I would so watch a Star Trek parody made by Kevin Smith.
Spock has to fight a giant spider in the third act
This feels like it plausibly could have been done in TAS already
Burton’s Batman films are top tier, though. If I get a great director with a solid vision for the character/story, I don’t care at all if they were a fan before hand or not.
The first one was a great reintroduction to batman given the campiness of the 60’s show it was trying to shake off.
Yeah it really got the Batman atmosphere well. I wonder if it’s because Batman was such a cultural icon that even if you “didn’t read comics” you till knew who Batman was and what he was about?
Possibly. Most people’s first thought when they heard “Batman” at the time was probably still the '60s series, but Dark Knight Returns had gotten a bit of press already pushing back on that. But really, Burton’s sensibilities just work with the character. Maybe it’s whoever convinced him to give the job a chance we have to thank.
J. J. Abrams is a hack and I hate that he keeps getting work
Eh, he’s done some decent work he just isn’t always the right fit for the properties he’s given.
Sorry I can’t read your comment. The 20 lens flares he put on screen still have me blinded
Edit: to be clear. I don’t think his movies are bad per say. They’re just painfully mediocre.
What director is that supposed to represent? JJ flares are horizontal, sometimes have multiple occurrences in a single frame, and often are accompanied by a briefly blown out image in case the viewer doesn’t notice the insane distraction.
Michael Bay
JJ, when the lens flared.
SeductiveTortoise, his fists clenched.Why did Jonathan Frakes direct a comment about JJ Abrams?
The JJ lens flare then made it into DISCO although I think they toned it down a bit for SNW. I checked out of SFA after 3 episodes so I don’t know if they continued to be flare happy there.
For better and worse, Discovery took a lot of cues from the Abrams films, being more action focused, with flashier effects and cinematography, for example.
It got toned down as time went on, but there were parts here and there in Discovery where you can tell they were trying to replicate the films.
Yeah, the Disco premiere was very action-oriented, very JJ coded. I was like, ok, they’re trying to draw in viewers with a flashy beginning, but hopefully they’ll start being a proper Star Trek show soon. Oh, well. Happily, some people liked the show, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
DISCO? SNW? SFA? I guess with concerted effort I can use context clues to figure it out but like, how often are you typing these things?
We’re in a Star Trek community. I think most people are going to understand those without an issue.
Most /= all but thanks for sharing
Not all people speak English. What’s your point?
*per se
He’s always the wrong choice for anything that calls for the bare minimum planning and substance, but that’s what they keep giving him. He has good instincts for cinematography but shouldn’t be trusted with anything that requires an actual plot.
Now I kinda want to see him make an Avatar movie.
(Blue skinned aliens, not ATLA. Although his ATLA would probably be better than what we got.)
He would probably announce a trilogy, spend the first movie setting up some mystery in Pandora’s core and then would never follow up.
spoiler
And somehow Quaritch would return, but Cameron has that covered already.
You can be a hack and still do great work, look at Ridley Scott.
Relatable
As long as you don’t let him anywhere near the plot.
what is this decent work you speak of? did he make a never published short or something?
I thought Super 8 was pretty good.
Like Chris Nolan. Has his name attached to a couple good things and now he’s treated like King Midas
People are taking this interview out of context.
He said, as a kid, he never liked Star Trek. But as an adult, after rewatching TOS to prepare for the 2009 film, he grew to appreciate Star Trek.
You wouldn’t guess that from the movies.
he grew to appreciate the money he was going to make from Star Trek.
Fixed.
But as an adult, after rewatching TOS to prepare for the 2009 film, he grew to appreciate Star Trek.
Right, so he should not have been hired to do the job. He didn’t rewatch it until money, and he likes money. He liked it because of money.
I don’t think it’s inherently bad for Abrams himself to not have seen the show until asked to do it, but there’s absolutely a good question of why the people that commissioned Abrams chose him, when he had no familiarity with Star Trek beforehand.
Thats my main point - Abrams was the wrong choice from the start imo.
There is a weird thing that i think was hinted upon in a ds9 interview that for some reason “they” do not like to have star trek fans working on the set and those that where where supposed to act low profile about it.
I can kinda see how it can be both distracting to get work done and irritating or to have crew argue canon all the time (Henry Cavill in the wincher)
But i also can’t not see how political this might all be.
the wincher
Henry Cavill plays a tow truck driver who repossesses the realms most powerful monsters cars.
