Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof should not Return.

I get what you're saying but to me it was overshadowed by Kirk's bitching to Uhura and his racist remarks towards Spock on the shuttle.
Maybe it would be better for me to have never seen TOS when making comparisons to STID. In TOS no matter how bad a mood Kirk was in or how Vulcan Spock was acting you never doubted their friendship or loyalty to another. Even if it was just the way Shatner and Nimoy looked at each other.


I think it would have had more dramatic impact if nuKirk and nuSpock had been seen say playing chess or eating lunch together after the Nibiru incident before Kirk finds out that Spock had put in an 'honest' report. That they had been shown as friends not merely a great team. I don't think that Abrams doe that though - have slow character establishing dialog.


All those talking about rip-offs. It was a homage. Its not like Abrams ran out of ideas. He or the writing team thought a twist on the TWOK theme was a clever idea. That the fans might like it. And for that he's castigated.

 

Yep. And it was in fact clever, rip-off or not. Unfortunately there's a difference between a clever idea and a good idea.

 

I'd love to see the following films show the characters on a break enjoying themselves and their company as seen in the shows. Heck, our first introduction to Kirk and Spock in TOS was when they played 3D chess in the Rec Room!

 

You're right, doing Khan in his second film totally did not give the impression that Abrams was out of ideas.

 

Here is the passage in question:

My assertion was that it is "simply wrong" to think of cover versions as rip-offs, something that would be required by my reading of the definition quoted there. Is my writing so awful that it's that hard to see that that's what I meant? Or, are you seriously arguing that cover versions are "very plainly" all rip-offs?!?

 

Didn't they say they were originally just going to have the character be Harrison and then later changed it to Khan to link in with the reboot universe.

For all the similarities I see with original Khan and Harrison they could have just had him be a disgruntled Section 31 guy experimented on to have superstrength and regenerative blood and an atitude. They made him Khan for us (the fans) whether you like it or not.
Same with Scotty and Chekov. Totally different characters IMO. I just accept these things and move on.

 

From what I understand, Harrison was just supposed to be a normal human, closer to Jason Bourne than a superman. In the end it would be Marcus who was the main villain rather than Harrison. Changing him to Khan, that dramatically altered the dynamic.

 

No. Your thinking is so awful* that you meant it.

(* Taking "awful" with a grain of salt, there. I don't really think it's a big deal in the greater scheme, I'm just bemused at how much time and energy you're expending in what looks to me like an unnecessary and futile cause.)

I'm seriously arguing that, dependent on context, the term could technically be applied to any cover version or borrowing, since that is in fact its semantic function and your apparent horror at this prospect is vastly overblown and unwarranted. Yes.

(Also, which is obviously the cause of all this: yes, it's applicable to Abramstrek's "mirroring" of the Wrath of Khan death scene... even more directly than it's applicable, and it is, to Original Series Trek's "Balance of Terror" and The Enemy Below. And that's okay. The other terms you like better are applicable too, depending on preference. It doesn't change anything fundamental.)

 

I have to agree with that, at least.

 

They say in the commentary that were thinking of ending the '09 movie on a shot of the Botany Bay floating in space. That says to me that it wasn't a lack of ideas that led to Khan, but a plan all along to use TOS' most famous villain in the second movie.

Again, Khan is a character, not a story. Him being brought back is no different to Moriarty in various Sherlock Holmes adaptations. Joaquin Phoenix may be Lex Luthor in the Man of Steel sequel - is that due to a lack of ideas or simply them using the Superman mythology?

 

That's bullshit, full stop. It's liking saying dog, when you mean cat.

Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" is not a rip-off of Bob Dylan's original. Full stop. The same goes for Dwight Yoakam's cover of "Suspicious Minds," as a second example.

People have been singing other people's songs for time immemorial. It's a very natural thing to do. Recording covers is specifically allowed under US copyright law (apologies to UFO, yes, I'm going back to that well, for this), and when terms can be negotiated, so is release and sale.

It's an abuse, a misuse, as well as a disuse of language to call all covers rip-offs.

