Completely agree. In fact, I have a few of my own. But I rarely post them here because any worthwhile critical analysis quickly degrades into elementary schoolyard name calling.
I should add that I'm not trying to shoot down all of the productions cited by Barbreader, but that I think we can mistake superficial differences for being more than what they are. You might have a whole new setting but fall back into a lot of the cliches. If "The Atlantis Invaders" had ever been produced I think that would have illustrated some of what I'm in agreement with Middy about. In my rewrite I tried to focus on "fixing" some of the broken formulaic crap I'd seen Star Trek shows doing, and without pushing it so far as to not feel like Star Trek. Step 1 was to make all the Exeter crewmen act like real competent professionals who didn't squabble and were all experts in their jobs. I aimed to make them smart, and that their actions drive the events of the plot. Step 2 was to not fall back on boilerplate action and things we've seen a hundred times before, or, when I pulled out a hoary cliche (say, a phaser on overload), I put a new spin on it which I hoped would have both surprised and delighted a hardcore fan but also made perfect logical sense in the story. I also wrote a very experimental intercut interrogation sequence that might've been a little too experimental for some fans, but I loved it. I love seeing the format stretched. I thought D.C. Fontana's "To Serve All My Days" was interesting because it took a page from Anton Chekhov's plays and worked that into the structure of the script. I don't think it entirely worked, but it was a real format stretcher and I applaud the effort, moreso than the by-the-numbers "World Enough And Time".
Wow, you know, me too. I thought I'd chime in, because this is apparently a minority viewpoint. To me anyway, the thing that's the most impressive about "To Serve All My Days" is actually the thing that most fans, as I perceive them, probably hate about it, which is a surprising, dramatic, and ultimately logical and inevitable ending that is impossible to reconcile with canon. But it's this "What If?" angle that makes it worthwhile.
Evidently so - it continues to make Paramount a great deal of money because most people who've seen it - including most previous Star Trek fans - like it so much.
And will continue to spark gladiatorial combat in fandom until roughly ten minutes after the sun goes nova.
I finally got around to buying it out of a discount bin somewhere and found it fun, although Abrams' style is overly frenetic for me.(Hey I'm an old fart who wasn't raised on Mortal Kombat and other high intensity video games) Great film? No. Fun, worth what I paid for it? Sure. Actually I'm more interested in the sequel. Hopefully (for my enjoyment) he'll tone down the pacing just a touch...and maybe use a few less lens flares. I can criticize and/or nitpick the film, but I enjoyed it overall. On my rating scale it was worth 3 out of 5 lens flares.
I was in college when the videogame "Pong" was introduced; my tastes were pretty definitely formed in an earlier era. I still don't get the complaints about things like fast cutting, "shaky-cam" and 3D.
All a matter of preferences. I may not be a big fan Abrams, but I do respect his skill and talent. What I don't get is why some people have to try to say the film was terrible because it wasn't what they wanted. I can acknowledge that it's skillfully made and well-acted with incredibly high technical standards even while saying it wasn't exactly my cup of Earl Gray.
WEAT definitely raises the bar on fan films...on this we can safely agree... This is the same generic, superficial drivel of an argument trotted out by those who constantly feel the need to prove that the new TREK isn't really TREK. I could go on for pages, but I won't ... it's not worth the effort.[/quote] It doesn't take much effort at all to admit the truth: JJ Trek was the proverbial "mile wide and inch deep" as a film. Tropes dressed up in dazzle for the mass audience. All flash and no real substance. Intellectually safe as tapioca pudding. It gave us nothing we haven't seen before in the franchise, and seen done better. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know you're in trouble when your new Trek producer pulls out the playbook for Star Wars to figure out how to make his film. I read. I listened. I noted the irony of you accusing fan films of being "empty calories" as entertainment, safely formulaic and unimaginitive, then citing JJ Trek (as enjoyable as it might be) as an exemplar of "how to do it right". With apologies to the original: "All fandom trembles at the searing logic of your fiery intellect... " And, in case you are unaware of the original of that, it is sarcasm... The thing is, I actually liked Trek XI, at least for what it was: a dumbed down, sexed up ADHD alternate universe Trek film that had (along with a good cast) just enough of the elements of "real" Trek in it to get away with it's shortcomings.
Once again, your argument is couched in the same generic "he turned STAR TREK into STAR WARS" argument. Not one I'm overly concerned with, it is a circular argument. Also, your argument that ST'09 was "tropes dressed up in dazzle for the mass audience" and "intellectually safe as tapioca pudding" is the same thing said about the orignal source material. For instance: [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yaY98GTCYM[/yt] Got me there. I did use ST '09 as one example of how find opportunities to stretch the format, break free of the formula by thinking about how Abrams used other storytelling languages and brought that to Trek. But I wasn't saying that fan films should be a 1:1 carbon copy of the Abrams film. Once again, however, you missed the substance of my argument. I go into further detail in this post. Your "sarcasm" and rolling eyes aside, Dennis still has a valid point. Yours on the other hand isn't. Generic, nothing that's been said before by others only wishing to stir the pot rather than actually engage in debate. Quite frankly, your superficial assessment of ST '09 seen through another lens could be said, as seen in the Tom Synder clip with Ellison, about the source material: sexed up, dumbed-down and fast-paced science-fiction for 60s television. I love STAR TREK (TOS) more than any other television show, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that it was as intellectually deep as its given credit for. Sure it was smart television, but not as smart as Trek fans and so-called television historians say it was. Certainly, no smarter than a lot of other contemporary one-hour dramas, which had their fair share of sharp storytelling and political commentary. Which is why I urge fan films to watch and study other shows of that era — I SPY as an example, particularly this episode, which daftly examined drug addiction without getting on a soapbox about it. And as seen in the post I link to above, the original was certainly transformative, taking high-seas adventure fiction tropes, pulp SF tropes and western tropes then placing it aboard a starship as a vehicle for storytelling.
A lot of people's tastes get locked into what they grew up with and what they lived in their 20s. As I've gotten older I find that my tastes have actually broadened in many ways. There are very modern things I like and really ancient things I like, often more than the stuff I liked when I was younger. Viva la difference. And there's the rub. Many people have a strong urge to condemn and demean that which they don't like, be in sexual practices, music, religions, books, food or movies. It's something I don't get. Not necessarily. Abrams put in lots of running and jumping and action to make the film exciting and visual, but those aren't in of themselves bad things. Arguably, part of the problem with Star Trek on the big screen has always been its relative lethargy and talky-ness. This film finally addresses that. It's light on its feet and even if the plot events aren't the most inspired it does finally show that Star Trek CAN be exciting and fast paced and modern. As such, flaws or not, it's a great example of what Middy is getting at. It's not a be-all and end-all, it's just one possible approach. I think THIS is the nugget. Art does not exist in a vacuum. It is informed by everything around it. Many fan films ape Star Trek without understanding how it works and why it is/was what it is. Most of the writers who wrote for the original series had experience writing all kinds of shows, including cops and westerns, and the things they brought from those cross-pollinated with Trek's sci-fi genre. Kirk is Horatio Hornblower+Hamlet. Spock is—let's face it—Mingo on Daniel Boone. I think it's fair to say that fan filmmakers could learn by broadening their horizons beyond mere Star Trek simulacrum. It worked for Roddenberry, Coon, Fontana, et. al., right?
^ Good point. Roddenberry wrote for cop shows and westerns and created a show about the Marines before he put together Star Trek. Dorothy Fontana wrote for westerns and doctor shows beforehand, and Gene L. Coon wrote for sitcoms, westerns, cop shows, and everything in between.