How would you have done the new movie?

[OneBuckFilms]

A story that begins with Kirk, Spock & Crew in the 23rd century and is resolved by Picard and Nimoy Spock in the 24th century. No time travel, no "passing the torch" junk, just a linear storyline.

This would involve the TNG crew, and not make for a good setup for future adventures. It would also require non-fans to have a familiarity with both crews from the start, thus defeating the entire reason Paramount wanted the movie in the first place.
Nice given the premise above, but losing half of your cast halfway through a movie is not wise. Again, if the TNG crew are the endpoint of the movie, it sets up future adventures with the TNG crew, and the TOS crew serve no function to the end of the movie dramatically.This would have been met with cries from fans who would likely reject the full reboot, and wonder why it would be necessary to destroy the Enterprise if it was a true reboot.

And visually... the TMP era designs, those are timeless. No huge shitfuck of reimagined stuff and barcode scanners and crap.

The Barcode Scanners are only apparent when pointed out, IMHO, and most of the time, I don't see them, but YMMV.

The TMP Era designs were fantastic, but if this was a TOS movie, it is TOS that should vaguely be the design model, no?

If it is a true reboot, then re-using existing designs would be the laziest, least creative option.

If it is NOT a reboot, the TMP designs would have been seen as an egregious breach of continuity, and creatively lazy.

The TOS designs would have been laughed off the screen by general audiences.

Star Trek would die as a franchise in your hands.

Oh, sorry, is this supposed to be an argument? None of us can back up either position with anything.

Except common sense, of course

 

[OneBuckFilms]

I would have done a straight reboot with Kirk coming aboard the Enterprise as the youngest captain in Starfleet history. Most of the movie would have focused on Kirk proving himself to his crew--especially to his half-Vulcan/half-Human first officer--as the right man for the job.

The bad guys would be the Orions, but they'd be reinvented as "space pirates" with a female Orion as their pirate queen. The Enterprise would be deployed to stop her from raiding Federation colonies along the frontier.

While there would definitely be some visual nods to the original series (uniforms and props), I probably would insist on the Enterprise being more rugged and less stylish in appearance--more like a ship with some 20 years of wear and tear on her (she ain't pretty, but she's a ball buster all the same).

This has a lot of merit, IMHO.

 

[BillJ]

Drop the origin story and drop Spock Prime. Try to tell a more straight-forward story (hard reboot).

Some merit to this, but it would mean alienating fans who want the story to fit in with existing continuity. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

I think you're over-estimating the number of people who would actually care.

Tell a straight forward story with Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the Enterprise and let the fans determine how it all fits together.

 

[JarodRussell]

Oh, sorry, is this supposed to be an argument? None of us can back up either position with anything.

Except common sense, of course

 

[Jack Bauer]

I would've done a straight up origin story without the time travel causing a parallel universe. If you're going back to the TOS era with Kirk and Spock it's better to do a story about the crew's first mission rather than just some random mission. I know why they did the parallel universe and like what they did with it but I would've preferred just a straight prequel.

 

[Captain Mike]

I wouldn't do it at all, as an "origin" or anything else for that matter. Star Trek as many posters on this board self profess was dead. Producing "new" Trek died once before...on June 6th 1969. Look at what happened. Four movies and series (which was the problem) later it continues. I would have let it rest a few more years to have the fans (Trekkies, Trekkers, fanboys and I could go on) salivate for a new Trek adventure. NOT get a producer with maybe 1-2 hits under his belt to divide the fanbase even farther apart than what they are.

 

[SMC]

I wouldn't change much about how it was done by Abrams and co. I just would have put the script through a few more drafts to iron out some of the plot inconsistences and probably would have made a few design changes to the ship interiors (industrial style engineering areas but done as purpose built sets to better suit the ship instead of location shoots) But the premise of an altered timeline I like and I think the casting and characterization were spot on, the ships were great - the only problematic areas for me were the plot and the villain's motivation. They were a bit muddled and suffer from some of the same problems that Nemesis did specially in the villain motivation area. I also personally think they didn't go nearly far enough with the differences between this vision of Trek and what went before. A lot of fans thought it was too different - I didn't think it was different *enough*

 

[Devon]

I wouldn't do it at all, as an "origin" or anything else for that matter. Star Trek as many posters on this board self profess was dead. Producing "new" Trek died once before...on June 6th 1969. Look at what happened. Four movies and series (which was the problem) later it continues. I would have let it rest a few more years to have the fans (Trekkies, Trekkers, fanboys and I could go on) salivate for a new Trek adventure. NOT get a producer with maybe 1-2 hits under his belt to divide the fanbase even farther apart than what they are.

Exactly how do you quantify how "divided" the fanbase is supposed to be?

