So what appeals to you about Kelvin Kirk is the idea that he's totally different from Prime Kirk? Okay, so how are we supposed to differentiate Kelvin Kirk further from Prime Kirk AT THIS POINT besides the fact that he had a different upbringing? We saw it full on in 2009, but it was always leading up to him growing up to become a less impulsive and more thoughtful commander as we eventually saw him by BEYOND, which was a lot closer to the Kirk of TOS where he was feeling the burdens of command and being less of a skirt chaser.
At least to me, the point of creating the alternate timeline wasn't just to set up a completely different universe with completely different versions of the classic characters, but that we get to revisit those classic characters but now in a timeline that wasn't beholden to the old canon so filmmakers were free to do what they want. If a filmmaker wanted to have a story as extreme as one where actually Kirk quits the service (and doesn't come back), they could actually do that without worrying if it doesn't line up with the timeline.
They don't necessarily need to be more different in extreme ways, they already
are different. If you think these Kirk and Spock are the same or they will still be the same characters, I dunno what to tell you. They aren't. They can't be. Even their dynamic is different.
This Spock will never evolve to become the delusional guy tos Spock was when we firstly see him in the series because it would be an involution of sorts for him. He has already resolved something that it took tos Spock decades. This is part of the reason why you don't see him and Mccoy in the same dynamic: because kelvin Spock is more contemporary as a biracial guy analogy, and it literally makes zero sense for him to argue with Mccoy the same exact way his tos counterpart did. This Spock doesn't deny he has feelings, he knows that vulcans have them too (even his father admitted that), he loves a human and he's defensive about his human side because his mother was important to him and he lost her..his humanity is everything he has left of her. He also lost vulcan, HE'S A SURVIVOR who experienced ptsd and survivor guilt (see stid), but he might have a better relationship with his father that Spock prime never had in his reality.
Kelvin Spock doesn't really pretend to be who he isn't and unless you want to turn him into a parody of Nimoy-Spock, he cannot be that guy now.
With Discovery putting their own young Spock prime, it would be all the more illogical and forced to pretend kelvin spock&co are the prime timeline characters. For one, Spock never worked for 10 years with Pike here. Kirk's crew was created sooner because of different circumstances. There are too many things to ignore here...
Also, Kelvin Spock doesn't have siblings who made him want to be just vulcan because they hurt him as a kid. Kelvin Spock only had his human mother as a link to his humanity and then Uhura, and neither made him want to be only vulcan, clearly. You cannot pretend Quinto, Peck and Nimoy played the same guy. I can't even buy Peck's version as a prequel of Nimoy's Spock, it figures Quinto's.
I think discovery cemented the idea of 'different Spocks' even to newest audiences who hadn't watched tos.
For me, it's in everyone interest to keep the two realities separated and, at best, only allow some crossovers but no mixing up of the stories and characters arcs.
The point is, if you care about the characters, then I have to find it contradictory that you don't care about their story and the fact their life experiences have already shaped these characters as different people. They just cannot work as a prequel of the original thing. They have things in common, but they are not them. This is important. Or how can you care about the characters and stories if you don't care about their stories? That's a contradiction as I think the two are mutually exclusive.
It's because I care about the characters that I have the opinions I have and thus I'm worried about Tarantino.
The alternate reality thing, hence the discourse about timelines, is in this context an important puzzle piece that helps to explain why they are different and they CAN be. If you remove that then you either remove their story and turn these characters into mere..pictures or cosplayers of the tos characters, or you retcon the tos characters with the stuff that is unique to the kelvin version. Either way, it doesn't work and it really shows a lack of care for the characters from both verses and their stories thus the *characters*.
I agree that it is refreshing. More my Vulcan eyebrow raise is the openness towards Tarantino while Abrams is (still to this day) lampooned for daring to not be familiar with the source material.
Again, I have no doubt that if SJ Clarkson had said what Tarantino is saying, she'd get insulted by fans and people would petition to have her removed for incompetence. Wasn't she already criticized because her curriculum doesn't show experience in franchises like this? Yet, Tarantino gets a pass for both.
And it's 100% true that people have double standards as they criticized and nitpick so much when it comes to JJ knowing every detail about the original thing, yet they give Tarantino a pass when he's way worse because he flaunts his own ignorance about the source material of the very trek iteration he wants to make a movie about.
That comment by JJ wasn't so crazy btw. He said that as a kid he didn't get it but as an adult he did. Nothing weird about that, I didn't get it either when I was a small thing. Kids at the time liked star wars more because it was this cool popular thing and the first space opera they could watch at the cinema. It was captivating even if you didn't get everything. If you ask kids, they probably don't understand the recurring plot of star wars either...but they have all those gadgets and 'heroes' to play.
]) and I strongly suspect he doesn't find it as confusing as he makes it appear (like my friend, he's not above "stirring the pot" for his own amusement).
