« This is a great ad | Main | Trane reigns superior, always taking care of ya... » Ta-Nehisi's geek pass is revoked16 Oct 2008 11:00 am
Yeah. I'm just not that excited about J.J. Abrams's Star Trek. I mean him no disrespect, and it isn't even about him. It's about the whole direction of Hollywood when they take on these sorts of things. Count on more explosions and more special effects. It's what the people love. But, frankly, when I watch something like the current season of Mad Men, I have no idea how anyone in the business of telling stories makes it through the day. You may think it's apples and oranges. But it's all storytelling, and that's all I'm really in it for. So I think I'll act my age, stay home and watch First Contact again. The Borg rule.
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I just saw the trailer for the Hulk DVD last night. Looked exactly like the trailer for the Spiderman 3, Bale Batman II, Transformers, and about a dozen other movies.
Some of them are probably good, but I'll never know. Does every superhero now need the power to leap (photogenically) through a canyon of (exploding) skyscapers?
I'd rip these movies by saying they all look like video games, but the truth is that many games have better stories, dialogue, and acting, at this point (GTA: San Andreas, for example).
Yeah, I'm glad Paramount is making the new movie. I hope they make a bundle. But, I'm not gonna rush out to see this one, either.
It is possible to combine good storytelling with lots of exploding bright shiny things. Let's hope they get the mix right.
(I'd say Spock and Kirk in that pic look like they're still still using Clearasil, but that's probably my own skewed perspective.)
DB: you're missing out if you skipped out on the latest Batman. It was flawed, but unlike the others you list (and I fear like the new Star Trek) it actually has a story to tell; the special effects are in service of the story rather than vice versa.
I'm a long time Trek fan and all around sci-fi geek, and I'm not excited about this new Trek either. However, I can't wait for the final season of Battlestar Galactica though!
I like the original series, even though it turned to cheese halfway through the first season.
This movie has Nimoy in it, which is kind of cool... I guess. But I wish there was a place for thoughtful science-fiction movies in the mainstream.
I'm with you. I have no love for this idea - one that was floated as far back as 1989, and was mentioned by Goerge Takei when I heard him speak. People in the audience began yelling "Blasphemy!"
It's doubly troubling when the Trek francise has managed to reinvent itself several times successfully over the decades. Yes, the last couple have floundered, but that's hardly a reason to toss aside what they have built and run back to the original show with hopes of catching a BSG vibe.
I just can't see this movie working. The casting is just wrong. I'll expect the following scene throughout the movie:
Spock: What a delicious power you have. I must understand how that works.
*Spock makes an evil grin.*
*Spock then uses his vulcan telekinesis to throw someone against the wall, and his vulcan laser beams to slice off the top of their skull.*
Like Mistress Scorpio, I'm looking forward to the last round of Battlestar Galactica. Because it's a new story.
I think the only Trek film I've seen was the whale one. My husband and I both liked the show as kids, both checked out some of the new shows when we were somewhere with tvs, but ultimately it's just not as interesting as a new story.
I'm here to revoke your geek card, not because you don't care about the new movie, but because you are watching First Contact for the Borg.
The Borg were the coolest bad guys *ever* on Star Trek because they were deadly, implacable and couldn't be reasoned with. They weren't going to destroy you, they would assimilate you and make you happy about it. No matter how many you killed, it didn't matter because they were just replaceable parts.
The along came FC, and we end up with a seducable Borg-Queen who is the weak point of the whole collective and just happens to have the hots for Picard? It was a betrayal, man, a BETRAYAL!
I can tell you why you aren't excited: Those guys look like the Jonas Brothers.
Yeah your right. The Borg-Queen bit was BS. It's still a good flick though.
Ooh, it's Star Trek Babies!
I'm hoping for the best on this one. I would love to see Star Trek come back in a big way.
wait, so you like mad men or not, I'm confused
The guy playing Kirk is 28. The guy playing Spock is 31. All of you old heads sound, um...really old. Don't fall victim to the nostalgia. It'll get you everytime.
And yes, TNC likes Mad Men, but the comment about it in this post was very confusing.
I just think Battlestar Galactica and Firefly both put the Star Trek franchise to shame, in terms of storytelling, character and even special effects. After I'd run through all the Firefly episodes I remember feeling as if the Star Trek franchises had been cheating me for a long time. Turns out it just wasn't a very good product, from probably midway through the DS9 run.
I never understood slashfic before I saw that picture.
Stacy,
It's the storytelling. It's just great. It's shaming everything I've seen--and maybe everything I'll ever see. The youth of the cats here didn't bother me. I'm 33. I'll bet Shatner was in his late 20s as was Nimoy. There is some dissonance here though--how are you a Starship captain in your late 20s?
I was pretty sympathetic until I reached your implicit claim that First Contact was an example of good storytelling. I didn't even like it when I was fifteen, and I didn't have terribly high standards back then!
Anyway, there's plenty of good storytelling going on in the movies these days; you're right, though, to detect early that the new Star Trek film will not be among that group.