I’d watch that.
i mean just for our boy Hank. But also because i gotta sing
When a humble bard graced a ride along
With Hank of Newark, along came this song
Oh god, Gravity Falls Spinoff…
I think arguing canon on set is one thing, I think enjoying the work and understanding it from the start is another.
He wasn’t into Star Trek, he said he was after being paid to be into it. Thats it - and honestly I don’t believe he liked it in his rewatch either - and that is the issue. He wasn’t interested in making a Star Trek movie. He got brought on because “BIG NAME MEAN BIG $$$” and not because it would be good for Star Trek. imo of course.
Indeed. Nicolas Meyer was the same, and most fans seem to love his contributions to the franchise. Being a newcomer isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes a fresh perspective can be a great thing.
Not to say I love Abrams’ work, but in the end he did more harm to Star Wars than to Trek, and by all accounts he’s a life long Star Wars fan.
I did not like it as a kid either. My most used to watch Voyager when I was a wee lad
And what did your most think of it?
That Janeway has a bloodlust that can never be sated.
That’s because you forgot the coffee. Mix blood into coffee at a 2:1 ratio and you’re good.
Nicholas Meyer had never seen Star Trek before he did Wrath of Khan.
People are just crybabies.
…but he clearly came to understand it, and coaxed great performances from the stars. WoK is one of the best films.
Eeh. Most of the complaints I see in this thread about Trek 2009 would apply as well to TWoK if people were being even handed. It’s a pew pew action film. There are no deep philosophical questions being tackled. It’s not utopian – Starfleet is portrayed as a straight forward space navy that works with real scientists only begrudgingly.
There’s kick ass high drama and a decent character study of an ageing Kirk, but the character work on Kirk and Spock in 2009 wasn’t all that bad, either.
I actually think 2009 is pretty good for a scifi action movie, and the cast is phenomenal. Chris Pine especially kills it as Kirk. The script is a little stupid, but so is First Contact. I’d still say WoK is better though, but they both saved the franchise in a way.
It’s the one with Khan I really don’t like, and Beyond is just forgettable. And that script was only saved by Simon Pegg, who pretty much just said FINE, ILL DO IT MYSELF GODDAMN.
He wrote a two part blog about how he was recruited to direct and working with Ricardo. He did his research and found his “in” for the movie which Rodenburry approved of which iirc was Hornblower in space.
kinda doesn’t count, he accepted the job, and was given the job, despite not liking the source material,
him doing basic research later and changing his mind is irrelevant.
Why accept a job making media you don’t care about. besides the money
Because its his job.
With art it is a bit more complex than that. Think of a photographer. Many people love photography, not all people love wedding photography, for example. It is not a great idea to have someone who loathes wedding photography as the photographer at your wedding. But, there’s no shortage of photographers who don’t like weddings working it because it is the most predictable and lucrative income source for a professional photographer. The results will depend on the level of professionalism of the party involved, sure they are doing it for money. But it is not hard to imagine that a photographer who actively enjoys the subject matter will turn out a more satisfying result than someone who, however professional, is only going through the motions. This is how many a couple end up with boring cookie cutter photos of the most important ceremony of their romantic relationship and quickly end up burying it in a basement or closet somewhere, never to be seen again.
First, you’re assuming you have to love the story or the universe to make a good movie set in that universe.
Second, if you could get paid several tens of millions of dollars to make a movie I’m pretty sure you would, and you’d probably do a hell of a good job catching yourself up.
I’m not sure why you’d say it “doesn’t count”.
I also assuming that there are countless talented people who love the source material, and better to give them a chance than giving it to someone who just makes content.
I am not going with “hire fans” bullshit, just that there are so many actual directors in the industry who already have a passion for it, so it is just a marketing choice to hire someone for the name.
Art is art, not content, when it is turned to content we get slop like those movies.
i mean, i’m a musician. there’s music i love and music i hate. from my perspective, about a quarter of the music i make, i don’t really like that much. but you know, i get to make music with people i love, and that is the real point from my perspective. and in my region, there are maybe three or four musicians who can match me technically and none who can match the mental work i put into it. so like, they want me to play even if i dislike the music. and i want to play even if i dislike the music, because i’m still making art.
does hearing the mental process from another field about similar decisions help explain it?
