Just some general thoughts, swimming around inside the fishbowl that is my head. 
"Revenge as drama" has become something of a hot topic among fandom for the nuTrek movies. Or, rather, it has become a topic of what to avoid in future scripts.
I can totally get why script-writers keep returning to revenge as a cornerstone of their scripts. Revenge is a base emotion. It's maybe one of the most easy ways for a writer to attribute a motivation to a character.
(Particularly an antagonist, although it can be used for dramatic purposes in a protagonist as well, eg. Picard's not wanting to let go of the fight against the Borg in "First Contact" being overtly compared/contrasted in the dialogue itself to Captain Ahab's quest for revenge against the great white).
We can all 'get' revenge as a motivation.
Despite what we say about being 'tired' of revenge in the Star Trek movies, it's worth noting that some of Star Trek's most highly regarded hours, both on the big and small screen, are built on the archtype. The likes of "Obsession", "The Doomsday Machine", "The Wrath of Khan", "First Contact", "For The Uniform".
Each of these above mentioned episodes and movies remain well regarded within the fandom, and all of them use revenge as a central concept in some way or other.
The trouble, really, is that Hollywood is always keen on creating a "Formula For Success" that they can milk again and again. And 'the suits' have come to the conclusion, not without due justification I must hasten to add, that revenge plots work for Star Trek.
Or at least, that revenge plots work for theatrical Star Trek.
And yet this might not actually be practicably true. Of all the 11 Star Trek movie plots, approximately half of them revolve around revenge as a basis for something.
TWOK, FC, INS, NEM, ST09 and STiD all touch upon revenge as a motive one some way or other. GENS has an antagonist driven by sorrow instead, but to outside appearances it comes across almost like revenge too, even though he isn't exactly targeting anyone specifically in retaliation for a past incident. Soran has got a general apathy towards the rest of the universe, feeling slighted for the Borg killing his entire family, and these sociopathic tendencies manifest themselves in his complete disregard for the cultures he's willing to destroy to 'escape' from this reality and into a much (from his point-of-view) nicer one.
But it can not be said that all of these movies are praised by the fandom. Indeed, some of them are instead derided for their villains lacking depth and having paper-thin (if immediately understandable) motivations for their actions. Nor did they all resonate with the general public either. So clearly, revenge is not some magic formula plot generator that creates immediate success.
I think the real reason why so many of us claim we want a 'Revenge Free Movie Plot' for the next Star Trek movie is because we most of us are recognizing that it has become a formula through over-use.
It has gotten repetitive to the point of becoming something that makes us roll our eyes at the very mention of it:
"Revenge? Again with the revenge?!? What is it with these people?"
(etc, etc,)
It's kind of what "The Trouble With Tribbles" writer David Gerrold said in his non-fiction book 'The World Of Star Trek' back in the seventies, when he talked at length about how formula erodes format. The more a TV show (or movie series) settles upon an established, 'successful' formula, the less it becomes willing to do anything other than said formula, and therefore the less often it plays to the strengths of its original format.
What we really need is a cartharsis of some kind. A movie plot that foregoes revenge, maybe forgoes identifiable human-like villains altogether, in order to allow us the release from all these revenge movies. Variety is the spice of life, and the TOS movies (for better AND worse) at least recognized/acknowledged the need for this, as they found other motivations for their antagonists, and the success of TVH is at least partially attributable to Leonard Nimoy's decision to deliberately go for a change in tone, again providing cartharsis from all the High Drama that was such a part of TWOK and TSFS.
On the other hand, I remain less confident that Hollywood can deliver on this. Even if some people involved in nuTrek can see that this revenge kick is getting tired, there must be others who push hard for the winning formula of TWOK to be distilled, purified to it's most base elements, and then replicated in 'Lite' variants every new movie.
Like I said, just some general thoughts. What do you guys think?
"Revenge as drama" has become something of a hot topic among fandom for the nuTrek movies. Or, rather, it has become a topic of what to avoid in future scripts.
I can totally get why script-writers keep returning to revenge as a cornerstone of their scripts. Revenge is a base emotion. It's maybe one of the most easy ways for a writer to attribute a motivation to a character.
(Particularly an antagonist, although it can be used for dramatic purposes in a protagonist as well, eg. Picard's not wanting to let go of the fight against the Borg in "First Contact" being overtly compared/contrasted in the dialogue itself to Captain Ahab's quest for revenge against the great white).
We can all 'get' revenge as a motivation.
Despite what we say about being 'tired' of revenge in the Star Trek movies, it's worth noting that some of Star Trek's most highly regarded hours, both on the big and small screen, are built on the archtype. The likes of "Obsession", "The Doomsday Machine", "The Wrath of Khan", "First Contact", "For The Uniform".
Each of these above mentioned episodes and movies remain well regarded within the fandom, and all of them use revenge as a central concept in some way or other.
The trouble, really, is that Hollywood is always keen on creating a "Formula For Success" that they can milk again and again. And 'the suits' have come to the conclusion, not without due justification I must hasten to add, that revenge plots work for Star Trek.
Or at least, that revenge plots work for theatrical Star Trek.
And yet this might not actually be practicably true. Of all the 11 Star Trek movie plots, approximately half of them revolve around revenge as a basis for something.
TWOK, FC, INS, NEM, ST09 and STiD all touch upon revenge as a motive one some way or other. GENS has an antagonist driven by sorrow instead, but to outside appearances it comes across almost like revenge too, even though he isn't exactly targeting anyone specifically in retaliation for a past incident. Soran has got a general apathy towards the rest of the universe, feeling slighted for the Borg killing his entire family, and these sociopathic tendencies manifest themselves in his complete disregard for the cultures he's willing to destroy to 'escape' from this reality and into a much (from his point-of-view) nicer one.
But it can not be said that all of these movies are praised by the fandom. Indeed, some of them are instead derided for their villains lacking depth and having paper-thin (if immediately understandable) motivations for their actions. Nor did they all resonate with the general public either. So clearly, revenge is not some magic formula plot generator that creates immediate success.
I think the real reason why so many of us claim we want a 'Revenge Free Movie Plot' for the next Star Trek movie is because we most of us are recognizing that it has become a formula through over-use.
It has gotten repetitive to the point of becoming something that makes us roll our eyes at the very mention of it:
"Revenge? Again with the revenge?!? What is it with these people?"
(etc, etc,) It's kind of what "The Trouble With Tribbles" writer David Gerrold said in his non-fiction book 'The World Of Star Trek' back in the seventies, when he talked at length about how formula erodes format. The more a TV show (or movie series) settles upon an established, 'successful' formula, the less it becomes willing to do anything other than said formula, and therefore the less often it plays to the strengths of its original format.
What we really need is a cartharsis of some kind. A movie plot that foregoes revenge, maybe forgoes identifiable human-like villains altogether, in order to allow us the release from all these revenge movies. Variety is the spice of life, and the TOS movies (for better AND worse) at least recognized/acknowledged the need for this, as they found other motivations for their antagonists, and the success of TVH is at least partially attributable to Leonard Nimoy's decision to deliberately go for a change in tone, again providing cartharsis from all the High Drama that was such a part of TWOK and TSFS.
On the other hand, I remain less confident that Hollywood can deliver on this. Even if some people involved in nuTrek can see that this revenge kick is getting tired, there must be others who push hard for the winning formula of TWOK to be distilled, purified to it's most base elements, and then replicated in 'Lite' variants every new movie.
Like I said, just some general thoughts. What do you guys think?