I think, though, that there's plenty of Hollywood art that is still aiming at good storytelling. The Dark Knight, for instance, is a miserable failure of a movie. Christopher Nolan is a terrible writer. But there's no question that he's trying for story... trying hard enough that his approximation fooled millions of people. And that, while a fault, is a different fault from only caring about explosions.
TNC,
Yes, this season of Mad Men has been truly remarkable. I almost feel like I'm claiming that every new episode is the best they've ever had. I know that's not possible, but it sure seems like it just keeps getting better and better. Most of these characters could have their own show, and I'd watch 'em all. The last episode alone probably deserves its own thread.
Memory alpha tells me Kirk was 31 when he became captain. But the guys in that picture have been photoshop smoothed until they look 16. Wesley Crusher for captain!
The guy playing Kirk is 28. The guy playing Spock is 31. All of you old heads sound, um...really old. Don't fall victim to the nostalgia. It'll get you everytime.
And yes, TNC likes Mad Men, but the comment about it in this post was very confusing.
Posted by Stacy | October 16, 2008 12:48 PM
Shatner and Nimoy were in their mid-thirties when they palyed those roles. Look at Kirk's ex-girlfirends on the first season and second season episodes, almost to a woman they're his age peers, also in their mid thrities. Aerial Shaw is no twenty-something.
Yes, I'm a treker, and I was a little kis whe the show first aired. I only saw one episode in the last season during it's first run. They always aired Star Trek after my bedtime. :-(
The along came FC, and we end up with a seducable Borg-Queen who is the weak point of the whole collective and just happens to have the hots for Picard? It was a betrayal, man, a BETRAYAL!
YES Canuckstani YES, what you said right there!
BSG for the win dammit.
I can NOT WAIT FOR JANUARY!!!!
Sorry, fangirl impulses tucked back in now.
This movie does not thrill me yet. Abrams is always love it or hate it , or love it then despise it (Alias- still bitter) for me. And Star Trek movies are never my preferred Trek, unless of course we ever get a DS9 movie.
It's great to see so much sci-fi/hero storytelling done through movies, but they are increasingly meh.
Oh well, back to Gaiman's new book.
T Harris, you're not the only one still bitter over Alias. Oh, no.
John Cho is in this so I'll watch it. Yes, I am that shallow.
But I wish there was a place for thoughtful science-fiction movies in the mainstream.
I hear you. About the closest I've seen lately was Sunshine, and the 'science' part of that movie was a little lacking. (Still a good movie, though.)
Star Trek: 90210
I said this in the last Star Trek thread, but I'll repeat myself. The problem with the new film, and with the "Enterprise" series, is that it looks backward, and Star Trek only works if it's going forward. It has to be a forward-looking show--that's, in many ways, the whole point of sci-fi, but it's especially the case in Star Trek, because exploration is always about finding the undiscovered, not so much about looking back at where you came from.
I've been telling Trek fans for years that the problem with the franchise is that the producers and writers keep themselves trapped in the paradigm of always telling the stories from a specific starship's perspective. The whole ship-overcomes-trouble-thanks-to-tricky-captain-and-pseudoscience-gibberish formula has been so overdone that nobody outside of the Trekkie core wants to see it any more.
They have a whole galaxy's worth of material there so why don't they use it? I like sci-fi, but I have zero interest in a Kirk/Spock reboot. On the other hand, I'd totally watch a movie or series with BSG-level writing that told the story of what's-his-name conquering the Klingon homeworld, or how the Vulcans nearly destroyed themselves before turning logical, or underground Romulans fighting their oppressive government, or a million other stories they could tell.
It's not the ages of those actors, it's the fact that they're either made up or photoshopped to look about 17. I'm 30 myself and there's no freaking way I would believe either of those dudes is older than 22 from that picture. It really does look like "Star Trek Babies." I hope it's just for the magazine cover, because if the movie looks like that it will be unintentionally hilarious.
The whole ship-overcomes-trouble-thanks-to-tricky-captain-and-pseudoscience-gibberish formula has been so overdone that nobody outside of the Trekkie core wants to see it any more.
No one inside the Trekkie core wants to see it either.
SeanH, that's an awesome suggestion; one I hadn't really considered.
My only concern is that the Star Trek Universe was never meant to be that realistic. Star Trek worked best when it was a morality play, a simple, uncomplicated way of putting a handful of uncomplicated, boldly drawn characters into some kind of moral crisis. These kind of stories (which the TOS excelled at) were so powerful and imaginative that their impact can still be felt.
As the show got more and more wrapped up in its universe, though, things got silly: a warp-speed limit had to be put in place to keep distances plausible, money had to be introduced for the dynamics of DS9... it just starts to unravel.
Btw: Kevin Smith says the movie's "phenomenal".
Which means that it almost certainly sucks.
Sean H nails it.
