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Star Trek To Return Christmas 2008
Tycoon Guy writes "Paramount today announced the new Star Trek film is scheduled for release on Christmas Day 2008. The studio also confirmed the film will be directed by J. J. Abrams, who said the film will 'embrace and respect' Trek canon, but will also 'chart its own course.' Also today, rumors are out claiming Matt Damon, Adrien Brody and Gary Sinise will play Kirk, Spock, and Scotty, respectively."
This is going to suuuuuuuuuuuck!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Not just a DS9 movie, but one set in the alternative universe.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Seriously.
...okay.
Quit it.
Star Trek was a fantastic series - heck, I enjoyed all of the runs, which is more than a lot of fans would claim - but if you want to bring back the brilliance and optimism of Roddenberry's world (FTA), you don't do it with a "when-they-were-young" storyline which would most assuredly contain:
1 - A necessarily predictable storyline, to the extent that we know who manages to pull through into their later years.
2 - Shameless references to the more familiar versions of the characters (e.g. A young Scotty trying unsuccessfully to fix a coffee machine and making references to a lack of available power OMGHILARIOUS.)
So yes.
Stop it.
Okay?
I mean, I'm not a gargantuan star trek fan - I enjoyed 4 (who didn't?) I loved 2 and well the original series is camp fun at best.
Also TNG is good but yeah I'm not a circle jerk star trek loon (sorry guys, I know I should leave now)
honestly I don't see a need for anything to be re-made BUT - well gee wizz those 3 actors are pretty darn good for their roles.
could be interesting.
I'm not going to claim that Star Trek was the most original piece of entertainment ever conceived. (They could have called it The Forbidden Planet: Weekly) However, it was at least somewhat fresh since nobody had made a TV show quite like it before. (just movies) Some of the subsequent spinoffs managed to carve out their own niches, but the last couple (i.e. Voyager and Enterprise) were unabashedly formulaic retreads. Boldly going where no man had gone before somehow became little more than cashing in on an old idea. Safe Trek. Safe Trek became marginally profitable Trek and eventually TV ratings rat poison.
So what does the franchise need? A couple years of laying fallow after the abysmmal Nemesis? (I am one of the few nuts who dutifully went to see that flick in theaters. I wanted to like it very badly. It was an even numbered Trek episode after all! But what did they give us? Picard expounding upon the appreciation of finer things in life, such as joy-ridding through pre-contact societies in a monster truck.) Well, Nemesis did suck, but its Enterprise that really killed Trek off. Sure, maybe it got better in its third season, but who was watching after the first two seasons?
Now, I'm sure we could debate the finer points of why Enterprise lost its audience for days. However, I would contend that there was one insurmmountable problem with the show that made it a sure fire failure.
TV Series #3 aboard the freakin' Star Ship Enterprise.
The Star Trek universe is vast and filled with limitless possibilities. Why keep going back to the same bloody ship? Give us a border-patrol ship with the rejects and misfits of the acadamy instead of a bunch of the same boringly perfect people. Heck, dive into the seedier side of the Trek universe. Give us a show about the orion syndicate or privateers. Heck, even Maquis terrorists would be a change. (Voyagers crew didn't really count since they were perfectly assimilated into perfect star trek life from day #1.)
Is this against Gene Roddenberry's vision? It's against his vision for the *first* Star Trek show. However, if the fellow were alive today I'm sure he'd realize it's time to move on and open up other aspects of the Trek universe instead of retreading the Enterprise yet again. Just because the setting is less than ideal doesn't mean your characters can't tell inspirational tales. (Likewise, despite its "perfect" setting one could easily critisize Enterprise for turning the Vulcans into hypocritical pricks and relentlessly extolling superiority of mankind like aryan suprecists.)
That being said, not only are we going back to the Enterprise (If not in this movie, certainly in the sequels, profits allowing), we're retreading the same characters! It's possible J.J. could make a good movie, but frankly, be choosing to do yet another retread of the same tired old Trek he's really making things more difficult for himself.
The series were successful in other time, where what they offered was novel, and wearing spandex as a uniform wasn't ridiculous.
I can't be too wrong that they will come out with a mix of references/cliches from the original series, in attempt to please the fans, and also try to modernize everything, to make it look plausible for a new audience.
The result would likely be something like the upcoming Transformers movie. Pissing off both the fans and the new audience looking for a serious movie in attempt to please both.
It doesn't matter however, since a new Star Trek movie isn't about movie making. It's about reusing a very very popular brand to sell many tickets. Even if it sucks, many people will go to see it.
