I put Rogue One on for a moment the other day because I wanted to check something, and those Star Destroyers just grabbed my eyes and wouldn't let me stop watching. It's probably got the prettiest space scenes of all the Star Wars films.
Honestly, all acting is pretend play; is evaluating it against reality a waste of time? Good fiction is about willing suspension of disbelief - that you can latch on to enough that it feels real for the time you're engrossed in it. Quality of CGI, or modelwork, or acting - they all matter, because most of us wish to forget we're looking at actors in a studio and let what we see play with our wonderful human imaginations. Things that "throw you out" interrupt that enjoyment. And for me, this vastly over-coloured, over-sharp, over-textured and over-accelerated ship feels intrinsically like a computer creation more than my mind can accept that it's a real place people might work in. We have done better CGI and ironically, some of the early CGI on DS9 or Voyager plays far better to my eye. I have plenty of criticism of the Kelvin Universe films but to be fair, their ships definitely felt like real (albeit oversized) entities. I remember when they remastered TOS and one of the supervisors said "we wanted to be faithful to the original - we didn't want to add fins to the Enterprise or have it doing barrel-rolls". And, to quote Ian Malcolm, sometimes I think CGI artists are so preoccupied with whether they 'could' that they forget to ask whether they 'should'. The potency of the tools is such that you can now have the Enterprise doing anything, shining in any direction or angle, with any colour - and so it leads to what used to be that single, occasional beautiful shot of sequence of a few seconds now being the entirety of the ship and how it moves. Ideally, they'd slow it down and tone it down a bit. These vessels are massive, hulking behemoths. Give me something that looks like it has a tremendous inertia, and has a fantastic mass and isn't trying to win a disco competition in space, but is a tremendous creation that's mundanely doing what it was meant to do. In essence, perhaps the antithesis of modern 'special' effects, but: less is more.
Watched The Outlaw Josie Wales last night. Great movie. Not a goddamn realistic thing about it. Rogue One, another good movie, is an odd one to cite as using realistic CG, since it features those two dead-eyed cartoon corpses that are stand-ins for Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing. NuBSG? Beautiful CG, and looks just like a video game. That stuff "takes me right out of the story" if I choose to let it. There's CG I don't like - such as much of STD - but it would annoy me far less if the show was any goddamn good. If Voyager's your idea of entertainment, knock yourself out - just don't tell me it "looks real." The only word in the sentence " Good fiction is about willing suspension of disbelief" that matters is "willing." Got not a thing to do with "realism."
If there has been one thing confirmed to me during the whole build up to "Strange New Worlds", it's that Trekkies are the absolute most pretentious fandom out there. Granted, this isn't a new observation. We saw it when Enterprise premiered. We saw it with the "Kelvin films". We saw it big time with Discovery. And now here we are, with what in my opinion, is one of the best looking Trek shows ever seen, and all we can do is make grand statements about how it doesn't look exactly like 1965. I mean, can we atleast take a minute to appreciate what we have here and the efforts put forward to make this show look and feel like classic Star Trek, but seen through a modern lens. No, the Enterprise doesn't look exactly like it did in the 60's, inside or out. But it's clear what they are going for. But if that detail is a make or break point for you, then I'm sorry, you're taking this stuff way too serious. Can't we just appreciate what we have? There is no bigger fan of the Matt Jefferies designed original, or the Original Series in general, then myself. But you're kidding yourself if you think they could have pulled off those looks in 2022 for an entire series. Yes, Enterprise had the Defiant, but that was 2 episodes built entirely around nostalgia. It wouldn't work for an entire series. What we have with SNW is the best of both worlds. It's clear they're going for a 60's look while still giving us something NEW and EXCITING. Which is what every Star Trek series has strived to give us. I can't wait to see all the references to the original while appreciating their new take on things. Because, in the end, it's just a TV show whose number one goal should always be to entertain us.
