There is the futility of having a discussion with someone who likes to spin the truth, devoid of any fact or knowledge.
Well to be fair it isn't exactly clear what the discussion is about.
My stance is that there are MANY people cabable of producing a good Star Trek movie.
I believe Jarod's position is that budget and production values play a huge part in elevating ordinary material.
What's yours?
I think budget and production values are two seperate issues.
TWOK was made with comparatively little money and was a big hit.
TMP was made with many times that budget, but the story sucked.
Production values come from what can be done creatively with the tools that are available.
Money isn't always necessary to have high production values.
That is more of an aesthetic.
Trek XI had both. Sure, we can all agree there are things we wished that Abrams had done but hadn't.. But it was a fun film that had all the spirit of seeing TOS for the first time..at least it did for me.
Abrams may have had a lot of money for Trek XI, but my point about Cloverfield, was that it was shot mostly on handheld..sometimes even on handycam. It's obvious that a great deal of the money went into SFX, but the story was simple and the dramatic tension was created by the handheld conceit: what it showed and didn't show.
In this decade, making a film for 25 million is really cheap for Hollywood. I don't think people can comprehend why these movies cost so much to make. Sometimes I don't, but then I look at the call sheets...and well.. yeah..
I don't think the film suffers for having all that money thrown at it. We have seen far worse from the Star Trek franchise.
I am glad it was Abrams that did this film because I respect the stuff he's done thus far (except Felicity, which I never liked) as opposed to giving it to some hack like JMS, or some flavor of the month..
Star Trek isn't ours anymore. We just have to hope that Paramount doesn't give it to someone who won't fuck it up because, let's face it Paramount doesn't
get Star Trek.. They never did.
Abrams made a Star Trek film that would appeal to people who never watched the show.. I think on that level he succeeded.
Do I think there are better people for the job?? Who knows. It's not what we got. I can't really think of someone who would do it better and satisfy the task of reaching a new fanbase.
The problem with Trek writers in general is that they write a little too "inside."
You need to know a lot about Star Trek to follow it and often times I do feel it bogs down an otherwise promising story.
Of God's And Men is a perfect example. Now I am a lifelond fan of Star Trek and know those characters inside and out.. If I didn't OGAM would make absolutely no sense at all. Every 5 seconds of footage has swome oblique reference to some aspect of 700 hours worth of Trek, but very little of it advances the story.
Granted that's a pretty harsh example, but I point to it because I would think that most people around here would have seen it.
OGAM had money behind it and top notch industry people working on it and it was a huge piece of self indulgent fanwank doggiepoo.
Then you look at something like Starship: Exeter, which has less money, working on a shoestring budget on vacation days and weekends and how many people have been drooling for that fourth act of their latest episode?? AND They are trying to tell a new story.. You don't need to know about the entire Trek mythos to get involved in the story.
