Good freaking lord: the movie

[Therin of Andor]

NathanielM said:
The someone is not me... I am only hearing from other fans, people who have heard word of mouth that its gonna be a shitty film. And their sources are coming from connections in hollywood (knowing people who are working on it)

You know, when the rumours were flying that ST IV would feature - shhhh!!!! - time travel, a friend of a friend of a security guard at Paramount sent us the inside scoop for our club newsletter: he and the guard had been watching them build a replica set of the old Guardian of Forever ("City on the Edge of Forever") on the Star Trek movie soundstages. Great rumour that one. Hardy har.

As good as that other fan, who wrote up on the IMDB site that the guest cast for "Nemesis" included Ashley Judd - even "quoting" the phony TV show on which she'd announced her casting - and every actor who'd ever played a TOS or TNG Romulan, reprising their roles!

Don't believe fan rumours. They are simply too much fun to make up, and then watch everybody complain!

Judge the film on its own merits. When it's released.

 

[Gagarin]

Even the the Transformers writers are writing it... Michael Bay isn't directing it, so don't freak out because of Transformers.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

The New Yorker recently did a profile of David Simon, the producer of the critically acclaimed (and low-rated) HBO series The Wire. Reading the piece, I was struck once again by how many of that show's writers hail from professional crime fiction (George Pellecanos, Dennis Lehane and Richard Price) or from years in the trenches of journalism--Simon himself was a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. I am a huge fan of The Wire, placing it a very close second to The Sopranos for best tv show ever. (TOS places around 5th or 6th on the list, maybe 7th--I've never actually sat down and made it. No spin-off makes the top ten--DS9 barely cracks the top twenty-five.)

What's dis gots ta do with Trek? Many people are saying its no big deal that Trek XI is being helmed by the creator of Felicity and Alias or that it is written by the guys who gave us The Transformers and Xena: Warrior Princess. Many fans have no problem with the fact that Trek essentially severed all ties to lit SF in the 80s and instead relied on its tired bullpen and the occasional fan-pitched script. By contrast, The X-Files--a show I never made time for--managed to snag a script by William Gibson. TOS had many good and great episodes penned by SF lumminaries: Roddenberry was no saint--he was a liar and thief who became a deranged shadow in ruthless and fruitleess competition with his former self in his later years--but he had an eye for quality and he knew to go out of Hollywood in order to get it. And then these same fans wonder why some of us aren't jumping up and down like schoolgirls at a Hannah Montana concert for this latest project.

I can answer only for myself: I am not interested in any more in-bred Hollywood Trek. I am a science fiction fan first and foremost and a Trekkie second. The "franchise" (and if that term doesn't say it all...) stopped being SF a long time ago and has become a sui generis Ronald McDonald Land.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

There are countless things about this forthcoming film about which I'm not sanguine. My disdain of all things modern Hollywood primary among them.

But when I got to thinking about it, I realised that there is one reason above all that I won't be watching this film. It shouldn't be made for me. In fact, I would have been impressed if the filmmakers had started by saying, "that the new Star Trek is not for existing fans of the Original Series. In fact, we don't want you at the cinema, you can bugger off."

I'll be approaching this film with 79 episodes and 6 movies in mind. Now the cast, when it comes to my appreciation, are in a no win scenario. How do they treat the original portrayals? Do they channel them, use them, or ignore them.

Ignore them and start afresh, and they'll be accused of pissing on the original franchise. But as soon as we hear Kirk's ... oddly fractured... vocal... portrayal and unique physical... gestures, as soon as we hear Scotty stating that physical laws are immutable, as soon as we hear a single "Dammit Jim!", as soon as Sulu becomes a closet homosexual (the sixties mores of ethnics not getting any onscreen nookie notwithstanding), then it becomes a parody.

Frankly, in my mind, as soon as the roles were recast it was a parody. Which is why I say this movie isn't for me. And it probably won't satisfy many TOS fans either.

 

[Captain Gandalf]

Forbin said:
I.... I liked Xena.
In amidst all the camp and comedy, there was, occasionally, some absolutely stunning human drama.

Seconded. I like Xena as much as I like Star Trek, and the Xenites are as numerous as are Trekkies.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I have a lot of girl-on-girl porn. Does that make me an honorary Xenite?

 

[aridas sofia]

Brutal Strudel said:
The New Yorker recently did a profile of David Simon, the producer of the critically acclaimed (and low-rated) HBO series The Wire. Reading the piece, I was struck once again by how many of that show's writers hail from professional crime fiction (George Pellecanos, Dennis Lehane and Richard Price) or from years in the trenches of journalism--Simon himself was a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. I am a huge fan of The Wire, placing it a very close second to The Sopranos for best tv show ever. (TOS places around 5th or 6th on the list, maybe 7th--I've never actually sat down and made it. No spin-off makes the top ten--DS9 barely cracks the top twenty-five.)

