They obviously know what they're doing or the show wouldn't have gotten made in the first place.
So, by that logic, anyone who's ever had a producer credit on a broadcast TV show "obviously know what they're doing." Are they all then immune from criticism? Can we not draw meaningful distinctions between the competence of the creative professionals doing one show versus another?
I mean, they're competent enough to actually create a professional quality television series with realistic looking sets and respectable acting and broadcast their product on a digital streaming service, which is more than could be said for any of us.
So? Who gives a damn? That is literally true by definition for every show on the air. How does that necessarily make their end product worth watching, much less artistically coherent, the criteria Longinus was discussing? Why are you setting the bar so ridiculously low?
Well, other than the fact that Abrams explicit said as much in 2009:
"I wanted to go back to the beginning and start afresh," he recalls... "I wanted to take the spirit of what was created 43 years ago and use it to make it relevant for today, but the key was that we wanted to make it ours and not feel constrained by too many rules that were almost half a century old," he says. "The spirit of what came before had to fuel the movie and yet the specifics of the film needed to be ours."
Funny, that sure sounds to me like it supports my point, not yours. He gave lip service to the original while very clearly stating that his goal was to make something new and different.
... which YOUR Star Trek television series totally is, yes?
I don't get what you're trying to be sarcastic about here. "My" Star Trek television series is
Star Trek. You know, the original series, on the air for three seasons, the thing from which every other Trek product is a derivative? So yeah, by definition, I'd say it's faithful to itself.
This is an absurd standard. I don't need to be a professional chef to tell that McDonald's cheeseburgers are pretty crappy food.
And yet that statement implies that you are at least capable of cooking a cheeseburger that is better than McDonalds'.
Umm, what? No it doesn't, not in the slightest. You can be personally incapable of boiling water, and yet still have a discerning enough palate to tell that McDonald's cheeseburgers barely aspire to mediocrity on their best day.
I don't believe, for example, that John Eaves is NEARLY as good a designer as Andrew Probert... But I don't get to call John Eaves a crappy artist; I could practice for a year and a half and not produce anything comparable to his very worst designs.
I'm seriously baffled by what you seem to be trying to say here. Following your examples to their logical conclusion, you're apparently out to discredit and undermine the very concept of criticism as a profession (much less as a pastime). Film criticism, and TV criticism, and literary criticism, and art criticism, and food criticism, and presumably every other kind. Or at least, in your quixotic worldview, only people who make a thing are qualified to have an opinion about it?...
You mean the rambling “critique” of the Abrams Trek full of pompous postmodern clichés written by a grad student trying oh so hard to show she’s smarter than everyone else?
Speaking as someone who's read a good bit of postmodern criticism (and who doesn't care for most of it), honestly, there's nothing at all postmodern about Horakova's critique of the Abrams films. You're misusing the word.
Beyond that, you also seem to have a bit of an anti-intellectual streak showing. Why such disdain for grad students?
The one that apparently failed to understand that the Kirk presented in those films had a completely separate life path to the one against whom he’s being compared (thus offering an insightful, yet still entertaining, look into the effect of environment on shaping a person’s personality and behaviour)? The one where the essayist clearly misunderstood that Pine-Kirk is MEANT to act DIFFERENTLY from Shatner-Kirk in order to explore a classic “what if?” scenario for which sci-fi is especially suited? That piece?
Yeah. I read it. She’s still full of shit.
Apparently you skipped footnote 18, then, where she writes,
"I get that the altered timeline has produced a different Kirk. What I’m interested in is the ways he’s different and what projects these changes serve."
I also find it interesting that just a few posts apart in the same thread, I can find myself at odds both with someone who insists the Abrams films are fine because they're faithful to the spirit of the original, and with someone who insists the Abrams films are fine because they're trying to do something completely different from the original. FWIW, I think you've got the clearer perception of Abrams' intent here. It's just that unlike you (but like Horakova), I don't find those changes either insightful or entertaining.