This is the same problem with the Star Wars Prequels, we already know the Anakin/Darth Vader story, it was in the original movies! Sure it wasn't spelled out in painstakingly boring detail, but we got the jist of it. What might have been interesting is for Lucas to go way back and tell the back story of how the Jedi were formed and so on.
Wow... I have to admit that most of the promotionals for this movie have left me cold. But seriously - I'm going to see Star Trek. I'm ready for Star Trek to FEEL different - more modern, and less stuck in its own mythos, and if it takes an overreaching director to do an effective retell - I'm ok with it. I wish we would have had some DS9 movies - the NextGen movies were not must-sees for me (I finally saw Nemesis last month, for crying out loud!), but this feels right to me - like a right way to step back into the ST universe and do something wonderful.
And - echoing everyone else - I can't wait for the rest of BSG to air!
QT
TNC - Love the blog, love the perspective, but I just wanted to put in a defense of Hollywood writers. (Of which I am one, been writing full-time for 4 years, no I don't have credits you would reconize...yet.) People seem to assume that if a story is a certain way, it's because the writer desperately wanted it to be that way. Typically, it's the opposite. The people who run shit out here are not creative, they are businesspeople. That's why it's impossible to explain subtle creative and story points to them. They go, "No no, that asian guy has to be white, it's more commercial." Then I go, "But it's a movie about Samurai. They're Asian, they're not white." Then the exec goes "But it's more commercial if he's white." Cut to two years later and out comes "The Last Samurai" starring Tom Cruise. It's completely full of plot holes, logical gaps, and a thousand other things, but it's the best you can do as a writer if you start with the premise: "We're going to make a movie about a samurai that stars a white guy."
Look, I love being a writer, and I love my job. I just have to point out that Hollywood is a business, like any other. The people who run the town do not give a shit about art, any more than the people who run a McDonald's care about the trans fat content of their burgers. Sure, it's not that much more work or more expensive to make shit the right way, but the balance sheet works on percentage points, and the highest profit margin wins. End of Story.
"Mad Men" is a fantastic show. Best on TV right now. Know why? Because Matthew Weiner, who created the show, ALSO WRITES THE SHOW. He's a genius writer who did amazing work on "The Sopranos". Then he got another show, with a relatively low budget, on AMC, which wanted him so desperately that they gave him absolute creative control. It should not surprise that under these circumstances he produced something of real quality. It's amazing what you can do when you can tell everyone else who doesn't know what they're talking about to shut the fuck up.
The first thought that occured to me was "Damn, that Vulcan looks plastic."
I can't even watch amy of the old series except for DS9 anymore. The other characters seem so hollow and campy by comparison. Maybe we'll luck out this time, but I won't hold my breath.
One book described the Classic Trek's scripts and episodes as varying greatly due to budget constraints and wondering if the show had many tomorrows. (And this meant more than those styrofoam boulders.)
When things were a bit tight, they'd write up a "bottle show" in which almost all the action took place onboard. Less special effects and model making, lower costs. More storytelling with the characters.
Compare that to Enterprise, wherein they had the money to give schlockmeister songwriter Diane Warren for that wretched theme and its awful lyrics.
You want a good show? Peep Dexter on showtime 9pm est on sundays. Good ish.
I'm going to give it a chance because it's JJAbrams, though he has tested my patience with this show Fringe - the lead female is hideous, and he usually gets casting above all else.
I actually have insider spoiler info on the plot of this movie, which is very exciting for me because it's the first time I've ever had insider spoiler info on anything! I won't spoil it for anyone, but I can tell you a lot of old-time Trekkers are probably going to be really pissed by this film.
...the problem with the franchise is that the producers and writers keep themselves trapped in the paradigm of always telling the stories from a specific starship's perspective.
Actually, Sean, a considerable amount of Trek has nothing at all to do with the various incarnations of the Enterprise. The Deep Space 9 series, for example.
In addition, a busload of Trek novels exist, and most of them have nothing to do with the Enterprise. Some are even reasonably well written.
Paramount is obviously rebooting Trek films in hopes they can profit from several sequels. Many, too many, people think Trek equates to Kirk, as well.
Me? I'd rather see a TV series explore the Trek universe a decade or so after Picard retires. And I'd like to see it set in a universe where individual actions have consequences, something often ignored on screen but now considered essential in the novels. E.g., people do not miracuously survive their mistakes. They die.
I'm glad that you cleared it up- Mad Men is the smartest thing on TV right now. Hey Ta-Nehisi- ever thought of a monday morning thread for the show?
It's kind of "boldly backing away from where no man has gone before." Not interested much.
Plus rebooting BSG was a very different kind of thing. The original BSG was much less successful and although it had a cult following it had basically lain dormant for twenty years. The original Star Trek has had six films and an animated series. (Plus four successor series) Trying to create a whole new mythos seems much less likely to work or make sense, but if it's just another TOS movie with a new cast it seems pointless.
CBrown's post saying that classic Trek lovers will be pissed is thus far still the only reason I can think of to see this movie.
So curious!