Orci/Bennett

[shapeshifter]

I remember seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark at a preview showing and thinking the general audience wouldn't get it. You never know.

A Making Of special feature on a 12 Monkeys DVD ends with a preview test audience raking the film across the coals on all points. Despite the hate, Terry G. decides to release the film as is with only minor changes and the rest is history...

Box office record set opening weekend, Critical Acclaim, Academy Award nominations, etc.

Watching the film again myself, (new series prompted interest with me in original film) I believe it needed some more work, the third act is a mess.

 

[Nebusj]

On the other hand "regular Joes" seem to be the subject of a great deal of questionable speculation and assumption-mongering, as if they were some exotic separate species.

Oh, yeah, I remember people predicting that "regular Joes" would never embrace anything as far-out and comic-booky as GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, or THOR, or . . . .

The general audience tends to be a lot more flexible and open-minded than the fannish cognoscenti often wants to admit.

It's like people will go watch anything that seems enjoyable or fun! Have they no standards?

 

[Set Harth]

You gotta win over general joe every time.

I've always liked his chicken.

No, wait, that's General Tso. I really have no opinion on General Joe's chicken.

a lovestruck teenage girl torn between a pale brooding vampire and a hunky werewolf, and hobbits.

Shows what I know. I totally thought she was gonna go for the hobbits.

 

[Greg Cox]

You gotta win over general joe every time.

I've always liked his chicken.

No, wait, that's General Tso. I really have no opinion on General Joe's chicken.

a lovestruck teenage girl torn between a pale brooding vampire and a hunky werewolf, and hobbits.

Shows what I know. I totally thought she was gonna go for the hobbits.

The furry feet were a turn-off.

 

[Lexx Shrapnel]

It always amuses me when fans insist that the general audience won't accept anything too fantastic or unrealistic . . . despite the fact that the average moviegoer seems to have no problem with alien robots who turn into cars, British kids attending wizard school, Disney pirates fighting ghost ships and sea monsters, a lovestruck teenage girl torn between a pale brooding vampire and a hunky werewolf, and hobbits.

As long as it's from a popular franchise...
Do a giant movie about some off the wall idea with no brand awareness and a lot of money could be lost.

 

[BillJ]

It always amuses me when fans insist that the general audience won't accept anything too fantastic or unrealistic . . . despite the fact that the average moviegoer seems to have no problem with alien robots who turn into cars, British kids attending wizard school, Disney pirates fighting ghost ships and sea monsters, a lovestruck teenage girl torn between a pale brooding vampire and a hunky werewolf, and hobbits.

As long as it's from a popular franchise...
Do a giant movie about some off the wall idea with no brand awareness and a lot of money could be lost.

You mean like Star Wars or Avatar?

Everything has to start somewhere with someone taking a chance that is outside the conventional wisdom. There'd be no Star Trek without Lucille Ball.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Everything has to start somewhere with someone taking a chance that is outside the conventional wisdom. There'd be no Star Trek without Lucille Ball.

Stealing this for my siggy. Hope you don't mind.

 

[BillJ]

Everything has to start somewhere with someone taking a chance that is outside the conventional wisdom. There'd be no Star Trek without Lucille Ball.

Stealing this for my siggy. Hope you don't mind.

Not at all!

 

[ThankYouGeneR]

Guardians of the Galaxy isn't bad, in fact it probably is one of the better MCU movies, not that there's any sort of competition or anything. But Guardians is overrated. Everyone, and I mean everyone seems to love it. Even a guy I know who is usually overly critical of movies. Everyone thinks it's some sort of masterpiece though it came off to me as a Star Wars derivative.

Well I must be living in my own alternate reality. the film was awful to me. it had some of the silliest one liners and bad fight scenes, I have ever scene even for MCU standards. I also did not follow the story at all because the story felt so disjointed and was not making sense. the fight scenes were just too much, it became like a CGI Feast. For me it was the worst comic film of 2014.

This is why I am worried about Paramount wanting trek to be like the film

Gotta disagree. Guardians of the Galaxy was my favorite movie this year. It was fun and colorful, gorgeous to look at, and full of vivid and engaging characters, all done with a great deal of style and panache.

Did it resemble STAR TREK? Of course not, but I don't think they were going for that. We're talking old-fashioned comic-book space opera here, like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers or Adam Strange or whatever. (I also got kinda a Farscape vibe, which makes sense since FS was basically a irreverent, modern-day spin on Buck Rogers.)

To each their own . . ..

My friend and I gave lots of money to Guardians of the Galaxy. (it gave me a Firefly vibe with its irreverent leader and cobbled together band of unique personalities)

Now, I can not picture a type of adaptation of this format for StarTrek but I get why it would come to their minds. I can't picture it but I don't know it wouldn't work either.

Whatever I personally might desire in a Trek production from them I fully realize and accept they are in the 'business' of movie making. Them looking at GOTG's mega success seems logical. Might work, might not. Might work for a Trek movie/might not. Might work for 'me', might not. But for them to have blinders on about GOTG because they are making me another StarTrek... would seem illogical.

 

[ThankYouGeneR]

Everything has to start somewhere with someone taking a chance that is outside the conventional wisdom. There'd be no Star Trek without Lucille Ball.