Are you saying he’s not an actual director? What makes someone an “actual director”?
Why do you think it was a marketing choice to pick him? He wasn’t exactly a major director at the time. He was far from unknown but he didn’t have a lot of movies.Which Star Trek to you is art and not content? I assume you mean made as a passion and not for commercial purposes?
I feel like that’s just ignorant of how movies are actually made.Is it content because it’s popular and you don’t like it?
Meant directors who actually like the subject.
The Abraham Star Trek movies were just forgettable. he tried to turn star trek into star wars. They are content made in meeting rooms by executives, not really creative decisions or story telling.
To a lesser degree that happens to every major movie,
You had a director who actually liked the subject. It’s right there in the interview. Wasn’t a fan as a child, liked it as an adult.
It sounds like you didn’t like the movie, so you’re saying it was because the director lacked something or the writers lacked something relating to “art”, instead of just saying you didn’t like the movie.
All but the most niche movies are about making money. That’s what they are. People can make good movies, but they’re all still fundamentally about money. The entire star trek franchise exists to make money.
The early movies were made as a cash grab to chase after Star wars money. You’ve got the movie director saying the series is boring and being selected because he can make it for cheaper.It’s fine to not like the movie, but acting like the movie can’t be good because those making it have financial incentives? C’mon.
In the text here yes he does say as a kid he didn’t like it. He also describes later how he was in a mix of people, some writers who loved it, one who never saw it, and him, who “was not a fan.”
That’s at the time they were making the movie. The “as a kid” part was just a lame ass excuse for an opinion he seemed to know on some level shouldn’t be uttered without one.
So yeah, no. He said he didn’t like Star Trek, AND moreover that he thinks that was an important opinion to have in the room while making a Star Trek movie!!!
Fuck this guy!!!
Which quite possibly kicked the idiot bandwagon in Hollywood/StreamingLand of hiring people who do not like the IP into overgear. “It made money one time, so we should do it forever” - High Level Business Executive Thinking. So many promising projects ruined.
David Lynch didn’t read Dune until his movie version of the novel was already in production.
That doesn’t seem possible at face value given that he was also the writer and the majority of the film is faithful to the book, sometimes word for word. Also, [searching] https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/pc5g58/jodorowsky_and_lynch_both_read_dune/
Didn’t Herbert pen the script?
Just read your link, I suppose I’m a victim of Lynch’s poor wording. Or retconning!
Yeah, but he actually succeeded though.
Star Trek 2009 revived a franchise that had been dead since Nemesis, reviewed well, is still the highest grossing Trek film ever made, and regularly appears near the top of lists of the best films in the franchise.
It really was obnoxiously enjoyable; In the words of Aurelio Voltaire, “Someone tell me why I love this film so fucking much”. It wasn’t golden era new gen philosophy trek, let alone the heights the series hit during the “Suck it Straczynski, we can write überplot too” era of DS9, but it was far, far from the depths that Final Frontier
and generationstook the series. Imo, it was a lot more coherent than Nemisis and had way better characterization of the villains than Insurrection, the two most “action trek” of the films. It was never going to be Khan (ranking among the most influential science fiction media period), but I don’t think anyone intended it to be.… the rest of the trilogy though, hot fucking garbage. The kirk motorcycle fight is pure power-cringe, and JJ should be executed for the whole “Bumblesnatch as Khan” fiasco.
The kirk motorcycle fight is pure power-cringe
Absolutely, yes - it was silly.
But - the only reason we never got that motorcycle fight earlier with Shatner was lack of budget.
It doesn’t fit the tone of orignal Trek because original Trek couldn’t afford it, not because original Trek would not have sunk that low, if it could have. Haha.
It really was obnoxiously enjoyable
Was it though? I could see it if you changed the audio track to a language you don’t understand, because it does have a lot going for it; the production design and costumes, set design and construction are all outstanding, sound design is still some of the best there’s ever been (especially when it came to modernizing legacy sfx), obviously the vfx and novel approaches to cinematography (yes, including the lens flares) are all great, etc etc.
But literally every last thing about the story is stream of consciousness, fever dream nonsense, which in any other franchise might be forgiven, but for Star Trek of all things to have such boneheaded threads of anti-science magical thinking, noxious xenophobia and childish cruelty is unforgivable. It’s a top to bottom garbage script, ironically produced with one of the most talented film crews in sci-fi movie history, which for my money anyway, makes it even more tragic and hard to enjoy.
