Is the movie respectful to the franchise? (No spoilers)

[Jerikka Dawn]

It lost it's fan base because it lost it's creativity and new ideas.

Every time someone tries to come up with a new or creative idea, someone tells them "you can't do that because canon says blah blah.." where "canon" can mean anything from TOS to some obscure geek manual from Waldenbooks or a "timeline" on a newsgroup.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

God, or whathaveyou, has a substantially larger budget - and certainly a great deal more imagination - than anyone who has ever worked in the movies.

I think I found a new signature line... I love it. Can I steal it?

Absolutely. Thanks.

I wanted to work in something about Michael Bay, but it would have been reaching.

 

[urbandk]

Michael Bay has just enough carefree nonchalance to redeem him for the unholy mutant movies he makes.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Michael Bay has just enough carefree nonchalance to redeem him for the unholy mutant movies he makes.

At least he's not nailing Scarlett Johansson. That would be too much to bear.

 

[phylogeny]

Well I need to know how bad it's going to be. Will there be any way to marriage the the movie to the franchise? Because if not I don't think I should really support it.

That's my question as well.

I don't mind a relaunch or whatever they're calling it. I don't care if they don't get the technical details exactly right. I'm looking forward to the "new" look of Star Trek (b/c frankly TOS's appearance was too cheesy for me), but I want to know if the movie will be able to fit into the preexisting Trekverse.

What I mean is, will we have to treat this as a parallel universe? Or can we kind of place this in our current Trek universe without fan waving major things away? I mean, I don't want to find out that Cardassians is actually a dying race that goes extinct in this movie---because we can't ignore that without ignoring the entirety of DS9.

I'm not a huge fan of Trek movies, even though I've seen almost all the Trek movies. What I really want to see is renewed interest in Trek and perhaps more Trek stories down the road. However, I don't want any future Trek to exist in a separate universe from this new version. For me, to toss away all preexisting canon with the current Trek as part of the updating of the Star Trek universe is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

 

[Sector 7]

God, or whathaveyou, has a substantially larger budget - and certainly a great deal more imagination - than anyone who has ever worked in the movies.

I think I found a new signature line... I love it. Can I steal it?

Absolutely. Thanks.

I wanted to work in something about Michael Bay, but it would have been reaching.

How's this? It brought back a lot of memories...
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[Basil]

Why don't people understand that such reverence is what in many ways makes Star Trek popular.

DID make Trek popular now it just hampers it...TREK has loss so many of its own fanbase and gained virtually none new ones so TREK is not popular anymore. J.J will keep Trek as Trek but this is not Gene's vision which while groundbreaking at the time was deeply flawed.

It lost it's fan base because it lost it's creativity and new ideas. Not because it kept track of the past of the show.

I've thought pretty much the same thing -- the more recent films basically took bland TV ideas and filmed them with a bigger budget but comparatively little creativity or freshness. The execution was the biggest problem, not the attempt to maintain continuity.

 

[pookha]

I just think that somebody who makes a point that they really aren't about pleasing fans are probably going to be fairly disrespectful to the fans.

Also I don't understand why he couldn't have made the movie completely in the franchise's universe. There's nothing about the universe that prevents that, and it's not like the filming style is part of the canon. (Because I know JJ loves the shaky cam)

you do understand tos itself at times played fast and lose with its own canon.
from what i am getting from the reviews is that the movie is true to the spirit of star trek// something that abrams said he did admire and wanted to capture.
the spirit of different people coming together for a common goal.. the feeling of optimism...that people can strive for something greater.

 

[joe40001]

Some respect for the canon is good though IMO.

Also don't you guys like that my old avatar is back?

Man, I haven't been here in a while.