Oh my, how very much I think like that.

I realistically know that every Trek iteration will not match my own vision of what I want in 'my' Trek, nor do I think all Trek should only 'be' my personal vision of Trek at its finest. And oh how I want people to keep trying, keep taking a chance at making their own vision of Trek.

 

[Lexx Shrapnel]

It always amuses me when fans insist that the general audience won't accept anything too fantastic or unrealistic . . . despite the fact that the average moviegoer seems to have no problem with alien robots who turn into cars, British kids attending wizard school, Disney pirates fighting ghost ships and sea monsters, a lovestruck teenage girl torn between a pale brooding vampire and a hunky werewolf, and hobbits.

As long as it's from a popular franchise...
Do a giant movie about some off the wall idea with no brand awareness and a lot of money could be lost.

You mean like Star Wars or Avatar?

Everything has to start somewhere with someone taking a chance that is outside the conventional wisdom. There'd be no Star Trek without Lucille Ball.

Star Wars was expected to be a minor thing so i assume New Hope was not some giant investmnet and Avatar plays it pretty safe all the way. I love with risks are taken, but i see why it does not happen often with big budgets.

 

[BillJ]

Star Wars was expected to be a minor thing so i assume New Hope was not some giant investmnet and Avatar plays it pretty safe all the way. I love with risks are taken, but i see why it does not happen often with big budgets.

I don't think anyone had any idea how Star Wars would play. If I remember correctly, Lucas had to give up his directors fee in order to have enough money to finish it (though he gained merchandising rights). Avatar cost $237 million to make. Nothing safe about either one of those projects.

It's easy to say something would be successful in hindsight.

Do you honestly think 20th Century Fox would've given up merchandising rights if they had any idea Star Wars would be as big as it was?

 

[The Wormhole]

My friend and I gave lots of money to Guardians of the Galaxy. (it gave me a Firefly vibe with its irreverent leader and cobbled together band of unique personalities)

You're not the only one to think so.

This is also amusing.

 

[ThankYouGeneR]

^^^ AWESOME!

 

[Lexx Shrapnel]

Star Wars was expected to be a minor thing so i assume New Hope was not some giant investmnet and Avatar plays it pretty safe all the way. I love with risks are taken, but i see why it does not happen often with big budgets.

I don't think anyone had any idea how Star Wars would play. If I remember correctly, Lucas had to give up his directors fee in order to have enough money to finish it (though he gained merchandising rights). Avatar cost $237 million to make. Nothing safe about either one of those projects.

It's easy to say something would be successful in hindsight.

Do you honestly think 20th Century Fox would've given up merchandising rights if they had any idea Star Wars would be as big as it was?

We agree, Star Wars was not expected to be much, so i assume money was fairly tight. Avatar has a bunch of safe story beats and formula.

 

[BigJake]

Avatar has a bunch of safe story beats and formula.

Avatar actually aroused quite a bit of ire from people who were uncomfortable with its allegory about American militarism, corporatism, racism and resource exploitation, still a constant undercurrent in responses to it (in, for example, attempts to claim its villains are "unrealistic" or "cartoonish"). It chose a palatable way of easing all of that down (which also earned it some criticism from other quarters, somewhat deserved, for recycling white saviour narratives), but calling its story beats "safe" is a bit of a stretch. We live in a world where corporatism and abuse of aboriginal peoples is very real and very touchy. The story it chose to treat is very far from safe, to the point where probably nobody with clout less than Cameron's could have gotten it greenlit and funded it in the form it happened.

 

[fireproof78]

Star Wars was expected to be a minor thing so i assume New Hope was not some giant investmnet and Avatar plays it pretty safe all the way. I love with risks are taken, but i see why it does not happen often with big budgets.

I don't think anyone had any idea how Star Wars would play. If I remember correctly, Lucas had to give up his directors fee in order to have enough money to finish it (though he gained merchandising rights). Avatar cost $237 million to make. Nothing safe about either one of those projects.

It's easy to say something would be successful in hindsight.

Do you honestly think 20th Century Fox would've given up merchandising rights if they had any idea Star Wars would be as big as it was?

Yeah. Star Wars was expected to be a kids film, and something that might make some money. Fox was banking on Damnation Alley to be its movie for the year, but it was delayed, and Star Wars was released instead. Since Star Wars ended up making all the money, Lucas ended up with a decent deal. But, it certainly was not expected by either Lucas or Fox. Lucas also had a tendency to dip in to his personal finances to get things how he wanted them to be done.

As a fun aside, Lucille Ball never knew that Star Trek was a science fiction show, or know what it was about. She thought it was about movie or TV stars and their journeys. No, really

 

[SPCTRE]

I'm sure they do want Fast & Furious in space (it would, after all, be a tonal fit with the prior two movies).

Actually, going all the way down the rabbit hole of the FF franchise's unique brand of dumb (in the most positive sense I can convey using that word) would be kind of amazing. Also, I wouldn't mind a similar number of movies. I mean, look at them. They just. Keep. Going.

 

[BigJake]

If they manage to work in the Rock, Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez, I'd be on board.

 

[SPCTRE]

See? See?! Now we're talking