid lines. I grew more and more fond of the character as the show and character matured, most particularly the last show he was in regularly.."Final Mission" I think it was. And his character grew even more intriguing with his guest appearances, like the fascinating "The First Duty." At any rate, I looked forward to seeing him in Nemesis. I wish he could have been more a part of it. I wish him the best in finding a successful adult career, and I hope that he puts the unfortunate image that Wesley Crusher has given him through no fault of his own, behind him.
Trolls: The high-tech version of those morons that scrawl obscenities in public bathrooms.
I only need to know one thing -- where to send my pleading fan letter. I'll gladly sit through a longer Trek film if it gives me what I want -- character development, backstory, FEELING. I grew up with ST:TNG -- this is part of my long-lost childhood they're cutting goddamnit.
We know Nemesis is probably gonna be weak, and we know it'll be the last TNG film -- of which not one to date has lived up to the Trek movie franchise. Why can't they leave in the few things that might make it a really special gift to the fans??
I mean really -- Christian Slater gets his cameo but Wil-fucking-Wheaton gets chopped? This breaks my heart. Even ten seconds of Wesley Crusher dying in a space-battle -- even a glimpse of Wesley in the background as an inside joke -- would delight the fan in me.
Case in point: Tasha Yar. How popular was that? 'Nuf said.
- Sean
He works as a writer but doesn't know the meaning of the word "admonish".
Actually it's more of a sin that he wasn't more incorporated into the script. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wesley was supposed to be some super-navigator who unified space, time, and thought, wasn't he? By the time his character would have been 30, I'll bet some damn interesting things would have happened to someone as gifted as him.
That would be a GREAT story line for a movie -- Wesley ending up in super-secret Starfleet intelligence and dabbling in deep 23rd century metaphysics, but something going wrong which required the attention of the Enterprise and maybe more Vulcan philosophy....
It's too bad they just turned him into a Starfleet Academy throw-away and left that whole great plot line. If anyone has any more details about the plot line, I'd be curious to learn them.
Maybe its a stretch but don't you think the very fact that he is going around and imposing his morality on others has only led to pissing people off is indicative of the what happens in real life? Case in point...
While doing research on perceptions of the World's only superpower (the U.S. -- I'm American) in the eyes of outsiders I found the very same thing. The U.S. goes around (along with some of its western europeann allies) and imposes its morality on others. Many times, that morality is just differing opinion but it leads to a lot of people who get pissed off and say "who the f*** is America to tell me how i live my life?". Maybe that isn't the central theme of Enterprise, maybe its not even intentional but I think it gives it a very real flavor. I would think that humans would act like that if they went to space.
I'd just like to say that Wil is a class-act. I have a lot of respect for celebrities that know how to handle fame gracefully, and even more for those who know how to set priorities in their life for what really matters.
Fame is fleeting - family lasts forever...
It's gotta be twice as difficult to be an actor with a wife and kids and keep everything together. Wil seems to be doing just fine.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
The first thing I was thinking was "I bet the /. crowd is going to skip the point and bitch about the cell phone while driving bit".
The director's cut of TWOK kicks ass, but I'm guessing that the people who forked over $$$ for the DVD set are a bit miffed that they're not getting the extra goodies. The added scenes improve the movie more than you'd guess.
/. feel the need to insert an acronym or two just for the hell of it when, more often than not, the unabbreviated text would convey their message just as well.
Sorry to single you out but it's sad how many posters on
TWOK? Would it have killed you to write The Wrath Of Khan? I'm sure that a lot of people knew what you meant but what about the rest of us? Should we really need to rely on a Google search to work out what you're trying to say?
If I, a Star Trek fan who's seen all the shows and all the movies, have to scratch my head wondering what the hell you're talking about what do you think it's like for people who aren't Trek-obsessed?
Would the fifteen seconds that it would have cost you to provide a little clarity kill you?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
...no [BOOBIES] links on slashdot. We don't need 'em here, since most slashdotters get a wood on from reading about "*nix now ported to unexpected device n".
Freedom: "I won't!"
But officer, I can handle my liquor!
Dude, I hate to burn karma on an idiot like you, but you are obviously one of these fucking morons who can tell us exactly why Wolverine's Adamantium skeleton is affected by magentic fields in current Volume 4 Issues 8-12, but not in previous Volumes 1-3, while explaining to everyone that you were "before we were punk", why you are more of a fan of band X because you bought their first album before they were popular, etc etc etc. Maybe you're one of those real nutcases who has himself convinced that he can speak Klingon, or perhaps you learned to speak Japanese from watching Anime.
Kids, the moral of the story is this. Being a "nerd", reading comics, loving fantasy and sci-fi stuff, etc, is all fine. Seriously. But trying to be the expert of one little thing and correcting people based on irrelevent semantics, exposes that you are not merely a nerd, but a FUCKING INSECURE MORON. You're about as impressive as those guys who run around spouting about the advantages of the v-tec system in their 10 year old 4 cyl stock Honda (which they senselessly red-line daily).
In short: Being an idiotic expert in the semantics of something no one cares about, makes you look like a jackass.
_Everyone_ thinks they're an above average driver.
Half of them aren't.
I've been riding motorcycles on the streets in one of the most congested areas in the country for more than 20 years. I'm not dead or crippled, so I am above average.
One-size-fits-all is the only way to be fair and enforcible.
Police spend way too much time enforcing arbitrary and capricious laws rather than protecting public safety. The majority of tickets written are for speeding on superhighways where speeding has little to do with accidents. What we need is fewer laws about what one can and cannot do in a car and more cops patrolling the roads ticketing people who drive recklessly.
But if you still demand more laws, I'll be happy to give up my ability to use a cell phone in my car when the legislature:
1. Makes it illegal to use rear-view mirrors for looking at children in the back seat.
2. Makes it illegal to do personal grooming while driving.
3. Requires one adult for every child in a vehicle (except buses driven by professional drivers).
4. Makes it illegal to eat while driving.
5. Limits the sound level of in-car radios to a such that it does not interfere with the driver's ability to hear.
6. Makes it illegal to drive with the seat reclined to the lay-down position.
7. Makes it illegal to change CDs while driving.
and so forth.
The reality of it is that there are a million and seven distractions that any given driver can give himself. A good driver minimizes his distractions when in complex traffic patterns, reserving things like cell phones for uncrowded roads or highways.
that did indeed conclude that conversations between the driver and passengers dramatically increased the risk of a fatal accident for newly-licensed drivers.
There seems to be a line of thought that has cropped up in the last few decades that goes something like this: If someone dies, a law must be passed making illegal whatever directly, or indirectly, lead to their death. The people espousing that line of reasoning seem to believe that once we have enough laws, there will be no more deaths. People will become immortal.
Kids can't ride their bicycles without helmets any more. Lawn darts have been banned. Infants must be tucked away in approved child seats in the back seat of the car. All cars are required to have airbags. We've lowered the blood alcohol level for DUI/DWI multiple times while raising the drinking age.
I have sad news for these people: You cannot legislate death out of existence. People are going to die and some of them will die because of accidents rather than old age. Even if cell phones are banned, there will be traffic accidents just as there were before cell phones existed.
I know: -1 offtopic.