It wasn’t a good Star Trek story, but it was a good spectacle. The whole thing was basically nostalgia with little else, between the brain worms, Spock, Romulans, Kirk being made Captain with the crew, etc.
The only thing it was really missing was the Borg and Dominion.
But I’d argue that spectacle was what Star Trek needed at the time, to make a casual audience want to watch more of the actual Star Trek, and bring it back to the cultural fore.
At that point in the 2000s, Star Trek basically had the reputation that it was a boring TV show for nerds, where you’d be watching people sit around and talk politics for an hour, over panning shots of planets and the Enterprise.
Star Trek of all things to have such boneheaded threads of anti-science magical thinking, noxious xenophobia and childish cruelty is unforgivable.
I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, since even the TV shows have had the Federation express those viewpoints before, with little to object against them.
If Data or the EMH MK. I were human, their treatment at the hands of Starfleet would be plainly unconscionable. Admiral Satie shows that anti-Romulan sentiment is still alive and well within the Federation, enough that she could tap it for her crusade without much pushback. Former Borg drones, like Picard, or current ones, like Hugh, are also treated with considerable hostility, even if they aren’t being actively hostile.
The bigger issue that is that neither show nor film really tap into those problems within the Federation in any significant way. Data, the EMH, and the crewman Satie accused got by because they had friends amongst the crew of the Enterprise/Voyager who stood up for them, and supported them. But the wider problems in Starfleet aren’t touched upon. As “Author, Author” touches on, they’re treated as one-off incidents, rather than highlighting underlying problems in the Federation that need addressing.
I cannot see the Federation, after a devastating strike during the Klingon war, capturing a Klingon, then promptly ordering the creation and release of a bioweapon that deliberately targets Klingon genetics; to be released to spread amongst the population to wipe them out.
And yet after Wolf 359, that was exactly what was ordered to be done with Hugh. We know that it likely wouldn’t have worked, given that they accidentally infected Hugh with individuality, and the Collective eventually cut his cube off after the episode, but the intent was for Geordi to create a memetic virus that would target the visual processing of Borg drones and kill them all that way.
But literally every last thing about the story is stream of consciousness, fever dream nonsense, which in any other franchise might be forgiven, but for Star Trek of all things to have such boneheaded threads of anti-science magical thinking, noxious xenophobia and childish cruelty is unforgivable.
Yeah no I totally agree, Final Frontier really is just the worst.
Edit: Yeah I totally get it, I reflexively downvote any reminder that ST:V is canon too.
(lmao why is that image so huge)
But it’s also really going to be hard to argue that ST:V isn’t as-bad-or-worse on pretty much every item (except scope, god beats black hole gun every time) compared to ST:09. 09 wasn’t a great star trek movie, but it was generally mindless fun and it revived interest in the series so we could get good stuff from STD and NSW (and great stuff from LD).
deleted by creator
“Suck it Straczynski, we can write überplot too” era of DS9
I have to say I like B5 a lot better than whatever it was they tried with that on DS9.
Oh for sure. The contrast between how the respective plots treat the Narn vs. the Bajorans alone sets B5 ahead. But it’s understandable for there to be a much more focused (and thus deeper) narrative when you don’t have to integrate the work of 98 different writers while trying to develop your characters/plot (and also Harlan Ellison just -hanging out- in your writers room probably doesn’t hurt…)
I wasn’t even thinking about the Narn and Bajorans. But yes, that was also handled way better.
I was rather thinking about the Captain and him being a religious figure. I felt they just did it because B5 had it with the Minbari and human souls melting and Captain Sinclaires role. I feel they didn’t know what to do with Sisko apart from him having that religious role with the Bajorans.Yeah I’ve always felt that the Sisko as messianic figure aspect was… idk. A little bit too conceptual for what star trek is structured to deliver, the fan backlash that forced all the bottle episodes in later seasons is evidence enough of that. It really was tragically under explored.
