"a borg’s smorgas of lines here. "
I groaned at myself for writing it.
CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar
- Thread starter Richard Baker
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I groaned at myself for writing it.
To boldly type what no writer has typed before!
(queue the music)
Up until the lawsuit, how good was Axanar actually going to be? The fabled "fully revised, locked" script director Rob Burnett declared last year was "the best Star Trek script ever," has finally come to light, and Jody Wheeler pens a review of the 105-page screenplay for AxaMonitor, in which he predicts how much people might've liked the film.
Still sounds like it'd be a steaming pile of sh*t. Where's the true STAR TREK that they kept saying would be in this story? Where's the social commentary? What does this movie have to actually say about war?
Oh, nevermind that, it has an entire third act devoted to more pew pew and hundreds of starships battling it out. That's Gene's vision after all, which makes Axanar so much more true to STAR TREK than any of the recent movies. So bring on the pew pew, the starships and more biting dialogue about shield percentages.
Peters, RMB and the rest of the Axanar camp are self-aggrandizing blowhards. Best STAR TREK script, my rear end.
I've said from the beginning that Axanar is the best movie that was ever written in the shower and story boarded on the back of a 7th-grader's History notebook.
Sorry for the double post - but its important to remember that Alec is a huge Warhammer 40k fan. The notion of hundreds of ships plowing into battle wouldn't be all that odd to a Warhammer 40k fan.
See now, that's one issue (among many) the FTC should be looking into, not the purported CAN-SPAM violations.
Really? Nothing. Or nothing particularly deep.
There's the random "we'd rather be exploring" and there's that same scene they move around of a young ensign Garth meets in an elevator later turning up dead, so he reads her journal entry about the coming battle over a montage...but that's not real commentary.
If the film started with a great explorer becoming a great warrior -- and almost losing himself in the process, forced to return to the ideals he'd almost forgotten in order to really save things at the battle of Axanar, you can pew-pew a great deal and still get your Trek in. But that's no on display here.
The not-so-jokes about Garth needing to be perfect because the author needs to be perfect aren't that far off the mark. Giving Kharn visions and making him the more conflicted character just muddies the movie greatly. And when probably half the film is devoted to some kind of space ship shot, you've run out of room to do anything meaningful.
Vulcans walking and talking is not depth, drama, characterization, or conflict, internal or external.
Alec took one weekend class and thought he could now write with the best of them.
(The humbling edit is when you come back an hour later and realize you wrote "right" instead of "write." I'm edumicated!)
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I challenged RMB on various comment threads on this very subject, including I think the first incarnation of the CBS v. Axanar FB group. He could never give me a straight answer on whether Axanar would have anything to really say about war, on how it changed the people who fought in it.
After all, these schmucks and their ilk spent a great deal of time complaining and blasting the Abrams movies for being shallow (they're not) and not true to Gene's vision. (BTW, I'm so sick of the phrase "Gene's vision," I could vomit.)
It sounds like Axanar doesn't have anything interesting to say in the end. Now I don't mind action-adventure or pew pew, after all, STAR TREK is an action-adventure. However, I'd like it to be about something.
I do like your suggest, Jody, of an explorer who loses himself or could lose himself in his new role as a warrior. Now give me that movie.
But what really gets my ire is the self-aggrandizing of this fan film — um, independent STAR TREK movie or whatever — as the "best STAR TREK ever." And it ain't. It's just fanwank with empty space battles, vapid characters, and dialogue that's trying to be more important than it really is.
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It's the first unofficial, professional, independent fan film. Geez don't you go the meetings?!
I actually didn't know that part (or maybe I did and I blacked it out) but I think that actually explains a lot about that thirty minute pew pew fest Mr Wheeler described.
It's the first unofficial, professional, independent fan film. Geez don't you go the meetings?!
I stopped going when I had to check my brain and my good taste at the door.
