You could also say that kind of movie 'feels' like the Empire Strikes Back or a host of others whereas there's no such ambiguity in Trek XI 'borrowing' superficial elements from the Wrath Of Khan.
Star Trek II =The Dark Knight
- Thread starter 1bulma1
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I think The Dark Knight is the best Batman movie. Period. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it a masterpiece, as in a masterpiece.
The Dark Knight had muddier waters than I expect Star Trek 2 to have. I don't think the shining white knight is going to come falling down in the next Trek movie or that Kirk is going to become the "villain" to be hunted down by the authorities in order to protect this white knight's image because he can take it.
The Dark Knight had muddier waters than I expect Star Trek 2 to have. I don't think the shining white knight is going to come falling down in the next Trek movie or that Kirk is going to become the "villain" to be hunted down by the authorities in order to protect this white knight's image because he can take it.
In my first post on page 1, I referred to so many sequels wanting to be the Empire Strikes Back or The Wrath of Khan. I actually mentioned ESB first.
The reason why I didn't refer to it in the post you quoted above is that the other poster referred to TWOK and not to ESB.
And then a whiplash propels the Enterprise into a time warp, and flings them across space, until they end up a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Those are all very superficial items. Those Easter Eggs don't have much to do with themes and tone of ST09, which were very different than TWoK.
As Captaindemotion pointed out, the themes of TWok revolved around aging, facing ones past (which goes hand-in-hand with aging), and revenge (in this film, the revenge went hand-in-hand with facing ones past).
I'll give you that both films had an antagonist who was bent of revenge, but that's hardly an original theme. Revenge is an extremely common motivation for the antagonist in many stories, and I'm not sure you can say that ST09 got the idea to use that theme from TWoK.
TWoK's major theme was not really Khan's revenge -- that was almost a side story/diversion to the main theme of the film. The main theme of TWoK was the main protagonist's (Kirk's) theme, which was extremely front-and-center throughout the entire film was about finding ones place in the world as one ages, and all of the things that go along with aging -- such as losing friends and family, and coming face-to-face with the the ghosts of the past (those ghosts would be Khan AND Carol/David).
That theme was obvious and right up front in the 2nd scene of the film -- the scene with Kirk and McCoy in Kirk's quarters/apartment. That was the key scene in the film that set up the themes and tone for everything that followed. The themes and tones conceived in that TWoK scene were not the same kind of themes in ST09.
If you want to be slightly superficial, you could say TWoK's theme was about Khan's revenge. I suppose Nero's revenge is similar -- I'll give you that, like I said before. But I never felt that Khan's revenge was the main theme of the film.
If you want to go really superficial, you can talk about Ceti Eels and such. Yeah -- both films had them, but that's more of an in-universe cross-film reference that is done all the time in Star Trek films, not just ST09.
^ Exactly.
Hell, you could say that ST09 is as influenced by Enterprise as it is by Khan. YOu have a reference to Admiral Archer's beagle and you have a villain attacking one of the main planets of the Federation with a superweapon in order to prevent the destruction of his own planet in the future. Killing one of the crewmember's female relatives (Trip's sister/ Spock's mother). Season 3 and the Xindi?
Hell, you could say that ST09 is as influenced by Enterprise as it is by Khan. YOu have a reference to Admiral Archer's beagle and you have a villain attacking one of the main planets of the Federation with a superweapon in order to prevent the destruction of his own planet in the future. Killing one of the crewmember's female relatives (Trip's sister/ Spock's mother). Season 3 and the Xindi?
YARN
Fleet Captain
Well, heck! Try this on for size. Horatio, not content to simply retell the story of his Prince of Denmark, decides to travel back in time when he encounters three witches. By using a "Red Potion" he travels back in time and prevents the murder of King Hamlet by Claudius. Prince Hamlet, in this alternate timeline, is free of inner conflict, happily marries Ophelia, and has many fat children. Would this be a reboot? I mean, Horatio from timeline 1 is present in timeline 2, who could say that we ruined Shakespeare's play?
I love how fans have seized upon this fig leaf as if this makes all the difference.
A we starting again at the very beginning of the story, where the original series began? CHECK
Do we have different take on the characters? CHECK
Is the world reimagined/redesigned? CHECK
Is the story a not simply a retelling of the same text (e.g., staging Hamlet somewhere but using the exact same text) but an a story which will deviate from the original presentation? CHECK
Functionally, it's a reboot. "Technically," it isn't a reboot, but that's like saying technically it isn't theft if the King takes it, for the King owns everything in the Kingdom.
In fairness, the former happened in the cases of Zefram Cochrane and Saavik, and the latter in The Motion Picture, in movies explicitly continuing the same continuity.
I'd say it was a reboot, albeit not a total one. Hell, I read reviews that said Superman Returns was a reboot, and it plainly (yet vaguely) continues on from the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. I read that Terminator Salvation was a reboot, and although it's a huge departure from the prior Terminator movies, and totally changed John Connor, it's clearly set in the aftermath of Terminator 3, and prior to the time travel which begins Terminator 1.
The word reboot has been so widely used by studio companies and their publicity departments that it can really mean anything now.
ST09 is not a reboot in the vein of Batman Begins or Casino Royale, which pretend that the previous movies featuring their main characters did not exist. It acknowledges the previous incarnations of its main characters and even has one of them appear in it. However, it is a revival of the franchise and a means to tell new stories, unencumbered by the continuity of the previous versions of it. Call it what you like.
ST09 is not a reboot in the vein of Batman Begins or Casino Royale, which pretend that the previous movies featuring their main characters did not exist. It acknowledges the previous incarnations of its main characters and even has one of them appear in it. However, it is a revival of the franchise and a means to tell new stories, unencumbered by the continuity of the previous versions of it. Call it what you like.
I agree with what you're saying. Yet at the same time the movie has the same result as a reboot.
^ Yes, that's what I meant by the penultimate line in my post. It was a very clever way for the movie-makers to respect what had come before, without being bound by it.
Actually, it's really only in solid continuity with the first one ( and that's if we ignore the setting being updated from the 70s/80s to the modern day ). It's in "soft" continuity with Superman II, given that Luthor's visit to the FOS is alluded to and Superman and Lois had a past relationship, but this requires a certain amount of rationalization and squinting to make the details work out. In that sense it's kind of like it's following an "alternate" version of Superman II with a similar relationship plot. And Superman Returns does not follow the third or fourth films, because in those Martha Kent is dead.
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