Fade In: The Writing of Star Trek: Insurrection
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Exactly. ST'09 is not the kind of movie Piller is talking about; yes, it's action-packed, but it has a very strong, clear, character-driven dramatic storyline. Piller wasn't saying that action is bad; he was saying that the right way to do it is to start from character and let the action arise from the needs of the story, let it serve and inform the character arcs. And that's exactly what ST'09 did. Every action scene in that film was character-driven or story-driven. That's what makes a good action film. What Piller was complaining about was the type of film where the action comes first and the plot and character arcs are merely afterthoughts to tie it together.
As for T2:ROTF, that film was structured that way partly because it was developed during the writers' strike, so Michael Bay started by storyboarding the action scenes, and then once the strike was over, he brought in Kurtzman & Orci to add connective plot tissue (and then handed it to another writer who was responsible for adding the objectionable racial humor and so forth). The ST writing process is totally unlike that because K&O (and in the case of the next film, Lindelof) are producers on the film, working hand-in-hand with Abrams like a TV writing staff, so it's a far more writer-driven process from the beginning than is usual in Hollywood. Which is why ST'09 has such a good, solid story at its core despite its blockbuster excesses.
Ehren Kruger was responsible for the racial humor? Where's the source for this? Kurtzman and Orci actually wrote the original treatment for the sequel, I have a copy of it, it's pretty damn good and would have been a way better story than the one we got but it was pretty bold in scope and most likely was rejected due to budget concerns and the strike.
The "type of movie" Piller is talking about is specifically Armageddon, which also came out in 1998.
I disagree.
I don't think Piller was talking about a film's storyline being character driven vs action driven. I think his feeling was that a good film should be "about something".
The trend in mainstream, big budget movies then (which has continued and is ever so strong today) was heading towards films that were more concerned with blowing things up than with crafting an actual solid story of some depth.
Story is different than plot... and yes, Trek 2009's plot was driven by the young Kirk & Spock narrative and by Nero who's actions set the whole thing into motion.
But... what was it about?
I enjoyed the film (Trek 2009) but I still can't tell you what was at the heart of that story. Some people argue that it's about revenge -- but it's not really. TWOK was clearly a better structured revenge tale. Others say it was about destiny. How so? Just because the same people came together as a crew in a newly created timeline. Well, we all knew that was going to happen the minute we stepped into the theater so that's not really effective storytelling.
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was about something. "A Taste of Armageddon" was about an idea -- a complex one.
"Darmok", "Measure of A Man", TVH, even TFF, believe it or not were all about, and or posed, questions about human behavior or beliefs -- "maybe God is inside the human heart". Big ideas, universal ones. This is what, I believe, Piller is speaking to here, and I believe it's what Trek does best... and it's what has seperated it from being Star Wars.
Now, I'm not saying that the characters in Abrams film didn't do through some emotional paces. They did. But overall the film is really little more than a bunch of high concept action scenes strung together by pretty poorly constructed plot... full of holes. And while that didn't ruin me enjoying the film... the more times I view it, it just doesn't hold up, except for the visuals.
Eye candy.
Because, below the high tech, fast paced gloss, there really isn't much there. Before 2009 even the worst of Trek at least started from the attempt to be about something more that what's on the surface. They didn't always succeed, but at least they tried.
I don't see that as disagreement. They're both ways of saying that the action should serve the substance of the story rather than the story being merely an afterthought to tie the action together.
I don't think that's a fair assessment. No, the film didn't have a deep philosophical point, but that's because it was essentially a pilot: its job was to tell the origin story of this version of the Enterprise crew. I think it's a kneejerk reaction to blame the action for any lack of thematic depth. It's not the action that's to blame. It's just that they had so much plot to get through in order to tell this origin story for seven people (eight, counting Pike) that it didn't leave much room for a deeper thematic point. And that's not a horrible thing. Some stories are driven more by character than anything else, and there's nothing wrong with that. Look at Catcher in the Rye. It doesn't have much of a plot or a point; it's a character study. The character is the point. And that's a valid approach. Not every story has to have exactly the same ratio of plot to character to theme.
This is a great read, for anyone interested in filmmaking.
What I don't get is with all the kind of criticism and suggestions Piller received for Insurrection, and with the really creative discussion going back and forth between Berman, Piller and Stewart, how the fuck could Nemesis ever be made like it is?
What I don't get is with all the kind of criticism and suggestions Piller received for Insurrection, and with the really creative discussion going back and forth between Berman, Piller and Stewart, how the fuck could Nemesis ever be made like it is?
You just have to love Patrick Stewart!Patrick Stewart said:
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Personally, I blame the majority of Nemesis faults at Staurt Baird's feet. It had a story by Rick Berman and Brent Spiner, two people who know how to do good Trek, and it was written by John Logan, an Oscar winning writing who also happened to be a pretty hardcore Trekkie. Baird, on the other hand, thought Geordi was an alien.
Personally, I blame the majority of Nemesis faults at Staurt Baird's feet. It had a story by Rick Berman and Brent Spiner, two people who know how to do good Trek, and it was written by John Logan, an Oscar winning writing who also happened to be a pretty hardcore Trekkie. Baird, on the other hand, thought Geordi was an alien.
