CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar 2 - Electric Boogaloo-Fanboys gone WILD-too many hyphens
- Thread starter jespah
- Start date
No way the coffee cup was an accident. Too obvious.
I was so distracted by the fact that "Engineering" was the bridge with a couple of GNDN pipes I didn't even notice the cup. Did their warehouse not have a blank wall they could've used?
Also, while I'm normally in favor of functional and relevant rather than static and generic displays on monitors, the compositing for the post-production displays was awful, and a character reading the damage report word-for-word off the computer was bizarre choice. If the computer can already bottom-line what's going on for the captain on its own, why does it need a human to read it aloud? Was this a Galaxy Quest reference?
I didn't read the comic and didn't know it was a beat for beat version of it. It doesn't change anything about my review but it's definitely good to know regardless. I suppose you could consider it a storyboard of sorts for the film.
And, yeah, I noticed the lighting accentuating his nonblinking staring eyes and recognized the 1960's inspiration (not just trek but lots of other shows including westerns did that) and thought it was a suboptimal choice given the subject.
No arguments there... 
I mean, I've been waiting for you...
Please do.
Exactly, which is why I find myself wondering why people who I know saw and reviewed the comic bothered watching the video, since Lane flat out said it would be the exact same thing.
Well, at least they got rid of "Fire photon torpedoes" ... "Photon torpedoes, FIRE!" That was really awkward when I first saw it in some of the pre-release footage. 
Yeah I never understood the point of doing an exact replica of the already released comic strip.
But that's what he said he would do, and he delivered!
So you guys have never watched or had the urge to watch a faithful adaptation of a novel, short story, comic, or even play that was turned into a film? There have been several properties where I've enjoyed novel, comic, cartoon, and film versions of the same story.
The question I had is "Faithful how?" Comics and novels and movies are not the same thing. Blade Runner is vastly unlike Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and yet manages to hit most of the same thematic points. Ideally you adapt the story to the strengths of the medium, and what works on the page doesn't necessarily work on the screen and vice versa.
A couple of things for me. "Faithful" doesn't mean 1:1 recreation from format to format. Two, I use to want that but then I realized that part of creating art is adding an individual's spin to the material. That's the adaptation process. So, instead of wanting a perfect recreation I prefer seeing what a new artist sees in the work, rather than what I have already seen.
Sure. In the case of comics, faithful or nearly faithful adaptations, one notable instance was The Dark Knight Returns. Despite Weller's involvement, I was, sadly, disappointed with the overall result. Very little of it was actually in the category of good. It was pretty much inferior to the graphic novel across the board. Watchmen is a second case. The result there was more varied: there were quite a few good things about the film, but many negatives.
I can't comment on the results here, because I've never read the Axanar comic.
The question broadened to include novels, short stories, and plays, lots. Too many to mention. Generally, results would be mixed at best, which is a rule for all adaptations.
I agree completely... but isn't that the case here? Every line, every angle, every scene from both in the same order with nothing skipped in either direction from the original script that predated both? I'd find that difficult to fathom that a six page comic turned into a 12 minute film wasn't adapted in some way.
Again, agreed. Admiral and Mytran said it was an exact copy. Is it actually though? I'll have to dig up the comic and see. I suspect that they aren't but are instead just faithful adaptations instead... but I'm open to being proven wrong.
It's more the principle for me. I don't want frame for frame. I've wanted that in the past, growing up loving comics like Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes. But, faithful adaptation means something different to me now, and I don't want it to be shot for shot, identical.
But, I may be overstating. I haven't read the comic and have limited interest in doing so. Chalk it up to the simple fact that I do not trust supposed faithful adaptions any more.
For some reason, I’m hearing Harry Dean Stanton shouting “this is what I live for” in my head as I read this.
INTERLUDE REVIEW (spoilers Spoiler-coded)
Jonathan Lane's fan film for a fan film, Interlude, is sadly so generic I could write a review just by quoting virtually every other fan film review I've ever done. So my apologies in advance if I "et cetera, et cetera, and forgive me if I've said and listened to this a thousand times before." /Geordi
First, and as ever, my hat is off to anyone who can actually finish and release a film. Films that take donations and fail to deliver are far too common, and anything within 500,000 km of the long long grift that is Axananything that manages to actually deliver seems nothing short of a miracle. So kudos to Lane and his crew for that. They did it. That's a pretty big thing.
ACTING
It's a fanfilm, ergo I expect the acting to be non-acting, so I shan't pillory it for any flaws there except to comment on Alec Peters because Alec Peters.
PACING
It flags. The editing is too loose. There are shots the story doesn't need, and the tempo is all wrong and too flaccid. Most reaction shots are held about 40% too long. Let. The. Air. Out. The thing has no sense of rhythm and no building tension. There's no build in the sense of jeopardy because there's no dramatic build either in the action or the cutting.
