Star Trek XI Not A Parody

[M'Sharak]

I did read the article and I'm certain he thought the original Trek was a parody.

Why? Please cite something which shows that you evaluated what he said rationally, rather than flying off the handle at the one sentence and ignoring the entire balance of the text.

"I'm certain he thought" is the same thing as claiming to know what J.J. Abrams thinks, based upon... what? How can you be so certain?

The kitsch remark also sounds pretty condescending to me don't you think? He won't give TOS a break at all.
It's not Roddenberry and companies fault they didn't have CGI and all that crap back then.
They did pretty darn well with what they had to work with.

Not really. It's a word used to refer to a lot of things from that time, as viewed from this time.

In the sense he's using it, he could also use the word "retro", if he was attempting to duplicate that 60s look and feel in a movie of today. The problem is, though, that to do so specifically with the look and feel of Star Trek would be perceived by the movie-going audience at large as parody, whether it was his intention to make a parody or not, and it is that perception which he wishes to avoid.

He wants to make a movie which will be taken by today's audience, not as kitsch, but as a modern movie about what he hopes they will see (for the duration of the movie, at least) as a real universe. It's an homage to that series and to those characters, not an insult.

Why would he bother making a TOS movie out of condescension? That would make no sense at all.

 

[MattJC]

A quick buck. Nothing more.

 

[SonicRanger]

MattJC is obviously wearing his shit-tinted glasses today.

 

[MattJC]

The only thing I see is Abrams' bullshit.

 

[SonicRanger]

^^^

Even where none exists.

 

[M'Sharak]

^ That will be enough of that, thanks, SonicRanger.

A quick buck. Nothing more.

There are far easier and less exorbitantly-expensive ways to make "a quick buck", don't you think?

Seriously, you're making a huge to-do, based on no actual evidence, claiming an ability to read minds. Isn't that taking it a bit far?

 

[ancient]

Oh for fuck's sake. Really. Matt, you make no sense to anyone except yourself. Man, don't you hear yourself?

Or anything?

Loose your pointless defense of something which does not need defending. Stop coming up with these stupid, baseless motivations. If you are indeed a telepath, then you're a piss poor one.

Is something produced in 1965 retro in 1965? No. Is it retro in 2008? Hmm, let me look at my 1965 Television set...and at my disrespectfully redesigned 2008 television set. Fucking television producers, making a quick buck by disrespecting RCA. wank wank wank wank.

Oh yeah, now I feel yummy.

 

[MattJC]

Abrams is counting on most of the hardcore fans to show up to see this movie, no matter what he throws at them, plus whomever else he tries to con into seeing it.

 

[U.S.S. Republic]

The kitsch remark also sounds pretty condescending to me don't you think? He won't give TOS a break at all.

Lets give an example of MattJC speak:

JJ Abrams: 'This movie is going to be great!'
MattJC: 'Did you read that? He said TOS Trek sucked transvestite monkeyballs. Fucking bastard! I hope he is raped to death with a knife and rots in hell - him and all his sycophantic cronies.'

And no, this really isn't much of an exaggeration for MattJC as plenty of similar previous posts will attest to.

 

[MattJC]

Well, he can't say it will suck.
He's got to con people into the theatres somehow.

 

[M'Sharak]

The kitsch remark also sounds pretty condescending to me don't you think? He won't give TOS a break at all.

Lets give an example of MattJC speak:

JJ Abrams: 'This movie is going to be great!'
MattJC: 'Did you read that? He said TOS Trek sucked transvestite monkeyballs. Fucking bastard! I hope he is raped to death with a knife and rots in hell - him and all his sycophantic cronies.'

And no, this really isn't much of an exaggeration for MattJC as plenty of similar previous posts will attest to.

And I asked above that taking potshots at Matt not become the topic of the thread, did I not?

I'm going to close this thread, temporarily. Let's see if we can find the original topic and cool down a bit in the process.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Edit:

Okay, it's been a few hours. If everybody's clear on what the topic is, perhaps we can now proceed without getting further bogged down in stuff what isn't it. Apologies for the inconvenience.

 

[Franklin]

I did read the article and I'm certain he thought the original Trek was a parody.

Why? Please cite something which shows that you evaluated what he said rationally, rather than flying off the handle at the one sentence and ignoring the entire balance of the text.

"I'm certain he thought" is the same thing as claiming to know what J.J. Abrams thinks, based upon... what? How can you be so certain?

The kitsch remark also sounds pretty condescending to me don't you think? He won't give TOS a break at all.
It's not Roddenberry and companies fault they didn't have CGI and all that crap back then.
They did pretty darn well with what they had to work with.

It was a poor choice of words by Abrams in any case. Kitsch tends to mean broad popularity with little real artistic merit (and sometimes pretentiousness). Trite. Crass. I certainly don't think Abrams means Roddenberry et al were trying to be kitschy. Or that TOS has become kitschy. Lost in Space was kitschy. I'd even say the old Battlestar Galactica was kitschy. Even remaking XI entirely in the image of TOS would be a movie that felt less kitschy than campy.

