New ST:XI trailer

I just watched the trailer again, trying to see what's in it that's so terribly anti-Star Trek.

It's got Kirk staring greedily at the Enterprise.
Spock's dad talking about his divided nature.
Kirk goading Spock into losing his cool in order to achieve an end.
Scotty being just a wee bit on the giddy side over "this ship."
McCoy being funny and acerbic.
Kirk chasing a little tail.
The Enterprise warping out like crazy to save the day.
Red alert klaxons and a serious dude in a big chair ordering "fire all weapons."

I dunno, I'm not seeing a problem.

It is a little on the dynamic side. And it does seem to involve people at some points more-or-less talking to each other rather than hitting their marks and declaiming.

In fact, there is a definite lack of solemnly empty pontificating about Big Ideas on a superficial level. No technobabble to speak of, and the word "anomaly" is not heard.

That must be the problem. It's just too engaging and energetic and informal to be some folks' idea of "Star Trek." I mean, it actually looks like fun.

 

I understand the point you're trying to make, but what you see as "pandering" I see as "getting back to the basics."

Abrams felt what a lot of us felt, which is Star Trek had gotten so heavy and thick with continuity over the years-- where not only did the fans have to be up on the history of Starfleet, but that of a thousand other planets and alien species!-- that it was weighing the franchise down. In fact it got to the point where the stories started to become ABOUT the continuity. For a while that was fun, and DS9 did a great job playing around with and exploring that huge, complex history.

But pretty soon I started to get tired of seeing each new series have to tip toe around that continuity and try to avoid stepping on something that happened in the previous 700 episodes (and any new series would have had it even worse).

Somewhere along the way Trek lost track of what made it great in the first place. It became more about the history and less about the characters. You go back and watch TOS and the focus is much simpler and clearer-- it's about this friendship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and the adventures of the Starship Enterprise. Nothing more than that.

That's all Abrams is trying to get back to with his movie, and I couldn't be happier.

 

I don't know what is more impressive, the rest of your post, which is pretty sharp, or the fact you seem to have gotten RAMA to shut up for the last couple pages. Reading that was almost as good as seeing QOS for me.

 

Ha ha, my thoughts exactly.

 

We "Reach" brother....

In order for Star Trek to become great again..it must be all about it's roots...Good storytelling and characterization is vital for a re-birth and to make the film (and the franchise) successful. If this film steps all over canon..and is still a good movie.. my hat's off to it... I knew many in '79 who bitched that TMP was not their idea of what Star Trek should look like (Too Clean..too WHITE, TOO NEW LOOKING)... and "Canon" isn't a huge part of most film franchises.. James Bond films are not too terribly consistent, nor are the Batman films nor X-Men...firstly it's got to be a good story with good characters..something that Trek's handlers forgot... Here's hoping that JJ's movie will not suck.... But that's for 2009...

 

Wow brother, that really sounds!

That was Pike, I believe. Klaxons!

Philistine!

 

I agree with a lot of that, davejames, except for Trek being about the friendship between Kirk, Spock and McCoy. True, the friendship was there - it was what made us care about the characters, for sure. But I've never believed that TOS, at least, was about those characters - it was about the adventures of the Starship Enterprise, what those characters did, not really who they were, less a very few exceptions. At the time Trek was made, anthologies were a big thing on TV, and that's really what Trek was - it was a science fiction anthology, just as The Outer Limits, but instead of a new cast of characters and a new setting every week, Roddenberry took the ability to go to other worlds as a way to seek out new stories and frame them in the experience of running characters. TOS saw no growth in its characters whatsoever - Spock was exactly the same at the end as at the beginning, if you ignore "The Cage", and so was Kirk and so was McCoy. Uhura was the same, and Sulu and Chekov and Scotty - we didn't see how over the course of three years, Scotty's alcoholism had affected his professional relationship with his captain, nor how the alcoholism had grown out of the traumatic death of a woman he loved. If Spock struggled with his human half, it was only for the needs of this week's story and not as a continuing character arc in which we saw him struggle week after week, gaining ground, losing it, slipping into madness and eventually, with the love and support and bromance of Jim Kirk, he managed to either heal himself and accept his duality, or he became a bitter shell who had to go back to Vulcan to have the humanity beaten out of him (they saved that for TMP, obviously ). Even the death of Edith Keeler only affected Kirk until the last credit rolled, and then he was back the next week, strong and resilient as he learned of his brother's death. Star Trek wasn't about who these people were, it was about what they did, but that didn't make the great stories any less great (nor the bad ones any worse, for that matter).