"STORY"
There ain't one. It's just a scene. Stuff happens, grave things are said, that's it.
As I've carped on repeatedly, the length of the film is no defense. I've seen plenty of short subjects exactly the length of the pre-doco segment that tell actual complete stories with beginnings, middles and ends. But too many fans who produce films seem to think making a "movie" about people pushing buttons and sounding dire about their chances of survival whilst spewing meaningless technobabble about what systems are "offline" is somehow worth watching. It ain't.
Even on its own terms, as a mere scene, Interlude is ineffective. Zero fucks are given because zero stakes are established at the outset other than of the "ohs nos we're güd guys being shots atz!" variety. There's zip dramatic tension because we're dropped into the middle of a [tepid] action sequence and [undramatically] doled out bits of [bland] info as we go along. And woe be to anyone who hasn't seen Prelude to The Grift That Keeps On Grifting who won't know...
...and why this is important. All of these things could have been established in a few lines of dialog at the top so we'd know why we should care. But nnnnnope.
And to add insult to injury, then there's the trailing doco segment...which basically says, "This is what was happening that we couldn't be arsed to tell you in the actual story. We could have, but we didn't." Fuck you, script.
CHARACTERS
The focus of the "story" ought to be the characters it effects most. Sadly, the script puts Captain Does-Nothing as the star and Captain Does-Something as the co-star. The focus and the billing ought to have been flipped. [EDIT: Yeah, I get that it's supposed to be about Garth's reaction...but neither the script or the performance sell it.]
PRODUCTION
The set is nice. That they lit the bridge differently to sell it as two different ships is effective. The camera work is fine if a tad static: mostly locked-down shots that pan and tilt a bit (some of which might've been done in post, but I'm not going to go back and check). The lighting is fine. So's the sound...a rarity in too many fan films. I can understand every word being said (except for the marble mouthed engineer over the intercom), not that they're saying anything of note.
Are there some minor technical quibbles? Yeah. But nothing worth grousing about, and certainly far fewer than the average New Voyages mismatched looks trainwreck. They at moments get right a nice bit of cross-cut eyelines between the two Captains (Garth looks screen left, Jakande screen right) but then they needlessly cross the line and that falls apart. Oh well.
MY VERDICT
For all its handsome production values it's sadly another exercise in pew pews and "serious people in space" masquerading as a story, and—as ever—none of the sound and fury signify anything. If it had been exciting maybe such story deficiencies would not have stood out so starkly, but it's so lacking in energy and "oomph" that it failed to engage me on any level.
In conclusion. the first thing that popped to mind as it went on was that this is QUAALUDE TO AXANAR, for never has such a handsome Trek fanfilm full of space action been more of a sedative than this snorefest.
Jonathan Lane's fan film for a fan film, Interlude, is sadly so generic I could write a review just by quoting virtually every other fan film review I've ever done. So my apologies in advance if I "et cetera, et cetera, and forgive me if I've said and listened to this a thousand times before." /Geordi
First, and as ever, my hat is off to anyone who can actually finish and release a film. Films that take donations and fail to deliver are far too common, and anything within 500,000 km of the long long grift that is Axananything that manages to actually deliver seems nothing short of a miracle. So kudos to Lane and his crew for that. They did it. That's a pretty big thing.
ACTING
It's a fanfilm, ergo I expect the acting to be non-acting, so I shan't pillory it for any flaws there except to comment on Alec Peters because Alec Peters.
PACING
It flags. The editing is too loose. There are shots the story doesn't need, and the tempo is all wrong and too flaccid. Most reaction shots are held about 40% too long. Let. The. Air. Out. The thing has no sense of rhythm and no building tension. There's no build in the sense of jeopardy because there's no dramatic build either in the action or the cutting.
"STORY"
There ain't one. It's just a scene. Stuff happens, grave things are said, that's it.
As I've carped on repeatedly, the length of the film is no defense. I've seen plenty of short subjects exactly the length of the pre-doco segment that tell actual complete stories with beginnings, middles and ends. But too many fans who produce films seem to think making a "movie" about people pushing buttons and sounding dire about their chances of survival whilst spewing meaningless technobabble about what systems are "offline" is somehow worth watching. It ain't.
Even on its own terms, as a mere scene, Interlude is ineffective. Zero fucks are given because zero stakes are established at the outset other than of the "ohs nos we're güd guys being shots atz!" variety. There's zip dramatic tension because we're dropped into the middle of a [tepid] action sequence and [undramatically] doled out bits of [bland] info as we go along. And woe be to anyone who hasn't seen Prelude to The Grift That Keeps On Grifting who won't know...
who the Crispin Glover Ramirez body double is
And to add insult to injury, then there's the trailing doco segment...which basically says, "This is what was happening that we couldn't be arsed to tell you in the actual story. We could have, but we didn't." Fuck you, script.
