Visual Proof a Resdesign is a good thing

[Shikarnov]

All you have to do is look at any of Vektor's fantastic TOS artwork to know that, unlike Adam West's batmobile, the USS Enterprise was perfectly designed to stand the test of time.

Just take a look at this picture and tell me that modern audiences would never swallow it: http://www.vektorvisual.com/projects...arHorizons.jpg

[Balthier the Great]

Spilio wrote:

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All you have to do is look at any of Vektor's fantastic TOS artwork to know that, unlike Adam West's batmobile, the USS Enterprise was perfectly designed to stand the test of time.

Just take a look at this picture and tell me that modern audiences would never swallow it: http://www.vektorvisual.com/projects...arHorizons.jpg

It's nice but i believe that even that image has been slightly redesigned. No rotating/fashing nacelle caps, windows on the hull (I never saw windows in tos). I think the rear portions of the nacelles were also redone, so actually, I think you're trying to prove no redesign is needed ... by redesigning. Thus your point is negated.

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Spilio wrote:

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All you have to do is look at any of Vektor's fantastic TOS artwork to know that, unlike Adam West's batmobile, the USS Enterprise was perfectly designed to stand the test of time.

Just take a look at this picture and tell me that modern audiences would never swallow it: http://www.vektorvisual.com/projects...arHorizons.jpg

Actually, I love Vektor's work and I love that redesign - but I'm a trekkie, too. No, I don't think that modern audiences would be impressed with much of TOS's design without some real innovations. The teaser trailer is suggestive of that, though I'm given to understand that the "under construction" shots there are the most TOS-like images of the ship that you're likely to see.

[JuanBolio]

On the other hand, the modern Batmobile is designed to look functional, whereas the old one is simply designed to look "kewl". The reverse is seemingly true when you compare the original Enterprise with what we've seen of the new one in the teaser trailer. Fins on the nacelles? Come ON.

[Red Ranger]

People:

Well, the newest Batmobile does have an "ancestor" -- Frank Miller's version of the Batmobile in The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel was essentially a tank, much as the movie version in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

As for how the Enterprise will look in the new movie, I'm sure it will look very much like the original, only tweaked, like blue lighting on the nacelles, and the reddish globes at the front of the nacelles will probably look more like the nacelles of NCC-1701-E. In other words, I don't think fans will see a radical departure from the saucer/nacelles/engineering deck we've seen over the years. Not overly concerned about that!

Red Ranger

[shatastrophic]

The newest Batmobile in the Nolan series wasn't designed to be a Batmobile in the first place. It was designed to jump rivers and such to create bridges. An extremely sturdy vehicle that can take a beating on impact and carry a payload. Fox stated in the Dark Knight "We could never get the bridge to work, but this girl works just fine." or something to that effect. It just so happens that if used properly it can evade city police and catch bad guys, jumping on rooftops and crashing through walls instead of jumping rivers. The Tim Burton Batmobile, and all of the others were designed to be Batmobiles. Hell in the new Nolan movies nobody ever even referes to it as the Batmobile, they call it it's given project name the Tumbler.
Same thing with the suit, it was designed to protect soldiers. All Bale's Wayne did was add the cowl to represent the symbol of Bats, other than that nothing.
It was stated earlier that West's Batman was designed for camp. Nobody for a sec took Batman seriously when it aired, it was entertaining though. Same with the Burton and Shumacher films, which were over the top and cartoonish in ways. The Nolan films are a recreation but also an attempt to shed the camp and comic feel of Batman. Maybe not for the audience to take seriously, but to see how it could happen in as realistic of a way as possible. It's funny that we compare the 2, Batman and Star Trek. I have never thought of Trek as campy, but Shatner and the originals have been called that. I think that Sci-Fi back then was all considered campy even if it wasn't meant to be. I think TOS got a bad wrap because of shows like the 60's Batman series.
Now we have the new Trek movie coming out and Abrams has said some things concerning that he is eliminating that campy feel of the TOS. The original Batman series was campy and designed to be, so I really like and appreciate the treatment the new Nolan movies have given Batman. However, like I said earlier i never thought of the original Trek as campy. It was just a product of the times and now that it's old it's easliy mistaken for something it's not. I think because of this Abrams is trying to fix something that isn't broke. He's trying to do with Trek what Nolan did do for Batman but in the process Batman needed it, Trek doesn't.

