News Captain Pike Has Been Cast

[Lord Garth]

Another thought: Spock's pretty smart. He could've finished the Academy in less than four years. If he started during the second half of the 2249-50 Academic Year, and graduated in three-and-a-half years, "18 years" works for both "Journey to Babel" and "The Enterprise Incident". Amanda would round off, Spock would not. Graduating in three-and-a-half years also shows off Spock's intelligence and capabilities. And is in line with his assuming command in "The Cage" when Pike and Number One are on Talos IV. He was fast-tracked, then stayed.

 

[lawman]

And, it isn't like I can't be disappointed in films or that I don't like films. It is that I'm not going to sit there in the middle of the film and tear it apart...

Well, I'm certainly happier if a film is at least good enough that its flaws don't stand out to me until after the actual movie-watching experience is over. Unfortunately, a lot of films are not that good.

Secondly, my experience has been that if I go in to something with the expectation "Because Star Trek" or "Because Star Wars" there is an automatic set up for failure. Whatever my expectations are, films cannot live up to them. ... Instead, there is just anger and hostility at the writers.

I go into Star Wars films with essentially zero expectations, because I am simply not a fan of that franchise. I'm casually familiar with it, but there is no emotional attachment and never has been. Nevertheless, as often as not, it still manages to disappoint me.

Really, the main thing I hope for from entertainment is that it not insult my intelligence. I don't think that's too much to ask. Sadly, a lot of Hollywood productions fall markedly short of that low bar. That doesn't leave me harboring "anger and hostility" at the writers... those are draining emotional states, too exhausting to hold on to for long, and anyway there's no reason to make it a personal thing. But disappointment? Yeah, no shortage of that.

 

[lawman]

And it's not as if the fault always lies with the writers. More often than not, they are given shit notes from their bosses about what they had to do.
...
"Prometheus" is also an interesting case: Originally, it was a screenplay called "Alien: Engineers", that was a direct prequel to the original "Alien", which explained how the Engineers starship crashed on that moon (the script is online for free, you can read it, it's quite good). And then...? Suddenly a producer came in... It's unbelievably stupid - But it was not a creative decision, it was an objective from one of the money guys, and thus it had to be done, no matter what.

Sure, I have no doubt a lot of the blame can be placed on the Hollywood sausage-making process. But I don't really care how the blame gets placed. I care about the end results, because that's what I'm being asked to spend my time, money, and attention on. If it insults my intelligence, I don't care if the story was stupid from the first pitch or if it was great until it got mangled on the final edit... I still wind up disappointed.

(And when it comes to Prometheus, FWIW, the stuff you mentioned, about the ambiguity of its prequel status, is not the stuff that ruined the experience for me and my friends. (Well, one of them was kind of bugged, but it wasn't his main complaint.) The story had serious problems that had nothing to do with that.)

When it comes to DSC, I have no sympathy for the CBS beancounters who pushed Fuller off a moving train, and plenty of sympathy for his successors who were asked to jump aboard that train and get it to some reasonable destination without derailing. But that sympathy is beside the point, which is that the successors didn't do a particularly good job at that (unenviable) task.

And they'll have no such excuses for season 2, as they've set themselves up with a pretty clean slate, so whatever comes next is of their own making. But a lot of what we've seen and heard so far — about "science vs. faith" and Section 31 and hiring writers like Alan McElroy and so on and so forth — is less than encouraging.

Actually, I could totally see this actually happening in the real world....

http://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-women-desire-work-outside-home.aspx

Currently 29% stay home, but 56% would like to. The wildcard would be access to free childcare, but since the poll is a "would you if you could" question then the numbers might not change that much.

Interesting. The survey doesn't break things down by other demographic factors or do crosstabs, so it leaves me wondering how much socioeconomic status (SES) operates as a mediating variable here. I could see poor to middle-class women who work unfulfilling jobs because they have to, to make ends meet, finding it more desirable to be home taking care of their kids. (After all, taking care of kids is a very grass-is-greener thing; it's a lot more appealing from a distance than when you're actually doing it.) But at the other end of the spectrum, at least anecdotally, one doesn't run across very many high-SES women who opt not to work outside the home, even though they don't have to. When you've got a comfortable income and an education, and can choose the kind of work you'll spend your time on, it becomes a far more attractive option. If you can afford to pay someone else to deal with the household chores and the childcare, that just makes it all that much easier.

 

[Rahul]

Sure, I have no doubt a lot of the blame can be placed on the Hollywood sausage-making process. But I don't really care how the blame gets placed. I care about the end results, because that's what I'm being asked to spend my time, money, and attention on. If it insults my intelligence, I don't care if the story was stupid from the first pitch or if it was great until it got mangled on the final edit... I still wind up disappointed.