 

[Captain Mike]

I wouldn't do it at all, as an "origin" or anything else for that matter. Star Trek as many posters on this board self profess was dead. Producing "new" Trek died once before...on June 6th 1969. Look at what happened. Four movies and series (which was the problem) later it continues. I would have let it rest a few more years to have the fans (Trekkies, Trekkers, fanboys and I could go on) salivate for a new Trek adventure. NOT get a producer with maybe 1-2 hits under his belt to divide the fanbase even farther apart than what they are.

Exactly how do you quantify how "divided" the fanbase is supposed to be?

You want me to post every thread of gushers and haters????...

 

[Devon]

I wouldn't do it at all, as an "origin" or anything else for that matter. Star Trek as many posters on this board self profess was dead. Producing "new" Trek died once before...on June 6th 1969. Look at what happened. Four movies and series (which was the problem) later it continues. I would have let it rest a few more years to have the fans (Trekkies, Trekkers, fanboys and I could go on) salivate for a new Trek adventure. NOT get a producer with maybe 1-2 hits under his belt to divide the fanbase even farther apart than what they are.

Exactly how do you quantify how "divided" the fanbase is supposed to be?

You want me to post every thread of gushers and haters????...

No. I'd like to know how it is "more divided" especially when Star Trek 2009 is considered the most popular film installment in 15 years for the fanbase, and probably one of the more popular entries into the franchise.

 

[SMC]

Lots of fans are simply bitter that a whole lof of newcomers to the franchise have the "wrong" idea of what Trek is based on the new movie and that its success means that their "proper" Trek has effectively been supplanted.

For fans of a franchise that promotes open mindedness and tolerance of new ideas trekkies/trekkers/whatever are amazingly petty.

 

[Vincent Law]

If Paramount had come to you, and asked you to do STXI instead of JJ Abrams, what would you have done? Would you have done a origin story as well, or something different? The only requirement here is that it would have to feature the original crew somehow, even if not all or even most of them. Paramount seemed to think it was important to go back to the original series in some way. And while I'm sure some of you thought the movie JJ Abrams made was just fine, I would prefer if you didn't simply reply with, "exactly what JJ Abrams did," or something else along those lines. That would make discussion rather bland and pointless.


What follows here is just my own personal musing.

I kind of liked the idea of doing an origin story, but in my opinion the new movie tried to do too much at once, among other things I found myself dissatisfied with. Would it be better to feature Kirk and possibly Spock during their times at the academy, or would it be better to start later, say when Kirk first took command of the Enterprise? Or possibly some point in between? Would flashbacks along the lines of what was done in Batman Begins be a good alternative to the standard chronological style of storytelling?

I also have to admit that I am evenly split between the idea of attempting to follow established continuity, and simply doing a Battlestar Galactica style reboot.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone what the purpose of this thread is. I am interested in ideas on how to make a Star Trek movie, not in arguments about STXI. That is in large part the reasoning I used when I posted this originally in the general discussion forum rather than this one, so I would appreciate it if the type of argument that has been taking place could be left out of this thread.

 

[Captain Mike]

If Paramount had come to you, and asked you to do STXI instead of JJ Abrams, what would you have done? Would you have done a origin story as well, or something different? The only requirement here is that it would have to feature the original crew somehow, even if not all or even most of them. Paramount seemed to think it was important to go back to the original series in some way. And while I'm sure some of you thought the movie JJ Abrams made was just fine, I would prefer if you didn't simply reply with, "exactly what JJ Abrams did," or something else along those lines. That would make discussion rather bland and pointless.


What follows here is just my own personal musing.

I kind of liked the idea of doing an origin story, but in my opinion the new movie tried to do too much at once, among other things I found myself dissatisfied with. Would it be better to feature Kirk and possibly Spock during their times at the academy, or would it be better to start later, say when Kirk first took command of the Enterprise? Or possibly some point in between? Would flashbacks along the lines of what was done in Batman Begins be a good alternative to the standard chronological style of storytelling?

I also have to admit that I am evenly split between the idea of attempting to follow established continuity, and simply doing a Battlestar Galactica style reboot.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone what the purpose of this thread is. I am interested in ideas on how to make a Star Trek movie, not in arguments about STXI. That is in large part the reasoning I used when I posted this originally in the general discussion forum rather than this one, so I would appreciate it if the type of argument that has been taking place could be left out of this thread.

I did post my idea, ...only to be only to be attacked by a gusher....
Back on topic all...