I have seen it described that “B5 is to Star Trek what Star Trek is to Star Wars” and I think that’s a pretty fair assessment. In star wars, the aliens and culture are just deep enough that the plot can float in it without dragging the bottom. In Trek, the plot is deep enough that instead, the aliens and culture float on it. And in Babylon 5, the aliens and culture
have bathrooms and the plot works outwards from thereare the plot.(There’s so many things I could go on about that I’ve cut down for brevity reasons - The G’kar/Londo vs. Quark/Odo relationships, that Sherridan as the messianic figure was from the less advanced culture instead of playing into the “enlightened liberator viewed as the chosen one” trope like with Sisko, the emphasis on the Captain’s role as a diplomat rather than space administrator, the sacrifice of earth because the scope of the Shadow War was so much larger than the concerns of a single race that Clark simply couldn’t be a priority vs. the whole maquis thing (which I did think was very good in DS9 to be clear), everything with the psicorps, that the resolution of the existential threat comes not from martial prowess or military strategy but bloodsoaked negotiation, Zathrus, the list goes on for way longer than I want to admit)
Okay, okay, I’ll just watch B5 yet again. No need to press me so hard for it, jeez. 😋
Babylon 5 was neat conceptually and I like the aliens, but the main cast and writing come off as very copaganda-forward in a way that DS9 managed to avoid.
… Huh. I can totally respect your having an opinion counter to my own, I truly don’t understand how you arrived at it in this case. Have you seen the whole show?
Yes, you are explaining it perfectly: JJ Abrams MADE MONEY for Paramount. That’s all that matters.
None of those movies actually happened so it’s ok
I will give JJ Abrahams one genuine heartfelt compliment about his Star Trek movies: they delivered on the sense of scale.
Particularly the opening scene in the first film, the cinematography (sans overused lens flares) and sound design was excellent and showed both the awesome spectacle of the sheer size of the ships and the awful danger of space combat.
That’s something there wasn’t the budget or technological capability to show until Abrahams-Trek and then Discovery and Strange New Worlds.
Particularly the opening scene in the first film, the cinematography (sans overused lens flares) and sound design was excellent and showed both the awesome spectacle of the sheer size of the ships and the awful danger of space combat.
For their flaws, the Abrams films delivered in visual spectacle.
The intro in the second film, where the Enterprise rises out of the oceans, to the awe of all below, is pretty much one of a very small handful of times where the Enterprise is shown to be quite impressive. It’s a really good show of how a religion could form around it if someone is just a little careless with the prime directive. For its weaknesses, it’s still a cutting-edge Federation starship, with advanced technology beyond our ken.
The first film had the fast-paced nature of Star Trek combat, but it fell into the trap of doing things like Star Wars, by having only warp engines be fast, and keeping a small distance between the ships. Impulse engines can trivially reach a decent fraction of the speed of light (full impulse can go to the moon and back in minutes). They should be no less agile at typical engagement distances.
My favorite depiction of the Enterprise is in a fan edit of the Undiscovered Country.
The Constitution class ship isn’t actually that large. It’s 11 decks high, she’s perhaps the size of a naval cruiser. It’s Picard’s Galaxy class ship that’s stupidly huge in size. But they’re both STUPID FUCKING POWERFUL
Roddenberry-era Trek likes to depict starships as moving like seagoing ships. They slowly and ponderously hove around through no apparent means of propulsion. In Star Trek II, Saavik pilot’s the ship out of space dock under 1/4 impulse power, and the ship trundles forward at a good 10 knots or so like a navy ship leaving the wharf.
In the original cut of Undiscovered Country, Kirk orders 1/4 impulse power, and Lt. Valeris quotes regulation at him about thrusters only. II think it’s a holdover from an earlier draft of the script when it was supposed to be Saavik, it might have been an interesting character moment between the two as Saavik had a habit of quoting regulations to Kirk, which he was more willing to tolerate during the training mission depicted in Wrath of Kahn than he is here. But Robin Curtis declined to reprise the role so we get suspiciously similar new chick and it comes off as a boomerific power play between the older Kirk and the younger Valeris.
In this fan cut, the Enterprise HURLS herself through the doors and out of Earth orbit at truly science fiction amounts of speed. Because of course that’s what would happen under 1/4 impulse, those engines can fly the ship at half the speed of light. It makes Kirk look impatient and petulant, like a teenager burning rubber out of the garage because he’s pissed his parents are making him pick up his little brother from choir practice instead of visiting his girlfriend. And Valeris comes off as genuinely concerned for how reckless it is to blast through that small doorway under that amount of power, if filtered through typical Vulcan aloofness.