Many, many fans fell in love with those characters, those frankly two-dimensional characters, and the fans filled in the blanks and gave them personalities beyond the screen, and cooked up back stories to make them seem more human (somehow, especially Spock ). We romanticized the characters, and thus our memories of them, but each and every one of those stories can stand on its own, and the characters never changed. Maybe the expectations of the audience have changed over the years as more and more TV shows have become soap operas, even Star Trek, but even as Trek embraced character arcs, it still pushed most times to tell distinct stories about life, the universe and everything, and not simply the day-to-day lives, loves and heartbreaks of the characters. That seemed to become the thrust of the movies. And like most people, I love a movie that tells a good character story - Wall*E told a damn fine character story about a character who isn't even alive! - but to me, at least, what made Trek "Trek" was when it told of bigger things than the characters, who were really only there as surrogates for me and all the others watching. That was what made Trek different, but now it seems like people don't want it to be different. They want it to be like every other franchise, a character drama that happens to be set in space, instead of a sci-fi story that happens to have familiar characters in it. Worse, since ENT, it's been nothing but self-referential drivel, the sort of stuff we find in all of the "Making of Star Trek" books, all the stuff made up by fans, by the Okudas, by people trying to explain everything about the Trek universe and missing the point that you can't just talk about the universe, you have to explore it. I want to explore Star Trek again, not watch a documentary about it.

 

^^^
Ptrope...

Just a thought - seems like you're comparing the style of story telling from the old days to todays. What is today's story telling styles? Well, it's not the Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Star Trek style of the 60s. It's todays. And I'm not unappreciative of the fact JJ Abrams is a style setter himself in story telling for these days... LOST is definately todays Twilight Zone. I reckon. Just as we would have said The X-Files was the Twilight Zone of the 90s.

We have a film pretty much about Kirk and Spock finding thier destiny. More or less. No, it's not the stylr of story telling from the classic first 2 seasons of Trek. Nor would I expect it to be. Wouldn't that be nostalgia?

I'd love for a story about 'us', as in a deeper story element that reflects we as people here in the world... but Hollywoodland isn't doing that these days. Nor has Trek always followed that. Perhaps it need not, nor should it! DS9 certainly was soap opera like, but still found ways to find a relevant vibe. Ya just never know, if it works, it works.

We shall see!

 

Which is what I'm talking about - not style, but substance. TOS may have been told in a different style - an anthology - but what I'm talking about is that each of those stories was about something bigger, something other than a soap opera about the characters. I don't see Star Trek as being about Kirk's traumatic childhood or Spock's being an outcast from 'mainstream' Vulcan society and how these things ultimately drove them into each other's sphere of influence, resulting in a manly bond of manly men doing manly things. I'll watch Denzel Washington if I want to see the personal life of someone and be entertained and hypnotized by it. It's the same way I don't watch Star Trek to see all the nifty kewl 'splosions and psychedelic warp effects and bug-eyed monsters, rubber foreheads or not. I watch Trek for the stories, whether it's "City on the Edge of Forever" or "Balance of Terror" or "The Inner Light"; stories about what these characters did, rather than how they got there. Whether it's an anthology or a character arc, I want to see Trek move forward, but they stopped doing that years ago, and J.J. seems to have, in his admitted ignorance of Star Trek, taken to heart the wrong lessons about it. IMHO, it's not that they're trying to appeal to people other than the fans, but that they're so focused on the things that fans grouse and swoon about on this and other boards that they've given up on ideas.

 

Well here was the reaction to it when I saw the trailer today in Quantum of Solace.

People seemed to be excited when they saw the opening. However, as it progressed toward the ending, they lost interest quickly. When the title was shown a lot of people groaned and I heard one person shout "Not another one."

As for the trailer in my opinion, not bad.

 

I just wanted to quote this because it oh so sums up all the goodness (at least potential for it) of this forthcoming Star Trek film. You just stated everything I WANT to see in my Star Trek movies!


Carry on.

Sharr

 

It's funny how each of you has a different idea as to why the new movie is getting to core of trek and will thus reinvigorate it.

One says a prequel was needed to jettison the cumbersome mythology of over 700hrs of Trek. Which ignores the reality of Enterprise- an entire show devoted to that concept which succeeded in killing Trek.

One says the show suceeded when it revolved solely around the ship called Enterprise. Again, this ignores Enterprise which revolved solely around a ship named Enterprise, but again, it killed trek.

One says it was the friendships between the main characters that was the key ingredient. This ignores the fact that the latter shows each had similar friendships/relationships- Data and Geordi, Bashir and O'Brien, Harry and Tom, Archer and Trip.