(And when it comes to Prometheus, FWIW, the stuff you mentioned, about the ambiguity of its prequel status, is not the stuff that ruined the experience for me and my friends. (Well, one of them was kind of bugged, but it wasn't his main complaint.) The story had serious problems that had nothing to do with that.)

When it comes to DSC, I have no sympathy for the CBS beancounters who pushed Fuller off a moving train, and plenty of sympathy for his successors who were asked to jump aboard that train and get it to some reasonable destination without derailing. But that sympathy is beside the point, which is that the successors didn't do a particularly good job at that (unenviable) task.

And they'll have no such excuses for season 2, as they've set themselves up with a pretty clean slate, so whatever comes next is of their own making. But a lot of what we've seen and heard so far — about "science vs. faith" and Section 31 and hiring writers like Alan McElroy and so on and so forth — is less than encouraging.

No. But the difference is between someone creative being allowed to work on his own idea (even if he has to compromise much), who has a personal investment in the content he creates. Or if a hired gun is working off of a checklist to please his bosses. The finished scripts usually show this.

It's one of the reasons so many blockbusters are so similar (3 act structure? check. love interest? check. 3rd act being constant action? ceck.), while SO MANY creative writers have switched to modern television - where they have more creative control, and aren't bound by pre-existing expectations of a property.

 

[lawman]

Yeah, and part of the reason for that is the way Hollywood's business model has changed over the last few decades. Much ink has been spilled about the changes since the mid-late '70s, in particular... since the emergence of mega-hits like Jaws and Star Wars and the whole concept of a "summer movie season." (Although it's unlikely that either of those would get made today, at least not in anything resembling its original form. Jaws especially... it has a downright languid pace and conspicuously low production values compared to today's big studio product.) Hollywood has become more and more inclined to bet the farm on just a handful of big productions in any given year, and unless those are huge hits they're considered flops. Put that all together with other trends like improved FX capabilities and formula-oriented screenwriting training (as you note) and "four-quadrant" marketing thinking and corporate consolidation in the entertainment industry, and the end result is that just about the last thing on anybody's agenda is quality writing. You get "tentpole" films at one extreme, and super-low-budget indy pictures at the other, and in either case it's pure luck if a movie is actually good, and there's not much left in the middle, the territory that used to be the bread-and-butter of Hollywood production. (Except perhaps for a few conspicuous entries during "award season," which is a whole other weird concept and often a whole other kind of formula.)

It doesn't have to be like this. In the '30s and '40s under the "studio system," it's not as if Hollywood was awash in unfettered creative freedom — the execs still called the shots, arguably even more than today — but that system managed to produce an exceptional proportion of really exceptional, timeless pictures; there's a reason it's still considered the Golden Age. (Casablanca definitely went through its own version of "development hell," for instance, yet it's among the all-time favorite movies of a lot of people — myself included.) In the '60s and '70s after that system had been dismantled, there was an era of real creative freedom for innovative filmmakers, and again a lot of fantastic work got produced. I think there were still a lot of excellent "small" movies in the '80s, even... but things have been on a downhill slide ever since. (Would anyone make something like The Princess Bride today? Or any of John Hughes' teen pictures? Or even the original-crew Star Trek movies?)

Or maybe I'm just cynical, I dunno. Or maybe it's just selective memory. After all, it was decades ago (1951?) that Theodore Sturgeon coined his famous eponymous law, so evidently no shortage of crap was being written (for page and screen) back then just as much as now.

 

[Mr. Nova]

I have an expression that I say in Real Life, that I picked up down the line and made my own: "If you can't please everyone equally, offend everyone equally."

To quote Ricky Nelson from the 1970's Garden Party:
"But it's all right now, I've learned my lesson well
You see, you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself"

 

[Longinus]

I go into Star Wars films with essentially zero expectations, because I am simply not a fan of that franchise. I'm casually familiar with it, but there is no emotional attachment and never has been. Nevertheless, as often as not, it still manages to disappoint me.

I have had my Star Wars expectations calibrated by the prequel trilogy, so in that light I've been pretty damn positively surprised by these latest efforts. (Granted, the complete absurdity of destroyed planets being instantly visible across interstellar distances was painfully jarring, and took me out of the film for several minutes. It is the second time Abrams has done it. I really don't understand how one can direct massive space adventures without even primary school level understanding of space.)

 

[fireproof78]

Would anyone make something like The Princess Bride today? Or any of John Hughes' teen pictures? Or even the original-crew Star Trek movies?)

Yes, probably.

 

[Greg Cox]

(Would anyone make something like The Princess Bride today? Or any of John Hughes' teen pictures? Or even the original-crew Star Trek movies?)
.

There are always good, bad, and mediocre movies, future classics and formulaic potboilers, in every generation. And as for your specific examples: LOVE, SIMON, which is garnering favorable comparisons to John Hughes' movies, is in theaters now, along with films like CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and LADYBIRD and BLOCKERS. Coming of age films never go away.