What's dis gots ta do with Trek? Many people are saying its no big deal that Trek XI is being helmed by the creator of Felicity and Alias or that it is written by the guys who gave us The Transformers and Xena: Warrior Princess. Many fans have no problem with the fact that Trek essentially severed all ties to lit SF in the 80s and instead relied on its tired bullpen and the occasional fan-pitched script. By contrast, The X-Files--a show I never made time for--managed to snag a script by William Gibson. TOS had many good and great episodes penned by SF lumminaries: Roddenberry was no saint--he was a liar and thief who became a deranged shadow in ruthless and fruitleess competition with his former self in his later years--but he had an eye for quality and he knew to go out of Hollywood in order to get it. And then these same fans wonder why some of us aren't jumping up and down like schoolgirls at a Hannah Montana concert for this latest project.

I can answer only for myself: I am not interested in any more in-bred Hollywood Trek. I am a science fiction fan first and foremost and a Trekkie second. The "franchise" (and if that term doesn't say it all...) stopped being SF a long time ago and has become a sui generis Ronald McDonald Land.

I've been reading your posts, and it's interesting how they are coming closer and closer to my own feelings on the subject. I'm too open minded in the absence of evidence to make any firm pronouncements on the subject, but your sentiments here describe my thoughts on the history of Trek, my feelings, and my gut instinct, to a "T".

In addition, I'll note that I disagree with your signature line -- many critics whose opinions I generally find agreeable liked the TOS films that I found only mediocre. That's because they gave a lot of emphasis to the elements that most people pay attention to -- the story and pacing, the acting and to a lesser extent, the cinematography. In a speculative fiction film I have to be wowed by the design and the parts of the story that work to suspend disbelief and develop an interesting concept that convinces me needs to be explored. It is in these last two areas that really everything after TMP fails. That movie was poorly written but well conceived and well designed. The others had well-written examples among but never posed a problem that I felt was worth exploring, or showed me design work beyond the ruminations of a talented comic book artist.

In order for this movie to hit a grand slam, it will need to be as dramatically written as TWOK, and as well conceived and designed as TMP. If they do that, I don't really care if it reflects a reboot or an homage. I'll be happy.

 

[Captain Gandalf]

Brutal Strudel said:
I have a lot of girl-on-girl porn. Does that make me an honorary Xenite?

No, but I suspect your right forearm may be more muscular than your left (if you're righthanded that is).

 

[Brutal Strudel]

A lot of critics dropped the ball on A Scanner Darkly; Sean Burns of The Philadelphia Weekly, apparently using Total Recall as his Rosetta Stone, said Linklatter's humanism was a poor fit for Dick's paranoia. to the tenth power. So reviews--even reviews from critics I generally like--are only one small piece of the puzzle.

EDIT to respond to this:

Captain Gandalf said:

Brutal Strudel said:
I have a lot of girl-on-girl porn. Does that make me an honorary Xenite?

No, but I suspect your right forearm may be more muscular than your left (if you're righthanded that is).

Oddly enough, I'm right-handed in everything but that--which helps my bilateral symmetry, I guess.

 

[Captain Gandalf]

Brutal Strudel said:

EDIT to respond to this:

Captain Gandalf said:

Brutal Strudel said:
I have a lot of girl-on-girl porn. Does that make me an honorary Xenite?

No, but I suspect your right forearm may be more muscular than your left (if you're righthanded that is).

Oddly enough, I'm right-handed in everything but that--which helps my bilateral symmetry, I guess.

Fair enough.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Hey--I'm disgusting. It's what I am. It's what I do.

(Not at you, of course: at Xena.)

 

[Ssosmcin]

Warped9 said:

The God Thing said:

ssosmcin said:
Advice: see the movie. Then decide it if it's good.

I don't need to eat a dog turd to know that I am not going to enjoy the flavor.

TGT

:thumbsup:

Yeah, swell. But you have to actually come into contact with a fece before you realize it smells and tastes like shit.

This is rediculous. Nobody knows the actual story, nobody knows how the actors are going to work out or how it's going to be directed. All you're going on it your own feelings based on preconception.

But hey, being open minded was never a major Star Trek fan trait.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

ssosmcin said:
But you have to actually come into contact with a fece before you realize it smells and tastes like shit.

ST:XI already stinks of Abrams, Orci, Kurtzman and Eaves. None of these people have ever been involved in any media content creation projects that have impressed or moved me in the slightest. Seriously, what are the odds that they will begin now?

TGT

 

[Deleted 2]

Brutal Strudel said:
I can answer only for myself: I am not interested in any more in-bred Hollywood Trek. I am a science fiction fan first and foremost and a Trekkie second. The "franchise" (and if that term doesn't say it all...) stopped being SF a long time ago and has become a sui generis Ronald McDonald Land.