We need a different film for a different society. People no longer expect computers to be operated with fixed touch panels or consoles to explode from feedback as if 802.11n remote controls were never invented. More fundamentally, US audience would no longer accept "USS" Enterprise as total do-goders. More likely, we'll support Cardassians in their fight against ruthless and religious Bajorian terrorists.
I thought Lost was just a re-hash of Gilligan's Island with just enough 90210 brooding and staring thrown in to make you think something is actually going to, eventually, advance the plot (assuming there is one, which I doubt).
No really.
It was good, well in places it was great, but not everywhere, but all they are doing is trying to get more money from a story that has been told and retold until they are inescapably trapped in a quagmire of ever repeating storylines.
Enterprise was a good example. They assembled a team of great actors, then forced them to regurgitate shit storylines until even the diehard fans started to cry out in pain. Its the only star trek where if I see its on I won't flick over to watch it.
If they left it for a decade or three that might be good. Let the dust settle, let some fresh talent tackle the story in a new way.
<trekkie>Actually, you'll find at least one episode in which Kirk switches bodies with a woman. That woman is Kirk, and most definitely is not played by Shatner.</trekkie>
But seriously, give the man a chance. It could be much worse -- at least they aren't trying to replace Picard. Matt Damon can laugh, I imagine he can act, and he certainly can do physical violence. All he really needs is the arrogant swagger. Because that's really what Kirk did -- swagger arrogantly, get his shirt ripped, beat up the alien, and fuck the hot alien chick -- in other words, just like Riker.
I don't like them replacing Kirk, but I don't think Matt Damon is such a bad choice.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
OTOH, if the Enterprise crew needs a showdown debating the finer points of depression, suffering, love triangles, class struggle, and generalized angst, Adama's crew will lick 'em good.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
What about a DS9 movie?
;)
Well, since Babylon 5 is over, what storyline would they have to steal? I suppose the writers at Paramount could just ask JMS to please write a few more episodes, so they'd have something to copy from, but I hear he's pretty busy these days with other projects...
I am afraid that a DS9 movie WOULD suck. The reason that DS9 was so good, was that the characters had real developments and had to deal with problems that were not easily solved with technobabble. With 40-minute episodes, you can afford a "bad" ending, in which a major character suffers a great loss, or fucks up big time, or discovers that he or she did exactly what the enemy wanted. This happened frequently in DS9. With a movie, it has to end well in order not to alienate the general public (or so Hollywood thinks).
Bullshit. DS9 had the only really good story arc in Star Trek's history. Generally speaking the episodes were well written and well acted. Sure, they had their share of corny episodes, but nearly as many as ST:NG (I watched some of the episodes of that series first season and it was laughable). Voyager was a joke, but Enterprise was just plain goddawful. ST:NG got better as time went on, but I still think DS9 was the better of the two series.
Actually, what I found interesting as how much liked the Original Series. My wife got me the first two seasons on DVD for Christmas, and there are some episodes they made in the way-back-when which kick the crap out of anything that came later. The Doomsday Machine has got to be my favorite all-time Star Trek episode. You actually forget that they're battling a giant badly-rolled cigar.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Unless I'm getting a percentage of the revenue, why do I care how much money a movie makes?
On the other hand, whether it sucks or not certainly has an impact on my enjoyment.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
My biggest problem with Enterprise wasn't the crappy story arcs, or even the really bad writing that seemed to affect the show. For me Star Trek had always been about the chemistry between the characters. I thought TOS and DS9 were the strongest in this regard. The dynamic in both these series was excellent. TNG felt forced to me, and it was only the long run of the series which really built that dynamic. Voyager always seemed artificial, and Enterprise seemed to take the worst aspects of the earlier series; with all the overacting and horribly artifical moral dilemas. I just couldn't get into the characters. They were all slightly off, as if the actors never really got a good feel for what they were doing.
In part I can't really blame the writers or the actors. That inter-character chemistry, like the Kirk-Spock-Bones trinity, is as much a product of the chemistry between the actors as anything writers can do. They lucked out with TOS and DS9 almost right away, so that even bad episodes didn't necessarily have the souring effect that one would expect. TNG took a few seasons to get that feel. Enterprise failed, I think, because while good episodes could be very good, bad episodes got weighted down by all the contrived and never-quite-real relationships between the main characters. In other words, if you could empathize with the characters, could feel that there was a real spark to their relationships with each other, even a very crappy episode had some redeeming quality.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.