I think SNW has done a great job on its sets, they look very TOS era, though maybe a bit more 70s. Certainly more than Discovery's sets do. Everyone involved deserves praise. I think SNW has done an amazing job with its props, as they look like predecessors to the TOS gadgets without looking cheap or absurdly dated. Everyone involved deserves extra praise. I think SNW should stop right before TOS and not move another damn inch closer to contradicting a single thing you can see on screen in episodes like Relics, Trials and Tribble-ations and In a Mirror, Darkly. I also don't want anything else that comes along later to contradict TNG's Enterprise D sets, DS9's station, Lower Decks or Strange New Worlds. I don't care how much money they'll make retreading old ground, I'd rather have fewer series with more consistency if that's the choice. And I am sick of references being a substitute for progression and consequences. I don't want writers to show off all the Star Trek trivia they can remember, I want to know what happens next! And things can only happen next when the history stays put.
Yeah, I don't waste any time doing that either. I'm not a Professional Critic and Life is too short to expend that much energy on something that's not going to effect my daily life. I'm watching what I enjoy watching to entertain myself, not to make judgements on other peoples efforts to achieve that goal. If I don't like what I'm watching I move on, I don't continue to harp on "how They failed to entertain me" because an Imaginary Starship doesn't look real enough.
Oh, for sure. The CGI is one of the lesser issues with STD! Not sure I quite agree - taken in extremis, your point is that a person's imagination is solely responsible for whether they buy into the story. Were that true, the whole thing could be done in cardboard and plasticine. Budgets are spent to get and create as believable an environment as possible, to help people lose themselves in the story. Sometimes this is done well, and sometimes not. For me, the opening credits don't. Fingers crossed the series at large is better (I can always skip the credits...) They constantly refer to it as the "franchise". The makers see it as a business. Not sure why you think anyone owes them any fealty? Amen! Little references that made it a cohesive universe used to be the little extra spice that made it perfect. Now they chug a cannister into each episode and it makes the whole universe a bit smaller. Much like 'special' effects - you need them to be rare to be special. Otherwise it gets a bit humdrum. I mean hey, this is a place for post opinions about Star Trek. Silly as that may seem, about the only thing sillier is posting back to tell some stranger on the Internet not to bother. Life evidently isn't too short for you to expend energy on that, I see
Every single fandom I'm a part of has the same level of...whatever you want to call it. Some love it. Some "hate" it. Some "take it too seriously" (according to others). Some complain about what they hate. Some complain about others complaining. Some make claims about the entire fanbase as though it's a monolith. I've seen "No one hates Star Trek like a Star Trek fan", "No one hates Star Wars quite like a Star Wars fan", and "No one hates Doctor Who more than Whovians". Each from within their own respective fanbases. Like what you like, dislike what you dislike. Express it either way. Tolerate it when someone likes/dislikes something and you disagree. Don't take it personally. You didn't make it, and someone else having a different opinion doesn't hurt you in any way. Unless you've read all this shit I just typed, half of which probably doesn't even make sense. Not even to me.
Yeah, it's not going to work that way. If this show succeeds, over time it's going to be a whole new version of the Trekverse.
I've seen both ways this can play out so many times before in other franchises and I much prefer it when the writers basically treat it like it is a historical documentary. Or historical drama really. Is it too soon to start a letter campaign to get it cancelled?
Never too soon. But persistence is futile. The L.A. unemployment office keeps holding the door open for Kurtzman, but he just won't walk in.
Exactly, If I dislike something I stop watching it. i dropped out of Batwoman Season 3 5 episodes in because it just started to bore me. I don't understand watching something you don't like.
It's not that black and white. I'm sure you had criticisms about Batwoman before you finally bailed on it, and yet you kept watching (up to that point). I've had pretty mixed feelings about Discovery, but it's still connected to an overall universe that I love and I keep hoping for the writers to add more of what I like and less of what I, very subjectively, feel are missteps. Picard's second season has, for me, been the most disappointing Trek show ever. I know I wouldn't be missing anything if I stopped watching it, but I've kept watching it, partly in hopes of being proved wrong ("maybe the things that seem like mistakes are actually part of a great master plan that I just have to be patient enough to see revealed" - silly, but not impossible), or because there's a certain amount of entertainment in seeing how off-the-rails a big, expensive show like this can go. If Picard weren't a Star Trek show I would've certainly stopped watching it already. And I would stop watching it regardless if it were much longer than 10 episodes. I hope I never have as negative or disappointing an experience with a Trek show again, but I think most of us can agree that part of being a fan of a huge universe like this is that it's not as simple as "just stop watching if you don't like it".