And it gives you a sense of how sci-fi powerful the Enterprise is, that this relatively small machine packs an amount of power we just don’t have now, that the barest tap on the throttle will huck the damn thing to Pluto, and those are the slow engines!
Have you seen the Expanse? They had to come with narrative excuses to make combat interesting, otherwise it was just lobbing volleys of missiles from thousands of miles away.
The books were so good, they did such a good job with all of the space stuff.
Abrams*
Abrahamlincolns*
Arby’sms*
hinged rant incoming (this one actually makes sense). not very good (it makes sense), lots of bile and, uh, bile
oh your god don’t get me started on sound design. sound design should be like IT. the only time we should notice it is when it’s AMAZING. like, Baby Driver had amazing sound design. every step lined up with a beat in the music. that kind of amazing. lately you NEED subtitles or you’re going to miss half the dialog. WHAT THE FUCK FILM INDUSTRY?
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For what it’s worth, I found Star Trek dreadfully boring as a child. The trailers for '09 did nothing for me either because it seemed to be all references to a show I didn’t watch. Wasn’t until everyone at school was talking about how fun it was that I finally saw it. I had a blast. It made me want to understand more about the lore. ‘I’d heard about Kirk and Spock my whole life, but who the hell is Bones?’ Etc. Baby-stepped up to Wrath of Khan. ‘Oh wait, this is a sequel to an old episode? Well I gotta see that episode.’ Watched that and found the show way more gripping at an older age, so I went back and did TOS from the beginning. Then on to TNG and so on…
Slop still serves a purpose.
I’m a life long trek fan and I still haven’t been able to watch more than a handful of TOS episodes
It’s honestly my favourite to revisit. I’ll put on TNG episodes that I love, but TOS is the one where I can throw on any episode and have a good time in one way or another. I love the balance of retro camp paired with that era’s version of the philosophical stuff the show is known for. And the colours on the bluray pop so much more. I love the later shows (tbf I’m still only on DS9), but I do find TOS to be the most visually pleasant to look at.
Agreed. TOS has so much greatness. Episodes do such an amazing job of setting up a mystery and then exploring why [mysterious thing] is. Like the setup of Lost but with an actual payoff for watching.
I also think it has the best pacing of any of the series except maybe DS9. Episodes have more time to breathe.
IMO the movies should be movies.
Tone down the world building, the existential messages and social commentary and make something thats more accessable to a wider audience.
Dont fuck with the show, the show is absolutely for all of that.
This is incredibly limiting as a mindset. Movies can absolutely have strong world building, existential messages and social commentary, and also be accessible and entertaining. It’s just that, you have to be a good filmmaker to achieve that.
movies are for
Movies have to be successful at the box office, and star trek movies had to be Hollywood blockbusters. Completely different production environment compared to TV. I don’t see how that can be fixed, and it has nothing to do with being a good filmmaker. How does an outsider come in, write some fancy script shoehorned into a world that they may or may not be good at? For me as a Trekkie, every single star trek movie was a disappointment.
But that they allowed the shitty Abrahams movies to fuck up the series? The very heart and soul of star trek and the federation? Unforgivable. They couldn’t leave the optimistic fantasy of utopia alone. Too philosophical. Not enough profit. Bastards.
Dune is the number one counterexample.
Strong world building, faithful to the source, existential messages in line with with the original material’s philosophy, social commentary that doesn’t pander and respects the audience’s intelligence. And on top of all of that, an academy awarded financial blockbuster.
It’s just that, it takes a good film maker that actually understands and respects the source ethos.
I think we’re talking a bit past each other. Maybe there are stories that work as movies but not as TV, and some that work as TV but not as movies.
I think Star Trek has something inherently episodic with a Starship (or station) traveling the galaxy (or having the galaxy come to them) that does not translate to “lets make an epic movie story”.
The other way it can probably work better. I kinda liked the Dune: Prophecy. It doesn’t really “harm” the movie. Lots of TV shows for star wars too that do not harm the movies.
But a movie coming in an fundamentally altering the world building? For a single blockbuster? Killing Vulcan for epic scene? Great for a movie, sacrilege for the TV show.
