Why does Abrams keep playing it safe?
- Thread starter brian577
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Not to mention that he spent many years churning out "Lost", which rarely "played it safe".
I seem to recall interviews where the writers suggested that the destruction of Vulcan, the developing Spock/Uhura relationship, and this Kirk's lack of field experience in the captain's role - all major differences to TOS - would indeed continue to influence the events of the next film.
Were there this many complaints when the Joker was used again in The Dark Knight? Will people complain when the Spider-Man reboot sequel inevitably re-uses villains? Yeah, Wrath of Khan was a solid film, but Montalban's performance is no more 'untouchable' than Nicholson's Joker. If that's the direction they go, I'd enjoy seeing a new take on it.
I know! How dare they replace Cesar Romero?
I've heard this argument over and over again, and it's completely fallacious. Spiderman, Batman, and Hamlet are all literary texts. Every movie version is an ADAPTATION of a literary text. Literary texts exist only on paper, and so there is an infinite number of possible different interpretations of said text. That is why you can redo the Joker, or Spiderman, or Hamlet, or Jane Eyre, or Pride and Prejudice as many times as you like - because they are all different interpretations of a literary source.
Star Trek is not a literary text. Khan is not an adaptation of a character who pre-existed in our minds and exists on paper. He is a character solely from that one episode and that one movie. To reuse him is to REMAKE the last MOVIE. To do another Jane Eyre has NOTHING to do with previous Jane Eyre movies - it's an adaptation of a book. See the difference? Rebooting Batman is simply reinterpreting a literary text. Reusing Kahn is remaking a movie. There is a fundamental difference.
Anyway, the 2009 Star Trek movie entirely played it safe. Blowing up Vulcan and killing off Kirk's parents is NOT unsafe at all. That's all just plot. The universe could have exploded in that movie, and it still would have been a cowardly, safe Hollywood movie. Being ambitious has nothing to do with dramatic plot points. It has everything to do with one's very attitude and approach to the material.
When DS9 first aired, that was a risk. It rethought entirely what the very notion of Star Trek meant. This new movie rethought nothing. There's nothing in the movie we haven't already seen in various forms of Star Trek already, aside from the more mobile camera. The storytelling tropes, the tone, the attitude, the storytelling assumptions, the very philosophy of storytelling is all very much the same, very old and used and done to death. If the new Abrams series were as different from everything that came before as, say, DS9 was from TNG, then we'd have something that wasn't playing it safe.
Indeed. While I wouldn't go as far as calling a reuse of Khan an automatic remake the attempts in the last two movies were definitely blunt and bad TWOK copy jobs. No idea where the folks who wrote NEM and STXI, not coincidentally fans, got the idea that they can capture and the greatness of TWOK via repeating villain patterns. The movie is about Kirk and does not work because of but in spite of Khan.
Sorry to be so blunt but Khan is not in any way an outstanding Trek character.
Sorry to be so blunt but Khan is not in any way an outstanding Trek character.
What I wonder is if anyone in the olden days ever got up in arms when the comic book art changed. "That's not how the Joker looks!"
These assumptions are not unreasonable. After Bay's first Transformers movie, would a prediction about the likely tone and approach of the second Transformers movie, also by Bay, be unwarranted?
2 questions.
1. Characters that are not originally from literature should not be redone, is that what you're saying?
2. If blowing up a beloved planet and killing off the mother and of a beloved characters is not taking a risk then how do you define risk?
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
I wouldn't go that far. Khan is one of the iconic Trek "villains". I use quotes because he's not evil for evil's sake. He just has a hugely inflated sense of his own worth, and dangerous ambitions of power. He did bad things, but there was a sense of nobility about him and an admirable firmness of resolve and clarity of vision.
He was a tiger...dangerous, but noble, and even admirable in his way. That's why Kirk exiled him instead of putting him in a rehabilitation colony where they would have had to break him or keep him in a tiny cage the rest of his life.
Now, as for the larger issue, as others have said, it's all about the business now. With the closure of the Trek office and the scattering of the Trek "family", there is no one left at Paramount who cares about Trek as Trek. It's all about using the name to brand a film franchise they hope will make them money.
The optimistic, humanitarian vision has been replaced with an all-too-plebeian vision: money.
Beam me up Scotty is an iconic Trek phrase yet it has never been actually uttered. When iconic means 'public image' I couldn't care less about it, especially when I can have the real thing instead of a distorted image of it.
Khan is not a villain? Of course he is and on top of that he is the evil equivalent of Superman (he is quite literally a superman) and not Batman, evil by design and not by choice.
His role in TWOK is to trigger something in Kirk and if you take away Montalban and focus merely on the text he isn't all that interesting. Given the character setup this is hardly surprising.
Khan is not a villain? Of course he is and on top of that he is the evil equivalent of Superman (he is quite literally a superman) and not Batman, evil by design and not by choice.