CHARACTERS
The focus of the "story" ought to be the characters it effects most. Sadly, the script puts Captain Does-Nothing as the star and Captain Does-Something as the co-star. The focus and the billing ought to have been flipped. [EDIT: Yeah, I get that it's supposed to be about Garth's reaction...but neither the script or the performance sell it.]
PRODUCTION
The set is nice. That they lit the bridge differently to sell it as two different ships is effective. The camera work is fine if a tad static: mostly locked-down shots that pan and tilt a bit (some of which might've been done in post, but I'm not going to go back and check). The lighting is fine. So's the sound...a rarity in too many fan films. I can understand every word being said (except for the marble mouthed engineer over the intercom), not that they're saying anything of note.
Are there some minor technical quibbles? Yeah. But nothing worth grousing about, and certainly far fewer than the average New Voyages mismatched looks trainwreck. They at moments get right a nice bit of cross-cut eyelines between the two Captains (Garth looks screen left, Jakande screen right) but then they needlessly cross the line and that falls apart. Oh well.
+ The nice nod to the late Barbreader. Bye Barb. 
¿? Titles. Many of the moving stars actually dim out to grey as they approach the edges of the screen. The Fuck?
+ + Yay. A woman as the director! Need more of that. Always hard to say how well directed a show is, especially when given a flawed script and how fanfilms are always short-handed and short-scheduled. The matched then mismatched looks between the ships is the only thing I'll really fault here, but to be fair that's super common in even in pro films (I wanna punch a certain AD who screwed the pooch on this on a film I worked on), so I'll let that slide.
± Garth. It's easy and suuuuuuper tempting to pick on Alec Peters, and he's certainly no actor, but he's no worse than a lot of fanfilm performers. Trouble is, as a lead he's leaden. He's got zip screen presence. Perhaps he thinks a steely wide-eyed look makes him look commanding, but all it does is make him Captain Plywood. As to his Gowron-eyes throughout, that might be what he looks like IRL but it just makes him look vaguely unhinged all the time. He needs learn how to use his damned eyelids.
– There's a spy. Ooooooh. Oh wait...a spy where? On one of their ships? At Starfleet? Throw us a bone, script.
± + VFX. They're better than a lot of fanfilms. Not quite to the level of the stuff Tobias Richter did for Prelude and Axanever The Movie.
– Follow the torpedo shot. Goes about half as fast as it ought ergo lacks any kinetic energy that would sell the damage supposedly sustained. That the hit as registered inside the ship is so nothing (ooh, TV static) it actually lessens the impact (pun very intended). None of it works.
– In fact, none of the hits sell the damage here. There's a reason Star Trek's past and present have always done the "Seaview shuffle/rock and roll" and thrown people out of their chairs. The light camera vibration, flickering screens and random where-the-Hell-are-those-coming-from flashes and sparks do not suffice. [EDIT: I see Lane waved off such critiques as a) not consistent with TOS and b) dangerous because stunts...but he's wrong about how often they shook or tilted the camera on TOS, and you can have people rattle around in their chairs without needing to do stunts.]
++ They lit the bridges of the two ships sufficiently different that it's easy to tell which one we're on. yay!
± – The idea of this being a Klingon Operation Vengeance to take out Starfleet's Axa-Yamamoto is a solid one, but it fails to land since there are zero stakes set up and nothing to really sell this to the audience. A few lines of dialog to sell his importance to the war would have sufficed, but instead we just get a little flat recap in the denouement. And worse, there's no sense any of that this mattered either way other than it tipped them off to their being a spy in their ranks, because even though he wasn't killed Ramirez was effectively sidelined. Was he helping direct matters from his hospital bed? Was his incapacity impactful? Guess, cuz the film ain't gonna tell you. If the irony is that the Klingons ultimately lost the war by succeeding in taking out Ramirez and tipping off Starfleet to their being a spy, then make that the big point.
– – It's super convenient that the instant after Garth suggests beaming Jeffrey Weissman Ramirez over they just happen to narratively coincidentally get damaged in precisely the way that belays that order. There's not even any wry irony here.
¿? Captain Can Act Jakande tells his Engineer to "start venting warp plasma" to make the Klingons think they're crippled...but we never see it, which makes the ploy not sell visually, so they might as well have cut the line.
– The Klingon actions makes no sense. If indeed a spy told them to go all Operation Vengeance, then why the hell would they let either Starfleet ship take off like that without instant pursuit? Each D7 clearly outruns and outguns the Starfleet ships, so if they're after Ramirez the sensible thing is to leave one ship to deal with the supposedly crippled Artemis and chase down Captain Plywood with the other two. Oh sure, you can rationalize it by saying they're going to finish the one then chase down the other, but that's a risk they needn't have taken because what if the escaping ship is racing off to meet some other starships they don't know about?