[Cary L. Brown]

Bashir007 wrote:

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People have been complaining that they want the Enterprise\Bridge\uniforms to look like they did on TOS. Here is visual evidence that improving it and mondernizing it is a great thing and why I feel it will be a great looking film at the very least.

Blah, blah,blah...

Change can be good.... or change can be BAD. The only thing that is sure is that "change is change."

If you really want to talk about "what Batman should look like" go back to the ORIGINAL version... here's the very first appearance:
http://upintheskycomics.com/detective27.gif

or go for the "Denny O'Neil" version which came out at roughly the same time as the TV show... just a couple of years later, taking Batman back to his "serious" roots again...


The point some of you guys want to make is "change is always equal to improvement." But the 1960's Batman you should is a CHANGE to the original version... and later versions improved by GOING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL IDEA.

Change is NOT equal to "improvement."

[Shikarnov]

BalthierTheGreat wrote:

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It's nice but i believe that even that image has been slightly redesigned. No rotating/fashing nacelle caps, windows on the hull (I never saw windows in tos). I think the rear portions of the nacelles were also redone, so actually, I think you're trying to prove no redesign is needed ... by redesigning. Thus your point is negated.

Gabe Koerner's version was a redesign. Vektor's added some texture and minor details. I wouldn't consider his a redesign in the same vein that we're discussing Batmobile changes.

And in TOS, the Enterprise had windows (link, link, link).

Cheers,

J

[The]

Brutal Strudel wrote:

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Trek hasn't been good enough to warrant fannish devotion since I was twelve years old. These last 26 years I've been going on force of habit.

So, you haven't liked any Trek since TOS?

[The]

Cary L. Brown wrote:

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But the 1960's Batman you should is a CHANGE to the original version... and later versions improved by GOING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL IDEA.

Actually, the original, Golden Age Batman is, in character, best exemplified by Keaton's silent psycho from the 1989 movie. The Christian Bale interpretation is more of the O'Neil/Neal Adams inspired gothic-realism of the Bronze Age, with West, Kilmer, and Clooney encapsulating the goofy 50's era of Batman...

[Brutal Strudel]

No, I've liked some of it--a (very) little TNG, most of DS9, a couple of post-TWOK movies. But none of that has been so good to justify the devotion I gave it. I never missed an episode of TNG until 1992, largely out of "loyalty" I felt to TOS, the show I loved so much as a kid. I tuned out of DS9 early, then tuned back in and tried to get caught up on all that I missed. As much as I liked it, it was at best second-rate tv, never holding a candle to the shows I consider great. Had it not had the words Star Trek in the title and taken place in that ostensible universe, I never would have watched at all. (I don't watch the Stargates, tuned out of Babylon 5 early and had to be convinced that NuBSG was as good as Time and Rolling Stone says it is--it's not, but in a world without The Sopranos or The Wire, it and Mad Men will have to do.) Voyager and Enterprise? Simply awful--not simply as Star Trekl but as television.

At this point, being a fan is counter-productive to getting good entertainment. I'm far more excited about Watchmen, say, than I am about Star Trek. Like money, too much bad Trek eventually drives out the good.

[The]

Brutal Strudel wrote:

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At this point, being a fan is counter-productive to getting good entertainment. I'm far more excited about Watchmen, say, than I am about Star Trek. Like money, too much bad Trek eventually drives out the good.

Ah, okay, I'm glad you extrapolated for me. I actually agree with a lot of what you said (beyond what I quoted). However, do you think it's reasonable to compare shows as skillful as The Wire or BSG to something like Star Trek? Aren't there varying degrees of entertainment to be gained from different types of shows? Is it reasonable to scale the measurement for all visual media at baseline? Or, is this more of just a personal attitude on your part, versus an implied universal template as I originally read it?

[M'Sharak]

Cary L. Brown wrote:

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...