 

[True Trek Fan]

From everything I have seen so far and read about this film I would say it does not respectful to the franchise and in particular the TOS era, not in interior set design, not in centering on the three main characters, Kirk, Spock & McCoy, the original Enterprise has been physically changed for the worse, the musical score is nothing like the original, Scotty is turned into a comic relief character, what happens to Vulcan is surprising and contradicts cannon, besides it isn't even set in the Star Trek Universe that we know for the last 40 years but in some alternative one.... so who cares anymore!

 

[Jimmy_C]

Some respect for the canon is good though IMO.

Also don't you guys like that my old avatar is back?

Man, I haven't been here in a while.

Replacing canon has nothing to do with respecting or disrespecting canon. You can have a completely different canon and still respect the old canon. Gundam has several stories set in different universes. Marvel reset the canon of all of their comic book lines. Twice IIRC. OTOH, The Star Wars Prequels did not really respect their own canon even though they were still set in the same continuity!

Think of the implications of what you are talking about, too. Do you really need to have the continuity of The Alternative Factor or Threshold to be respected? What about the discontinuity between the behavior of the holodeck in The Last Goodbye versus Ship in a Bottle? Do we really need to keep the idea of mining deuterium from Voyager and Enterprise? Can we please ignore These are the Voyages...

Respecting continuity doesn't mean following it, and following continuity doesn't mean respecting it either. Good lord, it isn't as if it was Pamela Ewing's dream! Although if Star Trek was Bob Newhart's dream, then I could still respect it. ;-)

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Some respect for the canon is good though IMO.

Of course it is - but that's rather different from "insane reverence" for every detail.

... so who cares anymore!

Based on the traffic here and the overwhelmingly positive tone? Most of us.

 

[Dane_Whitman]

If you think that the 'Star Trek Universe' won't benefit from an additional new timeline where all sorts of interesting things happen that wouldn't be possible in the regular Trek timeline because canon and continuity get in the way, than you are grossly underestimating the beauty and possibilities of said fictional universe. Let's just refer to it as the Star Trek multiverse from now on.

 

[SonicRanger]

From everything I have seen so far and read about this film I would say it does not respectful to the franchise and in particular the TOS era... Scotty is turned into a comic relief character

I think perhaps you need to rewatch TOS and the films. Scotty has been used for comic relief since TOS and increasingly so since TSFS.

 

[SalvorHardin]

 

[Cyke101]

Another post on another board brought up an excellent point about the show Batman: The Brave and the Bold. It's all about bringing back Silver Age characters that only continuity buffs would know. However, one reason why the show works so well (and is so fun) is because the story is about the characters and not the reverence of the past. Stick to the characters and why they were designed the way they were, and you don't have to worry about reverence of the past, because that will come automatically.

To quote one Agent Helix: "Right, it's not important that Kamandi is a silver age throwback to the show. What's important is that he's a the last human boy in a post-apocalyptic future of evil talking animals. And that's awesome."

To me, that line of reasoning also falls onto Trek. It's almost analogous. "It's not important that old-Spock is there to connect the previous Trek to Abrams. Rather, it's important that old-Spock is there to guide our heroes and help face down a rather ballsy villain." Honor the characters and canon comes automatically. Even Trek's fabled technology is secondary to that.

Frankly, we could even look at TNG/DS9. I would argue that they didn't feel the need to stick to canon, only on a few occasions (They rarely felt the need to reference TOS, or each other for that matter). Beyond the legacy, they told their own stories in their own ways by and tended to make a more expanded and exciting canon universe, thereby adding to the legacy.

I also think too much adherence and dependence on the franchise was one of the reasons why Enterprise was killed. The 4th season found a near perfect balance of being a prequel and adhering to the past mixed in with decent storytelling. But the first two seasons always felt like whatever nuggets the writers threw to the fans was followed by a "wink," as if there was a joke or a nod, while at the same time the writers took their eyes off the road in order to nod. When you're too concerned about canon and prioritize retcons and continuity links over plot development, then you're trading quality and relevance and creativity for fanboy appeasement. That in itself is disrespectful to the franchise.