His role in TWOK is to trigger something in Kirk and if you take away Montalban and focus merely on the text he isn't all that interesting. Given the character setup this is hardly surprising.
Two fair questions. Here are my answers:
1) The difference is motive. When Nolan redoes Batman, he does it for a compelling artistic reason. When Branagh adapts Hamlet, he does it because he feels he has a new, unique artistic vision that differs from previous adaptations, with Olivier and Gibson, of that same ever-malleable source text. When people offer a new adaptation of a literary text, it is almost invariably because the artist believes they have a new and interesting way of perceiving that world. When someone brings back a character that has previously only existed in another movie, the motive is economic. It's a producer's motive. It's about safety and brand recognition. If indeed Khan gets reused, it won't be because Abrams' muse was speaking to him about some world-shattering new artistic vision - it will be because he knows it will get butts in the seats. It's a base motive, and it's cowardly.
2) As I said, playing it safe has nothing to do with plot. It has to do with storytelling philosophy. See how different Nolan's Batman was to Burton's, or the original Adam West's? See how different the new BSG was from any sf show we had ever seen before? See how different Lost was for the first few seasons from anything we had ever seen on television before? Now THOSE are examples of not playing it safe. New BSG was risky not because they killed off billions of people (hell, the original BSG did that too), but because it changed completely the WAY they told stories. The very foundation of the storytelling was different. The KINDS of stories, and the METHODS of telling those stories was new. The language of the storytelling was different. Its newness had nothing to do with its plots, and everything to do with the overall storytelling philosophy of the show.
As soon as you prescribe economics as the motivator you have discounted the chance that a writer actually may have a creative story to tell through a preexisting character.
I am not saying economics might not be a factor, I just wouldn't assume that it is always a factor. I cannot rule out the possibility that they might be using a character, such as Khan, because they just like the character and have a good story to tell.
Can you expound further on what you mean by telling the way a story is told? I am not sure what you mean by that.
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
Which is not the sense of the word I employ. "Iconic" as in embodying and exemplifying the traits of a person, place or thing.
Khan is iconic because he is one of the seminal depitctions of a classic Trek "villain": one who is not wicked for wickedness' sake, but rather simply out of step with the rest of the world around him. Dangerously so in effect, but not because he was an inherantly evil person.
I quote this from the original "Space Seed".
There were many things to admire about Khan, while at the same time acknowledging the danger he represented.
No, he was designed to be physically and mentally superior, which fostered superior ambition. This is Khan as we know him prior to his exile on Ceti Alpha V.
Once there, given what happened to him, his superior intellect may have made it technically possible for them to survive, but being "beaten" so conclusively by his environment was more than his inflated ego could handle, and he snapped.
His role in TWOK is to represent Kirk's history (paralleling the David plot arc), catching up to him as he ages.
Khan in his intrinsic qualities and his role in both stories he is in is the embodyment of elements of classic Greek tragedy.
Honestly, I've always found that distinction completely arbitary. Logan's Run is based on a book. Fantastic Voyage is not. Does that mean it's okay to remake Logan's Run, but not Fantastic Voyage? What about The Blob versus The Fly? The Fly is based on a short story, so that means it's fair game for new adaptations, but The Blob was original to film so it's too iconic to remake? That makes no sense.
What about Planet of Apes? Everybody complains about the Tim Burton remake, but the novel came first, so that means Apes is okay to remake? As opposed to The Fugitive, because that was based on a TV show? (Even though pretty much everyone agrees that the FUGITIVE remake was better than the APES remake.)
Look, most movies are based on something: a novel, a play, a musical, a comic book, a tv show, a previous movie, an historical event or true-life story. So why is it okay to recast a character who first appeared in a book, but not okay to to recast a character who first appeared on film? Because Khan is somehow more iconic than the Joker? Give me a break.
No character is sacred. Everything can reinterpreted, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Whether it has literary or non-literary roots doesn't matter.
I think Ubik's point that TV and movies are visual media therefore their interpretations are fixed while books require the user's imagination therefore any interpretation within reason is acceptable. It's the same argument film fans have against certain directors (*cough* George Lucas *cough*) from constantly changing their work. It's not exactly a rational argument and based really on nostalgia.
Regardless of what anyone thinks, Paramount own Star Trek and can do anything they want with it. That's the whole point of intellectual property and the only say you have is the voice of your wallet. Does that mean that Star Trek is no longer intellecutally or artistically or even spiritually relevant. Pretty much but I think as whole we show grow beyond Star Trek and it's simplistic view of the universe rather than trying to make Star Trek something it isn't.
Regardless of what anyone thinks, Paramount own Star Trek and can do anything they want with it. That's the whole point of intellectual property and the only say you have is the voice of your wallet. Does that mean that Star Trek is no longer intellecutally or artistically or even spiritually relevant. Pretty much but I think as whole we show grow beyond Star Trek and it's simplistic view of the universe rather than trying to make Star Trek something it isn't.
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