If you really want to talk about "what Batman should look like" go back to the ORIGINAL version... here's the very first appearance:
http://upintheskycomics.com/detective27.gif

...

Cary, as that image does not appear to reside on webspace belonging to you, I have converted it to a link. Please refer to the Announcement thread appearing at the top of this forum, where the TrekBBS rules concerning hotlinked images are addressed. ("Don't do it" would work as a pretty good rule of thumb.)

This particular image is also a somewhat larger file size (263.04 Kb) than we'd like to see posted inline outside of the Art Forum or threads specifically identified as image-heavy or containing large images. Please try to keep the total under 70 Kb per post.

Thanks,
M'

Edit:

Bashir007, same words regarding image file size - a couple of those are a bit large.

[Brutal Strudel]

It's all personal, I guess. The way I see it, TOS was just about state-of-the art for what it did: it was just about as serious a show as the other dramas of its time while being the first show to seriously grapple, week after week, with a mostly coherent space opera setting. It was revolutionary and, I submit, responsible for the a great deal of the mainstreaming of SF that is all through our cultures, high and low. And even then, only about a third of its episode were of the of the quality that makes me say, to this day, "My God, but I love that show!" TMP and TWOK each had a measure of that but after them, Trek became "product" and rarely showed real inspiration. As a fan, I was willing to blind myself to that--I adored TSFS and TUC, for example, when they hit theatres but can barely watch them today.

But yes, I did derive a lot of enjoyment from DS9. Hell, back in college, I got a big kick out of TNG episodes I cannot tolerate today. And I was abou 9 years old when I first became a Trekkie--no doubt, I'll be more kind to stuff from back then out of nostalgia. But I can't ramp up that passion for Trek anymore, nor do I think I should try. For a while I was here, fighting the good or not-so-good fight against the overly optimistic projections but I can't really get it up for that any more, either. This next movie is just a movie, it'll suck or not suck on its merits. I just hope I can judge it thusly.

[The]

Brutal Strudel wrote:

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It's all personal, I guess. The way I see it, TOS was just about state-of-the art for what it did: it was just about as serious a show as the other dramas of its time while being the first show to seriously grapple, week after week, with a mostly coherent space opera setting. It was revolutionary and, I submit, responsible for the a great deal of the mainstreaming of SF that is all through our cultures, high and low. And even then, only about a third of its episode were of the of the quality that makes me say, to this day, "My God, but I love that show!" TMP and TWOK each had a measure of that but after them, Trek became "product" and rarely showed real inspiration. As a fan, I was willing to blind myself to that--I adored TSFS and TUC, for example, when they hit theatres but can barely watch them today.

But yes, I did derive a lot of enjoyment from DS9. Hell, back in college, I got a big kick out of TNG episodes I cannot tolerate today. And I was abou 9 years old when I first became a Trekkie--no doubt, I'll be more kind to stuff from back then out of nostalgia. But I can't ramp up that passion for Trek anymore, nor do I think I should try. For a while I was here, fighting the good or not-so-good fight against the overly optimistic projections but I can't really get it up for that any more, either. This next movie is just a movie, it'll suck or not suck on its merits. I just hope I can judge it thusly.

You have a lot more passion and respect for TOS than I do. But, then again, I never examined it from the angles you present. I think, though, that I respect it for exactly those same reasons, whether I ever had the kind of passion you did. My Trek passion is reserved for TNG, as it was my first foray into the Trek universe. So, nostalgia won't even play a part with me, concerning this movie.

Still, your fandom path and mine are eerily similiar, and I think it's that which caught my eye about your post. I, too, have no great passion for the upcoming movie. I'm just ready to see some spectacle. I don't believe it will have the heart that those early Treks ever did. I think it will be a fun, modern, open-to-newcomers action flick, with a spoon of Trekkie nostalgia for The Fans. Nothing more, nothing less. I guess I'm of the opinion that it's nearly impossible for the corporate machine of Hollywood to produce anything nearing a form of "art". I believe something like this film, which is being created to appeal to a wide-demographic, can be nothing more than 'product'.

But, I'm willing to be proven incorrect. Thanks for the quick reply...