Singing someone else's song crosses the line into rip-off territory when it occurs in conjunction with theft or some other form of infringement. But that's not what cover versions are; cover versions occur in the light of day, when it is specifically known who wrote the original and who is performing the imitation, and so that it is an imitation. That was the whole point of the example.

Am I horrified that you would disagree with me? Not on your life. Do I disagree with your assertion about the semantic function of the term rip-off? Absolutely.

---

By the way, I'm curious regarding what my level of horror about the use of the term rip-off has to do with how the term could technically be applied? If one has nothing to do with the other, then why did you offer my level of horror as a reason for how the term could technically be applied?

 

Uh, no, it really isn't. Sorry, but I think you're probably going to have to make your peace with that. Yes, technically the term could be applied to Jimi singing Dylan, Ariana Grande doing Santa Baby, et cetera. It is not a question of legality and bringing that up is always completely and utterly bogus, it not being the main point at all, so you should stop doing that.

Of course, context matters. The term will have better traction where borrowing is particularly unimaginative, or is unacknowledged, or is lame or otherwise somehow problematic. On those grounds people are less likely to use it about Jimi singing Dylan than they would be with another work. (STiD's "homage" to TWOK's death scene is obviously a more tempting target not because it is copyright infringement but because many people find it lame and lazy. You can argue that it is not so, but you cannot make their opinion invalid... which perhaps is really what you need to make your peace with, since it looks to be the objective fueling this whole bizarre tangent.)

The thing about semantics is that there is no science or law to this. It all depends on register, delivery and context. Believing that you can objectively rule out the term as applied to this or that work is bullshit, full stop. Believing that the term must connote illegal theft is bullshit, full stop. It could in extreme cases denote something like copyright infringement. That in no way means it must. Semantics and language do not work that way.

 

I don't think Khan is comparable to these recurring villains. He was a one-off who just happened to get a movie. He's not the Joker.

Now if it were Mudd, then that would be different because he was that type of villain. A movie with Mudd would be boring though, and using him as a character isn't the same as using Khan.

 

No.

About the only thing I really need to make peace with here is the fact that people disagree with what I'm saying, but that was never going to be too hard.

What makes what you're saying all the more preposterous is that you are attempting to tell me how semantics work, while at the same time insisting that "there is no law or science to this". That's really something that you can't have both ways.

I never said that rip-offs must entail illegal activity, either. That's simply the obvious extreme to go to find examples of when the term does apply, and in the particular case of the STID scene, I think it is relevant, precisely because the lifting is within the family, so to speak. It should be completely clear that I was not insisting that rip-offs entail illegal activity, since I called films from The Asylum rip-offs, while implicitly giving them a pass when it comes to the law (in not harping on how they should be shut down, for instance).

No answer to the question I asked of you?

 

Music covers do not steal, cheat, or swindle; they do no exploit; and they are not inferior copies or imitations.

They are not rip-offs.

 

Except when Pat Boone covers Little Richard.

 

That's only because Trek hasn't been rebooted before. Khan, as villain of Trek's most popular (and, arguably, most important) movie, is an obvious choice to resurrect.

Khan got a three-episode tribute in Enterprise (where they even replicated Khan's death by having an injured Malik crawl across the bridge to the self-destruct controls) and at least 3 novels detailing his backstory.

He got a mention at least. And a cool little ship.

 

Really? You actually believe semantics is a question of law or science? What are you basing that on? Because I don't think language works like either of those things, at least not in terms of everyday usage as it relates to meaning.

Oh, sorry:

Nothing directly, except insofar as your "level of horror" appears to be driving you into an absurd and Quixotic series of statements about how the term can technically be applied.

"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief," to quote the immortal bard of civilization*. Borrowing -- "stealing," metaphorically speaking -- from other artists is a basic part of artistic endeavour and is necessarily an aspect of doing covers. Sometimes this "theft" is benign, sometimes not.

Going beyond that would depend on the cover and one's opinion of it. I can think of plenty of covers that are exploitative, cheap and inferior to the original. (I see Nerys Myk beat me to the punch with Pat Boone and Little Richard... )

[* Yes, that would be Bono.]

 

Didn't someone point out that said cool little ship actually matches the profile of the one he had in his first TOS appearance?