There is a story here, somewhere, buried in the inexperience and arrogance, and hamstrung by the 50 minutes of VFX that they've paid for. (Yes, there are more battle scenes than the 30 minute one at the end.)
The Klingon D-7 is the uber, menacing ship of the film. Starfleet is scared shitless of this class, as it rips to hell everything the Fed has. Yet Garth defeats one in the middle of the movie, without more than some minor damage to his ship. And with his major adversary -- Kharn-- not in command or otherwise involved in the battle.
Yes, they tell us Garth barely got out of the battle alive. But they never show us. It doesn't -seem- like there was any sense of real danger from that D-7. If Garth lost, that would be something. If Garth won, but it ripped his ship apart, he lost half his crew and he then had to limp back to Spacedock. And then he finds out that there's an entire fleet of these ships headed for the Federation. That's a story. With stakes.
Also, a big deal in this story is that the Constitution class ships are being built in orbit around Axanar. That's why the Klingon's go there. But very early on, we find out that the ships aren't really being built there. They are being built on Earth. So there's no real stakes in the final battle at Axanar.
You can actually have the ships under construction there so the Feds have to win: stakes. You can have the prototype under construction there -- the Constitution -- so stakes. You can have it be a massive deception, but the audience doesn't know this: stakes and, if done right, a Mission Impossible reversal on viewer. You can have everyone know it's a deception, but the goal and drama is to get Kharn to believe it and commit his forces there instead of attacking Earth... stakes.
If you really have a hard-on for the Enterprise being in this, then rip the shit out of Garth's ship and have him take the untested Constitution into battle...and the ship does such a great job they rename it Enterprise. Or take the damn Enterprise into battle and have it save the day, instead of cameo.
There's so much you can do to make this personal to Garth, to the Federation, to the audience. But none of that is done in this script, outside of the broad "This is our last stand."
That's storytelling. That's making the movie about something. You can have all the pew-pew in the world in that and still tell Trek tale about wrestling with your ideals when the universe says to abandon them.
None of that happens in this script. It's a fan film, written by inexperienced writers. There's nothing wrong with that. Just don't sell yourself as the Best Script Ever, take people's money, and insult anyone Not of The Axanar Body who says "Wait a minute...."
All of this. That is all.
The eternal Borg/Death Star problem of sci-fi: You need to create an implacable foe, and then you must immediately find a way to easily defeat the implacable foe so the good guys can win and the audience cheers.
Yes, but it's not unsolvable. Or you don't introduce the D-7s as your ultimate ship. Or already start your story with Ares in service, and everyone using one.
But this is about being as nerdy and as faithful to the FASA game module. Again, it takes a deft hand to make that work. That level of dexterity isn't on display here.
Marvel on TV is allowing self-doubting characters to move from the page to the screen, and problems to persist and grow over time. Perhaps they will go this direction on the new Trek show, rather than trying to wrap everything up in an hour.
In today's deposition news, Terry McIntosh announced that Erin Ranahan, Axanar's attorney, offered to represent him pro bono at his upcoming deposition with attorneys from Loeb. He accepted, though he plans to have his own counsel present there as well.
It's an odd offer, given the huge potential for conflict of interest between Terry and Axanar. I'm trying to track down more of this story. I know Terry isn't the only witness to be deposed whom she has contacted.
It's an odd offer, given the huge potential for conflict of interest between Terry and Axanar. I'm trying to track down more of this story. I know Terry isn't the only witness to be deposed whom she has contacted.
I'm not surprised the script wasn't very good, they were bragging so much I just knew it was going to be bad. In talents shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent, the more a person brags the worse they are. The people who are really humble and just want to perform often get up on stage and are amazing, while the people who say they are the best in the world and are going to win the whole thing often end up being horrible.
I love how it sounds like they were guilty of all of the things they say they hate about the Kelvin timeline movies.
I love how it sounds like they were guilty of all of the things they say they hate about the Kelvin timeline movies.
Not surprising, she wants to keep him on message.
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