I think you've answered for a lot of people.

 

[Kegek]

Brutal Strudel said:
A lot of critics dropped the ball on A Scanner Darkly; Sean Burns of The Philadelphia Weekly, apparently using Total Recall as his Rosetta Stone, said Linklatter's humanism was a poor fit for Dick's paranoia. to the tenth power. So reviews--even reviews from critics I generally like--are only one small piece of the puzzle.

I didn't get that either. A Scanner Darkly is probably the most scrupulously faithful Dick film ever made - and it gets a better sense of his concerns, particularly regarding Californian drug culture, than any previous adaptation.

Probably the best science fiction film of the decade, to boot. I'm still awaiting someone psychotic enough to film the unfilmable Valis, but I guess I'll settle with the opera for now (whose best moment, obviously, is Dick's discussion of Parsifal).

To keep on topic: Star Trek has always straddled the uneasy middle-ground between popular, action-adventure science fiction and cerebral, largely lit sci-fi antecedents. Most of the time, it leans towards the former - and I expect this film to be no exception to the rule.

 

[Spider]

Not watching much modern TV these days and not big on paying outrageous money to sit in a theater, I recognize hardly any of the young actors in this movie. As far as the writers and producers, I either haven’t seen their work, or what little of it I’ve seen, I thought was horrible drivel. Also, none of the Trek movies made so far have been as good as the two TV series they were based on.

Having said all that, I’ll still see the movie. I’m rather ambivalent about it. If I like it, fine, if not, I’ll just chalk it up to another bad Trek movie.

The idea that if this movie is bad then Trek dies is utter nonsense. Hollywood spends more time repeating itself than it does creating something new.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Kegek said:

Brutal Strudel said:
A lot of critics dropped the ball on A Scanner Darkly; Sean Burns of The Philadelphia Weekly, apparently using Total Recall as his Rosetta Stone, said Linklatter's humanism was a poor fit for Dick's paranoia. to the tenth power. So reviews--even reviews from critics I generally like--are only one small piece of the puzzle.

I didn't get that either. A Scanner Darkly is probably the most scrupulously faithful Dick film ever made - and it gets a better sense of his concerns, particularly regarding Californian drug culture, than any previous adaptation.

Probably the best science fiction film of the decade, to boot. I'm still awaiting someone psychotic enough to film the unfilmable Valis, but I guess I'll settle with the opera for now (whose best moment, obviously, is Dick's discussion of Parsifal).

To keep on topic: Star Trek has always straddled the uneasy middle-ground between popular, action-adventure science fiction and cerebral, largely lit sci-fi antecedents. Most of the time, it leans towards the former - and I expect this film to be no exception to the rule.

It's a real shame most Dick projects are based on Hollywood re-re-re-writes of his short fiction. With only a handful of exceptions, Dick's short stories (and I've read them all--one of these days, I hope to write a dissertation on him) are rather poor and Hollywood seldom improves on them. When they do, as in The Minority Report, the end result is still somehow lacking. Blade Runner, OTOH, is one of those rare movies which is actually an improvement on the book on which it is based. (I find Androids to be his most stylistically weak and thematically offensive work.) But I tell peopl that, if they watch Scanner and David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (check out the shout-out to Dick in the form of the Perky Pat fast food restaurant), they've got a good crash course in PKD.

The God Thing said:

ssosmcin said:
But you have to actually come into contact with a fece before you realize it smells and tastes like shit.

ST:XI already stinks of Abrams, Orci, Kurtzman and Eaves. None of these people have ever been involved in any media content creation projects that have impressed or moved me in the slightest. Seriously, what are the odds that they will begin now?

TGT

Could I have said it better? No. No, I could not have.

 

[Kegek]

^
I don't know, I loved the conceit of animals as status symbols. What exactly did you find thematically offensive?

Never seen eXistenZ (awful title, by the way), but if it's got a Perky Pat scene I'll give it a shot.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Dick pretty much comes out and says the Andys are symbolic of slaves (note the passage about the off-worlder who compares the dignity of having androids to the dignity of living in antebellum Dixie) and then goes on to say that they must be killed in the service of (Com)Mercerism and "empathy." Does the killing take a toll on the killer? Not enough. I much preferred the sympathetic take on the replicants the movie gives us. Dick himself noted that the film inverted his theme.

The animals-as-status-symbols was a nice touch, though, as was the scene where Isidore lets a real cat die because he thinks it is artificial. There are a lot of very good elements in that book and in its precursor, We Can Build You. Dick sadly let his uglier traits (and we all have them) get in the way of his art with both.

Um... Star Trek XI. Yeah, um, I don't think it looks so good.

 

[Guartho]

NathanielM said:
Sometimes actors reach an empath, (as spock would say),

Actually, Spock would probably say they reach an impasse.