Oddly enough, I think it was Starship Polaris, who in his typical sarcastic way made the most accurate points. This movie, judging by the trailer alone, is highlighting each and every reproducible point about TOS that is remotely accused of making Trek a hit. I understand that makes some of us wary. Some of us don't like things that are too easy, and certainly giving us exactly what we want but in a shiny new package might seem too easy. But after Voyager and Enterprise I, as a fan, have paid my dues, and I deserve a rip roaring big budget TOS adventure, so I'm gonna be waiting in line come May 8, 2009.

 

The moment where I saw the light is the brief frames... where Pine as Kirk raises his arm in exactly the same manner as Shatner as Kirk would... and says "Buckle up!"

That seals it for me. Pine *is* Kirk, for he has aptly demonstrated a move we often saw Shatner use for Kirk. And it's great to see Pine in the gold shirt, and with two thick bars with a thin-line bar between at the cuff.

 

I rather enjoyed ENT. I've liked pretty much every incarnation of the series to varying degrees and liked almost all of the films..

I saw the trailer finally tonight before QoS (which was a bit of an adventure unto itself.) and thought the trailer was a mighty tease, but one for the better. I haven't been this excited since I saw the trailer for Wrath of Khan in the theatre.

I am still curious about how this will all fit into the Trek universe.

Absolutely. They crammed a lot of images into that trailer. It seems to have everything we recognize from Star Trek. Can't wait to see this.

The people in the theatre didn't react much. I did let out a "Fuck Yeah!" at the end.

 

I agree there have been a lack of good ideas and stories in Trek for awhile, and it's a very necessary ingredient. But frankly I think VOY and ENT proved that most of the good, anthology-style, alien-of-the-week stories have been TOLD already.

The thing VOY in particular was missing wasn't good ideas (I actually thought there were a lot of clever ideas and concepts there) but well-written and believable characters to make us CARE about any of it. Those guys were nothing but blank ciphers-- and while that may have been enough in the days of TOS and TNG, today people just expect and need a little more.

In any case, even if TOS really WAS more about the stories than the characters (and I would argue TOS wasn't nearly as brilliant or original in the story department as you make it out to be--at least not on a very consistent basis), it was always the characters I was interested in the most. Whether they grew and developed over the course of the series or not, they still came across as real, multi-dimensional people, and it was the little character moments between THEM that are the highlight whenever I watch the show now.

If Abrams wants to focus on them a little more than the "big ideas" for his movie, I can't say I have a big problem with that.

 

Just watched the junky copy. Looks cool as hell! however in a interview with JJ Abrams he said he felt Star Trek needed a lil Star Wars to it. What he ment was he made a Star Wars movie in a galaxy not to far away lol.

 

QFFT!!

 

I'm enthralled by the trailer. It reminds me of watching "The Doomsday Machine" when it was first aired on NBC - you know, as a fourteen-year-old kid in that era I didn't notice (nor did my two or three friends who also watched the series) that "Star Trek" was being limited in any way by its budget or TV formula. It seemed quite extravagantly designed and produced - and I remember watching "Doomsday Machine" in particular at a friend's house and we were just berserk about what an action-packed, fast and intense ride the episode was. Big in scale (to us) - it was like a sugar rush.

One gets older and more sophisticated, exposed to a lot of entertainment and the world moves on...and by the time "Star Trek" comes back as a film in 1979 it's expensive and nice-looking but it's playing catch-up with inspired properties that were designed for the big screen, and whose youngish creators more fully understand the technologies they're using, modern commercial film design and direction, and have a keen sense of the audience.

As a result, I've not seen a version of Trek since TOS on NBC that really gave me that kick of being a real gosh-wow ride out into this place that seemed both extravagant and kinda real and exciting. Well, this trailer does that for me. This is sort of what I imagined I saw when I watched Trek on a 19-inch screen in 1967.

Can't wait for the movie now.

And, parenthetically, I'm sure that there will be some "serious adult moments" and "ideas" in the movie - those elements of TOS were rarely more than moments sprinkled here and there in between the action and melodrama (there are some "important ideas" somewhere in "The Doomsday Machine" and "Mirror, Mirror" and "Journey To Babel" and so forth. I'm pretty sure. They just don't spend significant screen time explicating them). The trailer voice-overs promise that stuff just about on the level that TOS generally delivered.

 

^Dennis, you need to quit being right.

 

Hey, every dog has his day.

(What the hell does that expression even mean, actually? What is it that a dog does on that "day" of his that's distinct from the rest of his life - a hot three-way with the twin poodles down the street?).