“We don’t like or know the IP and we wrote a script until everyone liked it instead of saying anything because I don’t like philosophy.”
We, the communities, need to start buying IPs of the shit we like before it becomes a target for the mainstream to steal and destroy.
It’s the circle of life and happens with everything.
Either your favorite thing stays niche and withers slowly, never achieving it’s full potential; or becomes successful and becomes an increasingly derivative cash cow for whatever production company throws the most money at it.
Thankfully there are exceptions.
Mainstream success is not potential fulfillment, it’s cultural appropriation and butchery. Subcultures can and do very comfortably thrive for decades, gratifying their communities, without the need for the attention of the majority.
Ok, hear me out: First, fuck IP. Second, AI is pretty lackluster atm, but a lot of people are experimenting. It can reach an amazing high visual fidelity and FX already, and lackluster things like acting and errors or fight scenes could improve in the coming years.
It could be cool to see sort of like “councils” for various franchises pop up and approve / produce different AI fan projects and crowd sourced directors that tell or retell the story of our franchises.
Like imagine a dozen different fan writers and directors creating different seasons 8, 9 and 10 of game of thrones. Much will be shit, but as technology advances it might be possible to even merge or “remix” the scripts of different productions together to come to an “ultimate edition”.
Similar to how Hamlet or other classic theater stories are remixed.
Counterpoint Tony Gilroy who doesn’t like star wars made the best Star wars. So I can’t fully endorse this POV
The problem with the Kelvin movies is they are all pale imitations of Wrath of Khan. Dude has a problem with Starfleat. Dude enacts revenge. Wrath was a shiny red button you press once. They’ve pressed it four times now and each iteration keeps on getting shittier. As much as I love Star Trek, it’s time to take it off life support. At this point it’s more Weekend at Bernie’s than Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.
At the time, liked it out of pure desperation for good sci-fi to exist again. As a whole, just a mediocre money-grab with the classic attempt to “appease all audiences” while abandoning the franchise with a parallel universe loophole.
He was right. My GF never liked Star Trek but went “holy fuck!” to the opening of the 2009 movie.
FWIW, Star Trek isn’t the only sci-fi franchise he manages to drive against the wall.
The other big one is known more for action than philosophical discussion. You’d think he’d have been a better fit!
“I didn’t really have a plan for a trilogy” 🤦🤦🤦
We noticed!
Yeah, you would. He’s just that talented a director.
It’s difficult to have that conversation without making assumptions about… Things.
But for what it’s worth, ST is still somewhat popcorn in its subject matter.
i have been enjoying SNW. it was a good jumping off point for the larger universe. we finished a season and my wife asked to watch TNG, with the sole prompting of “what do you want to watch next”, so on that basis alone it is a good show
I’m assuming you’re a Trekkie and your wife is the newbie in this situation?
Picking the entry point of a franchise is a huge consideration undertaking. Lots of possibilities.
🌽 Cornrect🌽 . The best type of correct. We’re both in our 40s and her family is a star wars family. I’m a “scifi is cool” person, during the console wars I thought both Sonic and Mario were cool, yknow?
I think so. In that era, I was PC and just knew Microsoft was a bag of dicks.
It’s certainly many times better than Discovery.
I’m sure discotrek will grow on us once the new hotness is out
Jonathan Frakes never watched Star Trek as a kid either. He preferred Bonanza.
He wasn’t directing the show.
He directed 8 episodes of TNG, as well as First Contact and Insurrection and some of the newer stuff too, in fact he said that when they brought Riker back for Picard, he was terrified of screwing up, because he hadn’t acted for years, and had only been directing.
He’s directed something like 30+ episodes throughout the franchise. Most recently an episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy this year. He’s contributed a lot to Trek,
Obviously his most important contribution to modern cinema is his voice work as lead protagonist Goliath in Disneys Gargoyles, but the Trek stuff is ok too.
Obviously his most important contribution to modern cinema is his voice work as lead protagonist Goliath in Disneys Gargoyles, but the Trek stuff is ok too.
respectfully disagreed. also have you ever seen a really big dog?
We all agree his work on Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction was a great contribution to society, but I disagree with your disagreement.
Sometimes he was, though.
Actually I just mentioned it as related trivia, not to to make an argument for or against anything - although this is always the default assumption - you can take people out of reddit but you can’t take reddit out of them lol.