Finally...
¿? Is this a warning or a threat?
¿? Titles. Many of the moving stars actually dim out to grey as they approach the edges of the screen. The Fuck?
+ + Yay. A woman as the director! Need more of that. Always hard to say how well directed a show is, especially when given a flawed script and how fanfilms are always short-handed and short-scheduled. The matched then mismatched looks between the ships is the only thing I'll really fault here, but to be fair that's super common in even in pro films (I wanna punch a certain AD who screwed the pooch on this on a film I worked on), so I'll let that slide.
± Garth. It's easy and suuuuuuper tempting to pick on Alec Peters, and he's certainly no actor, but he's no worse than a lot of fanfilm performers. Trouble is, as a lead he's leaden. He's got zip screen presence. Perhaps he thinks a steely wide-eyed look makes him look commanding, but all it does is make him Captain Plywood. As to his Gowron-eyes throughout, that might be what he looks like IRL but it just makes him look vaguely unhinged all the time. He needs learn how to use his damned eyelids.
– There's a spy. Ooooooh. Oh wait...a spy where? On one of their ships? At Starfleet? Throw us a bone, script.
± + VFX. They're better than a lot of fanfilms. Not quite to the level of the stuff Tobias Richter did for Prelude and Axanever The Movie.
– Follow the torpedo shot. Goes about half as fast as it ought ergo lacks any kinetic energy that would sell the damage supposedly sustained. That the hit as registered inside the ship is so nothing (ooh, TV static) it actually lessens the impact (pun very intended). None of it works.
– In fact, none of the hits sell the damage here. There's a reason Star Trek's past and present have always done the "Seaview shuffle/rock and roll" and thrown people out of their chairs. The light camera vibration, flickering screens and random where-the-Hell-are-those-coming-from flashes and sparks do not suffice. [EDIT: I see Lane waved off such critiques as a) not consistent with TOS and b) dangerous because stunts...but he's wrong about how often they shook or tilted the camera on TOS, and you can have people rattle around in their chairs without needing to do stunts.]
++ They lit the bridges of the two ships sufficiently different that it's easy to tell which one we're on. yay!
± – The idea of this being a Klingon Operation Vengeance to take out Starfleet's Axa-Yamamoto is a solid one, but it fails to land since there are zero stakes set up and nothing to really sell this to the audience. A few lines of dialog to sell his importance to the war would have sufficed, but instead we just get a little flat recap in the denouement. And worse, there's no sense any of that this mattered either way other than it tipped them off to their being a spy in their ranks, because even though he wasn't killed Ramirez was effectively sidelined. Was he helping direct matters from his hospital bed? Was his incapacity impactful? Guess, cuz the film ain't gonna tell you. If the irony is that the Klingons ultimately lost the war by succeeding in taking out Ramirez and tipping off Starfleet to their being a spy, then make that the big point.
– – It's super convenient that the instant after Garth suggests beaming Jeffrey Weissman Ramirez over they just happen to narratively coincidentally get damaged in precisely the way that belays that order. There's not even any wry irony here.
¿? Captain Can Act Jakande tells his Engineer to "start venting warp plasma" to make the Klingons think they're crippled...but we never see it, which makes the ploy not sell visually, so they might as well have cut the line.
– The Klingon actions makes no sense. If indeed a spy told them to go all Operation Vengeance, then why the hell would they let either Starfleet ship take off like that without instant pursuit? Each D7 clearly outruns and outguns the Starfleet ships, so if they're after Ramirez the sensible thing is to leave one ship to deal with the supposedly crippled Artemis and chase down Captain Plywood with the other two. Oh sure, you can rationalize it by saying they're going to finish the one then chase down the other, but that's a risk they needn't have taken because what if the escaping ship is racing off to meet some other starships they don't know about?
Finally...
¿? Is this a warning or a threat?
MY VERDICT
For all its handsome production values it's sadly another exercise in pew pews and "serious people in space" masquerading as a story, and—as ever—none of the sound and fury signify anything. If it had been exciting maybe such story deficiencies would not have stood out so starkly, but it's so lacking in energy and "oomph" that it failed to engage me on any level.
In conclusion. the first thing that popped to mind as it went on was that this is QUAALUDE TO AXANAR, for never has such a handsome Trek fanfilm full of space action been more of a sedative than this snorefest.
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One thing I noticed along similar technical lines: the Artemis dumps its antimatter containment bottles right into the Klingons’ oncoming attack vector. When that thing blew, not only should it have vaporized the D7’s, it should have taken the nearby planet with it! Instead, the D7’s shields flickered a little bit and drifted about, completely otherwise unscathed.