"Camp" is the key word. I think in trying to make his Trek "feel real," Abrams would've been better served to say that he had to weed out the campy elements in TOS. As much as I love TOS above all other Trek series, those elements existed. Not that all TOS episodes had them, but I mean from the wacky-haired women barely clad in Theiss creations, to emoting actors (not just Shatner) and overplayed drama, to sometimes groan-inducing humor, to props that sometimes looked awful even by 1960s standards (pressure gauges on the Galileo 7? squirt bottles in McCoy's sickbay?), to fist fights.

As far as changing the look goes, Abrams wants to do something Roddenberry would admire. He wants to change the look of Trek to something that people can see today and really imagine it could be their future (all the pseudo-science involved notwithstanding). Star Trek, after all, is not about a time long ago and a galaxy far far away. It's about how we see ourselves and our future.

 

[Sector 7]

^ Good point. I agree that he wants a more 'realistic future'. As much as I love TOS, it has become outdated due to technology advances. That alone would make it 'campy' or 'kitschy' if it were not re-envisioned appropriately.
Thank heavens JJ Abrams seems to understand this. If not, the movie going public would think of the new movie as a parody indeed.

 

[MattJC]

Since when has it been popular to trash the look of TOS?
Have you all always felt this way or have you started trashing it just because the "savior" of Star Trek JJ Abrams said it's "Kitschy"?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I did read the article and I'm certain he thought the original Trek was a parody.

Then you've left no doubt that you just can't understand what you read. No wonder you're angry about so much that the film makers have said.

No potshot - a fair observation in response to what you explicitly posted.

 

[Tralah]

For YEARS I've seen people make disparaging remarks about the look of TOS. They did they best they could with their low budget, but the stories and characters make it easy for most people to overlook those things. I'm glad Abrams is mainly concerned with those things that matter, and I hope he delivers.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

For YEARS I've seen people make disparaging remarks about the look of TOS.

Exactly so.

I love a lot of TOS design, but the specifics of it belong to a certain era as well as being compromises with budget constraints. Unless one means to recreate Trek as a period piece for reasons of parody - such as "Galaxy Quest" - it needs to be abandoned.

My understanding is that, for example, the bridge of the Enterprise will be recognizable as a Trek bridge in the sense that the TNG, Voyager, DS9 Defiant, and various TOS-based film bridges were - but the differences in treatment and scale are far greater than the differences between say, the TOS bridge and the TMP or ST V bridge sets.

 

[Sector 7]

For YEARS I've seen people make disparaging remarks about the look of TOS. They did they best they could with their low budget, but the stories and characters make it easy for most people to overlook those things. I'm glad Abrams is mainly concerned with those things that matter, and I hope he delivers.

This is what I said, or meant. For the time it was made, TOS was fantastic! Modern technology has now advanced ahead, some due to the inspiration of TOS. So now it is time to re-envision TOS in keeping with changes in technology (sans TNG-era technobabble).
I think JJ will keep the good, rather than 'throw out the baby with the bath water'.

 

[M'Sharak]

Since when has it been popular to trash the look of TOS?
Have you all always felt this way or have you started trashing it just because the "savior" of Star Trek JJ Abrams said it's "Kitschy"?

I don't see anyone here (or in the article) trashing the look of TOS. All that's really been said is that it looks like a 1960s TV show, which is just fine... for a 1960s TV show on a 1960s-TV-show budget. If it wasn't fine, I don't think any of us would be here talking about it.

However (this is a question for you, Matt): If you were making Star Trek yourself, right now, would you make it look like a 1960s TV show? Or would you make use of techniques and technology which have been developed since that time to make a movie that they couldn't possibly have made then, but would have wanted to?

Or are you just stuck on the terms "kitsch" (yes, as Franklin said above, an unfortunate choice of word, but hardly limited to the negative meaning you seem to ascribe) and "parody" and unwilling to even consider the possibility that Abrams and company really do want to make the best Star Trek movie they can? Because if your mind is closed, there isn't much point in having this conversation at all, is there?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

TOS already has gone beyond parody with the movies, which dispensed with the elements from the TV series that Abrams is fretting about. On the assumption he's at least passingly familiar with the movies (and perhaps some of the other series?) he must be directing that comment at people who have seen nothing of Star Trek and have only a vague pop-culture notion of it as involving bright colors, 60s fashions, over-the-top acting and unconvincing SFX (by today's standards).

Just to make sure this is clear: Abrams means that if he were to transport TOS, as it was in the 60s, whole-cloth to a modern film production, it would look like he was making fun of it. There's no way that he could convey a different impression. So rather than fall into an obvious trap, he is avoiding the trap.