As for THE PRINCESS BRIDE, we just got A WRINKLE IN TIME: another family-friendly fantasy film based on a beloved novel. See also I KILL GIANTS,which just came out a few weeks ago. Or A MONSTER CALLS from a few years ago.

And are we really going to argue that THE PRINCESS BRIDE or THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK are somehow more daring and adventurous than, say, GET OUT or THE SHAPE OF WATER or BLACK PANTHER?

Let's not romanticize the past too much. Everybody remembers JAWS and CASABLANCA and THE PRINCESS BRIDE. Nobody talks about THE DEEP or KRULL or FRANCIS THE TALKING MULE . . . .

 

[UssGlenn]

Hey, Francis the Talking Mule is a classic of the talking animal genre.

 

[lawman]

There are always good, bad, and mediocre movies, future classics and formulaic potboilers, in every generation. And as for your specific examples: LOVE, SIMON, which is garnering favorable comparisons to John Hughes' movies, is in theaters now, along with films like CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and LADYBIRD and BLOCKERS. Coming of age films never go away.

As for THE PRINCESS BRIDE, we just got A WRINKLE IN TIME: another family-friendly fantasy film based on a beloved novel. See also I KILL GIANTS,which just came out a few weeks ago. Or A MONSTER CALLS from a few years ago.

And are we really going to argue that THE PRINCESS BRIDE or THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK are somehow more daring and adventurous than, say, GET OUT or THE SHAPE OF WATER or BLACK PANTHER?

To be sure, I'm not suggesting that all movies today are crap and nothing good gets made, nor conversely that all movies in the past were classics and no crap got made. Far from it; that would be ridiculous. What I am suggesting is that there's a different style of moviemaking today as compared to 30 years ago, or 50 years ago, or 80 years ago, with different priorities, that's driven by a different business model in Hollywood. (And again, I'm hardly the first to say so; in fact it's pretty much a commonplace in film studies and criticism.)

I've seen Lady Bird recently, although not the other two examples you mention. Genre-wise it's certainly a "coming of age film," and it's a good picture. (I particularly enjoyed its unique editing style, telling the story through a progression of mostly short scenes that eschewed the usual telegraphed "plot beats" of most movies yet never sacrificed clarity.) But that movie was also part of the festival circuit through which a lot of award-bait films are debuted these days; its success on a mainstream "popular" level is strictly a bonus based on the publicity associated with its awards.

A Wrinkle In Time, conversely, is an example of exactly the mainstream trends I'm talking about, and it's nothing like The Princess Bride. Back in 1987, TPB was a quirky, mid-budget film that was adapted from its source material by the original author (who also happened to be a top-flight screenwriter); it was all about clever storytelling and gleefully unconcerned about its low-end FX, and it has earned its reputation as a classic by winning over almost everyone who's seen it for 30+ years. AWIT is an adaptation of a beloved children's book, yes, but it has a budget of over $100 million (and that's just production, not promotion!), has fizzled with viewers, and has received extremely mixed reviews that repeatedly say it's weighted down by giant plot holes, uneven tone, inconsistent characterization, and overreliance on CGI spectacle. In trying too hard to please everybody, it has succeeded at the exact opposite.

As for Star Trek and how it's been affected by these trends... just compare the STII-III-IV sequence from back in the '80s to the Abrams films from 25-30 years later, in terms of pacing and quality of dialogue and ratio of story-to-stunts and level of FX spectacle. They're wildly different. And what the latter-day films offer is not improvement... they merely make Trek seem more interchangeable with other "action" franchises.

 

[Jadeb]

If you look at Beyond, it closely follows the modern Bond formula, complete with empowered Bond girl who still needs saving. There's even a motorbike sequence, of all things. Unfortunately, Beyond's about equivalent to a mid-tier Bond film and lacks the audience-attracting power that franchise has.

Playing in that sandbox doesn't do the franchise any favors, IMO.

 

[Longinus]

If you look at Beyond, it closely follows the modern Bond formula, complete with empowered Bond girl who still needs saving. There's even a motorbike sequence, of all things. Unfortunately, Beyond's about equivalent to a mid-tier Bond film and lacks the audience-attracting power that franchise has.

Quite true. And it still was the best of the Kelvinverse films...

 

[Nerys Myk]

Quite true. And it still was the best of the Kelvinverse films...

Because it was the most like TOS.

 

[fireproof78]

Give me Trek 09 any day of the week over Beyond.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Give me Trek 09 any day of the week over Beyond.

I love 09, but it's not as TOS as Beyond.

 

[fireproof78]

I love 09, but it's not as TOS as Beyond.

Perhaps, but in some ways it touched on many of the beats of TOS. It's an interesting balance between the two.