 

[BlobVanDam]

-I would have made the proportions and the size of the Enterprise closer to the original (although I don't take any issue with the design changes).
-I would have cut out the generic "Kirk is a badass" crap and fluking his way to Captain. That was just terrible. He could have been a rebellious badass without the driving a car crap, and the whole sneaking onto the ship and taking over the ship with no authority garbage.
-Don't blow up Vulcan. My friend and I both sat there waiting for the Enterprise to get sucked into that black hole to somehow fix up their colossal mistake of allowing the destruction of Vulcan, but it never happened.
-Cut out the Spock/Uhura thing. They spent enough time establishing the human/Vulcan dynamic of his personality without the obligatory cliche Hollywood love match.
-Actually give the other characters something to do besides being one dimensional one-liners. The entire first section of the movie gives up a pointless back story for Kirk, and a lot of time spent on establishing Spock's history (which I actually liked), but all of the other characters were wasted. All I remember of Scotty was he was with some Star Wars alien, then got stuck in a brewery. All I remember of Chekov is that he had one brief scene where he couldn't pronounce Vulcan. All I remember of Bones is that he tagged along with Kirk. And it just took be several minutes to recall that Sulu even existed. He couldn't get the ship into warp. For all I know he wasn't even named in the movie, because that's all I remember of him.
-Come up with a real plot instead of the red matter thing, and a Romulan garbage truck the size of the Death Star waiting for a guy to appear so he can blow up a planet.
-Make the Romulans look like Romulans, and not like they're from a German horror film. The Romulans never looked threatening, so I don't mind that they changed it, but don't make them look like generic goblins.
-Make the bridge look like a bridge, instead of looking like a lens flare chamber.

Aside from that, there were a lot of elements I would keep from the movie too.

 

[Devon]

I did post my idea, ...only to be only to be attacked by a gusher....
Back on topic all...

Asking you to expand on your own statement that "the fanbase is more divided than before" is not an "attack."

 

[ChristopherPike]

ChristopherPike,

Even a cursory glance at your proposed story reads like the biography of a character an unfamiliar audience has no reason to care about.

Sorry, I just don't buy that. It has just as many emotional beats to the story as that which made it to the screen. A general audience has as much reason to care about heroes and villains they've never heard of, like Christopher Pike and Nero, as they do with George Kirk and Robert April. The main requirement of it telling how the original crew met and the catalyst that caused that, together with the promise of future adventures is satisified. Plus it fits around established facts, without the need to tear anything down or shift everything to a different universe from here on.

 

[T'Girl]

The TOS designs would have been laughed off the screen by general audiences.

I never have bought into this, other than teching up the visual displays, the original internal designs would have served fine. The external design also, again with the minimal amount of tweeking, would have been superior and in keeping with the TOS theme.

The Andromeda Strain corridors were hardly necessary.

 

[Pauln6]

There is no doubt that changing the external design of the Enterprise was entirely unnecessary from an artistic perspective - merchandising was the only real reason to do it that I can see. TOS fans love that ship and it is so iconic that new fans would have accepted it without difficulty. The internal changes were probably necessary (obviously excluding the brewery), although I'd have been happy to retain broadly the same look from TMP personally.

If I were to 'reboot', I would probably have just told tales of the second 5 year mission (post TMP) with a new cast, including some new characters, and improved uniforms. But whatever anybody decided to do would have had fans and detractors. You can't please all of the people all of the time, Trek fans doubly so.

I have no major criticisms about the approach they took though. The movie was entertaining, the pace and cast were good. I would just have tweaked the plot here and there to make it less dumb and less contrived. I'd have kept Kirk as a book worm not a rebel primarily because I loathe the frequency with which we're expected to admire delinquent male characters in US movies (I'm usually rooting for the killer). I certainly would not have made so many of the crew cadets at the same time, I'd have included Rand instead of Chekov to even up the women, I would have made the villains more diverse (a mixed mercenary crew collected from Rura Penthe or whatever), and I'd have made the threat less overwhelming - a Vulcan outpost where Spock's family were stationed rather than planet Vulcan. Hollywood's obsession with 'bigger' and louder sequels rarely leads to any improvement. The plot should always remain the key.

Andromeda strain - yeah baby - now that was a good movie. The remake for TV with a larger cast of young, good looking scientists - no drama, no suspense - just dire.

 

[M'Sharak]

I did post my idea, ...only to be only to be attacked by a gusher....
Back on topic all...

Asking you to expand on your own statement that "the fanbase is more divided than before" is not an "attack."

While it's certainly no attack (he and other critics do like to play that "I'm being attacked" angle up, though, don't they?) I'd suggest that a statement such as the one above really demanded no response and would have been better disregarded altogether for the pretty obvious bait it was, just as a reference to "gushers and haters" like this one:

You want me to post every thread of gushers and haters????...

is cheap sucker bait of the sort which merits neither response nor acknowledgement. When he starts engaging in honest discussion about the movie (or, in the case of this thread, his ideas for doing the new movie differently,) then is when you ought to start considering an appropriate reply. The back-and-forth taunting and jabs from both sides are getting tiresome, though, and need to stop.

 

[ST-One]

No idea. But, as Roddenberry said, it would have been shit.