Captain Marvel (2019)

[Trekkin]

IDK. There have been many terrible people who have affected the course of history. I don't think I need to thank them, even if what they did shaped my life.

Hope you get better, @Awesome Possum .

We don’t even know if history was shaped for the better. A world where Close Encounters... and 9 to 5 were the biggest and most influential movies of their respective years, sounds just dandy to me.

Which is why ‘for want of a nail...’ is nearly always the most convenient and empty argument you could possibly make. ‘But if they didn’t do this, then we’d be doing...something else!”

*Cue, the Law and Order scene change noise*

 

[FPAlpha]

Saw it yesterday and it was a good movie, nothing truly groundbreaking or hugely interesting and novel about the story but worth seeing.

I'd place it somewhere in the middle qualitywise.. Brie Larson and Samuel Jackson were quite good in their roles, especially Jackson who got to show a lighter and funnier version of Fury though i was a little disappointed about how he got his eye patch (expected something big and bold and not a scratch by some alien cat).

Most origin stories are not that great but even a mediocre Marvel movies is still tons of better than most other movies.

However i liked the tie in with Avengers at the end and how Fury came about the title Avengers Initiative

 

[Bad Thoughts]

We don’t even know if history was shaped for the better. A world where Close Encounters... and 9 to 5 were the biggest and most influential movies of their respective years, sounds just dandy to me.

Which is why ‘for want of a nail...’ is nearly always the most convenient and empty argument you could possibly make. ‘But if they didn’t do this, then we’d be doing...something else!”

As I often must remind people, the origins of Deep Space Nine were not in Star Trek. It was Brandon Tartakoff who proposed making a version of The Rifleman in space: the story of a widower and his son living on a lawless future frontier. It was Rick Berman who brought it into the Star Trek fold. It's stunning how much material was taken from the first several episodes of the Rifleman in setting up DS9 in Emissary. If DS9 had not been folded into Star Trek, many claims about what Star Trek did for representing women and minorities in power--people with agency, not just supporters--would be lost.

Should we, as Star Trek fans, use the intentions of Gene Roddenberry when considering how women are portrayed as (super)heroes? Star Trek has had mixed results when portraying women on screen or using talented women behind the camera. Nonetheless, the efforts of some have helped to shape, IMO, women characters in genre fiction: writers and producers like Fontana, Piller, and Taylor, as well as actors like Mulgrew and Visitor.*** I don't know if Janeway influenced the film Captain Marvel, but Janeway did establish a model of a woman in control--a model that doesn't require us to acknowledge the legacy of the casting couch.

***ETA: it's worth noting that only Piller and Visitor came to Star Trek as Star Trek fans.

 

[Trekkin]

Janeway was not exactly groundbreaking for 1996. Hell, she was apparently based on Katherine Hepburn characters.

(She also damn-near steals entire scenes from Aliens whenever they want to ‘action’ her up. The episode where she takes on the flu that evolves into monsters (Organisms? Something like that) whilst clad in a tank top and a very strappy gun, comes to mind.)

She was just groundbreaking for Star Trek. Which is not so much a reflection of her (it’s fine, archetypes reach that point of their existence for a reason), as it is the franchise being somewhat...lagging. You don’t get to follow on the heels of Buffy and Xena, and crow about how your leading a unique and enlightened way. Voyager doing an entire episode ‘showing’ how ‘hard-ass career women aren’t actually frigid and dead between the thighs,’ ain’t exactly special 20 years after Murphy Brown, and airing alongside stuff like Ally McBeal.

As much as I like them, VOY, DS9 and ENT could be erased from existence tomorrow with barely a ripple. Outside Trekkie circles, they just did not matter.

Which is an absolutely fine state of affairs, provided you just want a show to entertain you. Not so much when you’re trying to convince everyone that they shouldn’t just dismiss Roddenberry as yet another floater in the showbiz septic tank.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

We don’t even know if history was shaped for the better. A world where Close Encounters... and 9 to 5 were the biggest and most influential movies of their respective years, sounds just dandy to me.

Which is why ‘for want of a nail...’ is nearly always the most convenient and empty argument you could possibly make. ‘But if they didn’t do this, then we’d be doing...something else!”

*Cue, the Law and Order scene change noise*

Yeah, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a masterpiece.

And before someone shouts butterfly effect again here, sure there are Star Trek models (and maybe a clipping of some sort?) in CE3K, but its larger influences were pretty independent of Star Trek: UFO hysteria, which was a product of Cold War hysteria and later bolstered by the space program, 2001: A Space Odyssey for the technical side of things, and otherwise just generally Spielberg being a genius. As far as I know, Steven Spielberg owes little to nothing to Godennberry.

 

[JD]

Because, Star Wars has far more in common with serial space operas like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. It came out years before TMP back when Trek fans were mostly comic fodder. Better say Star Wars alerted typically conservative studios to dust off forgotten properties like Star Trek.

I've never really seen much, if any, Trek in Star Wars, pretty much all of the things they both do, were already being done long before either of them started.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Star Wars at least cribs a lot of terminology from Star Trek. Deflector shields/deflectors, tractor beam, cloaking device, Federation, probably others.