 

[Turtletrekker]

To quote Ricky Nelson from the 1970's Garden Party:
"But it's all right now, I've learned my lesson well
You see, you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself"

Or to quote Tony Stark, "My bond is with the people, and I will serve this great nation at the pleasure of myself. And if there's one thing I've proven, you can count on me to pleasure myself."

 

[lawman]

If you look at Beyond, it closely follows the modern Bond formula...

You're not wrong about that. And even so, it was still leagues better than ST09 or STID, not least because Simon Pegg understands how to write plausible human beings a lot better than Orci and Kurtzman ever have or ever will.

 

[Rahul]

Yeah, and part of the reason for that is the way Hollywood's business model has changed over the last few decades. Much ink has been spilled about the changes since the mid-late '70s, in particular... since the emergence of mega-hits like Jaws and Star Wars and the whole concept of a "summer movie season." (Although it's unlikely that either of those would get made today, at least not in anything resembling its original form. Jaws especially... it has a downright languid pace and conspicuously low production values compared to today's big studio product.) Hollywood has become more and more inclined to bet the farm on just a handful of big productions in any given year, and unless those are huge hits they're considered flops. Put that all together with other trends like improved FX capabilities and formula-oriented screenwriting training (as you note) and "four-quadrant" marketing thinking and corporate consolidation in the entertainment industry, and the end result is that just about the last thing on anybody's agenda is quality writing. You get "tentpole" films at one extreme, and super-low-budget indy pictures at the other, and in either case it's pure luck if a movie is actually good, and there's not much left in the middle, the territory that used to be the bread-and-butter of Hollywood production. (Except perhaps for a few conspicuous entries during "award season," which is a whole other weird concept and often a whole other kind of formula.)

It doesn't have to be like this. In the '30s and '40s under the "studio system," it's not as if Hollywood was awash in unfettered creative freedom — the execs still called the shots, arguably even more than today — but that system managed to produce an exceptional proportion of really exceptional, timeless pictures; there's a reason it's still considered the Golden Age. (Casablanca definitely went through its own version of "development hell," for instance, yet it's among the all-time favorite movies of a lot of people — myself included.) In the '60s and '70s after that system had been dismantled, there was an era of real creative freedom for innovative filmmakers, and again a lot of fantastic work got produced. I think there were still a lot of excellent "small" movies in the '80s, even... but things have been on a downhill slide ever since. (Would anyone make something like The Princess Bride today? Or any of John Hughes' teen pictures? Or even the original-crew Star Trek movies?)

Or maybe I'm just cynical, I dunno. Or maybe it's just selective memory. After all, it was decades ago (1951?) that Theodore Sturgeon coined his famous eponymous law, so evidently no shortage of crap was being written (for page and screen) back then just as much as now.

There are always good, bad, and mediocre movies, future classics and formulaic potboilers, in every generation. And as for your specific examples: LOVE, SIMON, which is garnering favorable comparisons to John Hughes' movies, is in theaters now, along with films like CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and LADYBIRD and BLOCKERS. Coming of age films never go away.

As for THE PRINCESS BRIDE, we just got A WRINKLE IN TIME: another family-friendly fantasy film based on a beloved novel. See also I KILL GIANTS,which just came out a few weeks ago. Or A MONSTER CALLS from a few years ago.

And are we really going to argue that THE PRINCESS BRIDE or THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK are somehow more daring and adventurous than, say, GET OUT or THE SHAPE OF WATER or BLACK PANTHER?

Let's not romanticize the past too much. Everybody remembers JAWS and CASABLANCA and THE PRINCESS BRIDE. Nobody talks about THE DEEP or KRULL or FRANCIS THE TALKING MULE . . . .

It's Sturgeon's Law:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SturgeonsLaw
90% of everything is crap. Always.

If you look at the movies of the past, you'll only see those still remembered fondly (e.g. Casablanca). You're not going to remember the 3000+ other horribly formulaic romances, war movies and the laaaarge swaths of mediocre Westerns that have been produced at the same time.

In fact, the current output of quality movies is quite honestly astonishing: Just last year, we had Shape of Water, Dunkirk, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, Get Out... IMO 12 Years a Slave is still one of the best movies ever made. Not just because of the topic ("The blindside" was a stupid-as-fuck attempt at the same topic) but because it's a genuine great movie, one of the best movies to ever win the Oscar in, like, ever. People like Scorsese is stilll doing quality stuff on a regular basis.

It's just - and I give you that - the current big budget blockbuster is prevalent. But, and tis is a personal prediction, but I think the mid-sized budgeted movie will make a come-back. Something like "Creed", that's part of a franchise, but still artistically relevant with giving the guys behind the scenes enough creative freedom to handle their personal topics, while at the same time still being nudet in the direction of having mass appeal. Just right now, blockbusters (like comicbook movies) are universally sell-able. But the public will crave quality as well. As always. And as soon as there will be made money there, there will be more movies with more artistic freedom again.