I thought Baird did a respectable job with the material he was given. Nemesis just had too many flaws in it's story to be credible (like a certain 2009 Trek production
).
Baird, on the other hand, thought Geordi was an alien.
Wait, what?
I don't believe this "Geordi's not an alien" nonsense...
Next you'll be telling me Troi's an alien or some other fanciful rubbish!
Personally, I blame the majority of Nemesis faults at Staurt Baird's feet. It had a story by Rick Berman and Brent Spiner, two people who know how to do good Trek, and it was written by John Logan, an Oscar winning writing who also happened to be a pretty hardcore Trekkie. Baird, on the other hand, thought Geordi was an alien.
I thought Baird did a respectable job with the material he was given. Nemesis just had too many flaws in it's story to be credible (like a certain 2009 Trek production
Most of the involved agree that it was Baird who made the movie worse than it should have been. And I think they are absolutely right about this. He didn't have a feel for the characters, had very strange ideas about the direction of the movie, is basically a hack when it comes to Scifi (especially the visual part of it - creating an alien desert environment by just using a yellow filter, come on!), and he created a pretty bad atmosphere on set, which then resulted in the actors being unhappy, which led to the chemistry in this movie to be totally awful.
What brought down Nemesis was nepotism, I read. Paramount made a deal with Baird. He does last minute edits to some movie (he is a really good editor), and he gets to direct a Star Trek movie. Brent Spiner made a promise to John Logan not to change his script. When Rick Berman tried to get Nicholas Meyer to direct this movie, Meyer read the script, saw how crappy it was and wanted to rewrite it. But he couldn't due to Spiner's and Logan's deal, so he refused. Then Berman wanted Frakes again, but then Paramount came and said "You take Baird."
And then Baird came and wanted to do the "first Star Trek movie ever". That's something Herman Zimmerman said once. Basically he had the same attitude as Abrams, but sucked even more than him.
Baird, on the other hand, thought Geordi was an alien.
Lack of prior Trek knowledge doesn't make one an unfit director for a Trek movie. Nicholas Meyer had no prior Trek knowledge, but he did the research and people liked what he did. So saying that Baird lacked familiarity with the details of TNG beforehand means nothing. Of course he had plenty of opportunity to learn, just as Meyer did.
For a show like Star Trek, where there are certain given parameters and character relationships, it's not uncommon that people can come up with similar ideas -- or arrive at similar approaches to material -- independently.
Michael Jan Friedman has mentioned at conventions that he submitted a story outline for the Star Trek: The Next Generation comic in late-'93/early-'94, something that he thought was really good, unique, and interesting. It came back denied. Why? He'd arrived at the story for Star Trek: Generations independently, though without Kirk.
Or, over in the Doctor Who realm, I've thought for a very long time that "Dimensions in Time" owes a hell of a lot to Robert Holmes' "The Six Doctors" outline. Or that Russell T. Davies' "The Christmas Invasion" is an adaptation of Lance Parkin's novel The Dying Days. But in both cases, the similarities are coincidental.
On a different note, writing credits in Hollywood are very regimented, and there are certain things that have to be done to receive a story, screenplay, or created by credit. Piller's memos may have some similarity to Nemesis, but the Writer's Guild might not have found that enough to grant a credit. As an example, James Hudnall, who wrote the comic book Harsh Realms, didn't receive a "Created by" credit when Chris Carter of X-Files fame adapted the comic for television. The WGA is a weird, weird place.
I don't.
Yes, Baird could have been more familiar with Star Trek, but would that have mattered? He was a hired-gun director, and Hollywood makes lots of films, lots of successful films, with hired-gun directors.
Baird's direction isn't terrible by any means. He was certainly better than Frakes. He had a good sense of space, his shot composition was usually interesting.
For the things that fall under the director's purview, he acquitted himself well.
By a mile. Just compare First Contact and Insurrection with Nemesis. One thing that immediately comes to mind is pacing. Nemesis was horribly slow, and it was very static. There's much talking (which isn't bad in itself), but all the talking is shot with people sitting at a table, or standing around a table, and nothing else happens.
In First Contact and Insurrection, Frakes made sure that every bit of exposition and long talk is fast paced. Characters are walking from A to B, they are doing other tasks while talking to each other, lots of stuff is going on (which is similar to how James Cameron likes to stage those kind of scenes). That's already one big difference that turns scenes like this from lame and tired into interesting and active. And that affects the entire movie.
You don't need to change a single line in the script to do that. A different director creates and entirely different movie, with the same script.
Maybe, but I find it hard to belive that a man who has been nominated for 8 different writing awards ( 1 Tony which he won, 2 WGAs one of which he one (I swore I read that he won the Oscar for Gladiator, but apparently not this was for a TV script, 2 Oscars, and 2 BAFTAs) could have actually written something as bad as Nemesis. So I really think that it was a case of a bad director ruining a script. Personally, I actually like the story and alot of the ideas in Nem. it's just that it was so badly executed that I don't like it.
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