 

[suarezguy]

Roddenberry died I think 2 years before I became a fan. I don't think I ever really had any hero worship for him

Hero-worshipping is too much but he did come up with/work with others in coming up with a series quite different from other sci fi shows of the times and even still today and fought that in its revivals and continuations it would try to retain that distinctiveness, and even late in life was able to hire/approve the hiring of people who did think trying to follow his ideals was worthwhile.

 

[Jayson1]

I did use to think Roddenberry is someone who kind of cleaned up his life as he got older and became more mature. I always liked that idea but then I have gotten new doubts over the years. . Things like hearing about how he was drunk when he pitched TNG and some of the bad behavior in how he treated his writers and also the creepy lawyer guy. I think he might have been a huckster all along.

Jason

 

[Turtletrekker]

Yeah, Gene' s lawyer would have been right at home in the offices of Wolfram and Hart.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Wasn’t he part of the reason Gates originally left the show? He comes up a lot in that documentary that Shatner did, he just seems like a major creep and asshole.

 

[Professor Zoom]

None of us would be posting on a Trek board without Roddenberry. It's as simple as that.

Try. But, we also might not be positing if it wasn't for Gene Coon. Or Nimoy. Lots of people helped make it a success. It's not all because of Roddenberry.

Star Wars at least cribs a lot of terminology from Star Trek. Deflector shields/deflectors, tractor beam, cloaking device, Federation, probably others.

Yeah, Star Trek didn't come up those. Star Trek cribbed from Forbidden Planet, which cribbed from somewhere else. The pulp magazines are where a lot of those ideas came from.

 

[Jayson1]

Wasn’t he part of the reason Gates originally left the show? He comes up a lot in that documentary that Shatner did, he just seems like a major creep and asshole.

That was Maurice Hurley who basically the head writer from late season 1 to season 2. I forget some of the details but he did seem to hate her. The lawyer was the one sneaking around re-writing people's scripts and basically doing it all on behalf of Roddenberry. I think he might have even party wrote "Menegie of Troi."

Jason

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yeah, Star Trek didn't come up those. Star Trek cribbed from Forbidden Planet, which cribbed from somewhere else. The pulp magazines are where a lot of those ideas came from.

I didn't claim that Star Trek invented all the terms. Perhaps "cribbed" was the wrong word to use for all of them, especially the ones that Star Trek borrowed from the pulps as you say, like "tractor beam" (E.E. Smith).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractor_beam#Literature

Nevertheless, I don't believe there's any question that Lucas was using all of the terms I mentioned because they were in Star Trek, which was my primary point.

But none of the terms I mentioned came from Forbidden Planet, certainly not any part of it that made on screen.

Additionally, D.C. Fontana did invent the term cloaking device for TOS "The Enterprise Incident."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking_device#Conceptual_origins

 

[gblews]

Even when "Enterprise" came out they were still sort of following the Roddenberry rules.

This is not true. In fact ,Ent went out of it's way to be the anti-Roddenberry Trek. There was sex and nudity on the show, there was tons of crew conflict, the citizens of the Fed were shown to be xenophobic and racist.

 

[Jayson1]

This is not true. In fact ,Ent went out of it's way to be the anti-Roddenberry Trek. There was sex and nudity on the show, there was tons of crew conflict, the citizens of the Fed were shown to be xenophobic and racist.

Well they sort of danced around being anti-Roddenberry. The sex and nudity was basically people in skimpy outfits. Humanity was mostly recovered after World War III and when you showed someone who was xenophobic or racist it was still seen as some oddity of that world instead of just standard stuff you would expect like in modern society.

They did try and feel more contemporary in how people speak but it actually was more "Orville" like only just not as good of show as "Orville."

Jason

 

[EnderAKH]

For the poster who said Captain Marvel wouldn't have the legs of Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel's first full Monday - Thursday is almost an exact copy of Wonder Woman's.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=wonderwoman.htm
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=marvel2018a.htm

 

[Infern0]

Janeway was not exactly groundbreaking for 1996. Hell, she was apparently based on Katherine Hepburn characters.

(She also damn-near steals entire scenes from Aliens whenever they want to ‘action’ her up. The episode where she takes on the flu that evolves into monsters (Organisms? Something like that) whilst clad in a tank top and a very strappy gun, comes to mind.)

She was just groundbreaking for Star Trek. Which is not so much a reflection of her (it’s fine, archetypes reach that point of their existence for a reason), as it is the franchise being somewhat...lagging. You don’t get to follow on the heels of Buffy and Xena, and crow about how your leading a unique and enlightened way. Voyager doing an entire episode ‘showing’ how ‘hard-ass career women aren’t actually frigid and dead between the thighs,’ ain’t exactly special 20 years after Murphy Brown, and airing alongside stuff like Ally McBeal.

As much as I like them, VOY, DS9 and ENT could be erased from existence tomorrow with barely a ripple. Outside Trekkie circles, they just did not matter.

Which is an absolutely fine state of affairs, provided you just want a show to entertain you. Not so much when you’re trying to convince everyone that they shouldn’t just dismiss Roddenberry as yet another floater in the showbiz septic tank.

Janeway in 1996 was a lot closer to being groundbreaking than Captain Marvel is in 2019

 

[Trekkin]

1. No.

2. So?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Do they have to be ground breaking?

Killjoys and Dark Matter, were both spaceship tv shows with female Captains of colour, and no one cares.

God bless normalization.