Star Trek 2009 vs Star Wars 7 (NO SPOILERS)

I would say Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I actually want to see it again in the theater. I could wait for Star Trek to come out on disc after seeing in the theater.

 

I'm settling this right now.

The Force Awakens. Why?

Because it has Alka Seltzer bread.

JJtrek can't top that.

 

Star Trek 09 left me feeling better walking out than TFA due to swirling questions regarding some unknowns.

 

TFA--despite being a rip of ANH, its head and shoulders over that misguided JJ-Trek.

 

Being that he actually has a style.

 

I love both.

 

Both are great but if I had to choose it would be Star Wars for me.

 

Haven't actually seen TFA. The fact that Star Wars is ubiquitous, inescapable, and popular with all sorts of idiots makes me naturally averse to buying in to the hype. So I prefer Trek by default (our idiots are a much more select group ).

 

Okay, finally got around to seeing TFA this afternoon.

Definitely liked Star Trek more. TFA was good, but it's very clearly the first part of a series. There's still a lot of unanswered questions and storylines to explore. It doesn't really stand alone.

And I think Star Trek handled the "passing of the torch" better with Leonard Nimoy. There was more emotion behind it (as illogical as that may be). I loved TFA's inclusion of old characters, but they just didn't resonate with me as much as Old Spock did.

 

Both movies benefit from following irredeemable garbage. Makes them seem great by comparison when really they're both kind of mediocre.

The Force Awakens is a bit better, I guess. At least there are new characters, even if they conform to old archetypes. More originality than they managed with Trek.

 

Not really as star trek 2009 managed to be its own story whereas TFA borrow heavily from a new hope. star trek 2009 was a lot more original than tfa

 

I wouldn't call the 4th time travel story in 11 movies all that original.

 

I just saw TFA.

I liked it but without going into any detail at the moment, I think I'll vote Star Trek on this one.

We'll see if a second viewing in a few days changes anything.

 

Well it pulled from Trek's same-old same-old such as alternate realities and time travel, but we'd still never seen our heroes at the Academy before.

 

For me it was the characterizations of the crew that really made Trek 09 feel fresh and original. Along with a certain fun and carefree spirit that we hadn't seen in Trek (or scifi) for quite a while.

In fact part of me wishes Abrams had injected a lot more of that spirit into TFA, instead of trying so hard to make everything feel "mythic and important".

 

Star Wars was treated with a lot more respect to the source material, giving the ageing original actors substantial roles. With Star Trek they wanted to get as far away as possible from it, and had the mindset that the original actors are so old and boring that they should not be included, or just with a very limited amount of screentime.

Had they structured Star Trek like Force Awakens, Leonard Nimoy's Spock would have actually confronted Nero.

They also took Stormtroopers, that over time had turned into a pop culture running gag, and made them more serious. In Trek, they totally gave in to the redshirt trope and continued to make fun of it.

Same for the Star Wars design. They took everything from the originals and made faithful copies. They even went as far as using old Ralph McQuarrie designs from the 70s and realized them in the 2010s. There was no "I want the Millenium Falcon to look like a retro hotrod".

Same for the music. Giacchino didn't include any themes from Trek except for the end credits.

Somehow, Star Wars fans are also considered more intelligent. So there was no need to include songs and vehicles from the 20th century to make it more "down-to-Earth". There was also no need to include Earth to make the threat feel more serious. They even introduced a new planet for the Republic government, and introduced the Resistance. Lindelof would have reasoned that this totally confused the audience, and that it needed to be Coruscant and the Rebellion in order to work. There was also no need to give the characters teenage problems to make them more relatable to the general audience. They had adult relationships, problems and behaviour patterns, unlike what they did to Uhura and Spock.

Star Wars fans were also treated with more respect. There were no bashes against subscribers of Lightsaber's Monthly. Instead, the makers themselves subscribed to those magazines in order to recreate all the technical aspects as faithfully as possible.

 

^It's the difference between a sequel and a reboot. I don't think it has anything to do with respect. They just had different goals.

 

With TFA, you can tell that the SW universe is where JJ's heart is.

That was also present in 2009 Trek, which lessened it for me, as a Trek film.

 

time travel has always been part of star trek mythology. however trek 2009 was a lot more original and daring than star wars tfa. disney restricted tfa a little too much.