Regarding TWOK's popularity
- Thread starter RyuRoots
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Really? Never heard that version. I did read some comments by Harve Bennett to the effect that originally Spock was supposed to die much earlier in the movie, and the rest of the film would have been about Kirk getting "justice" for him. Bennett said that word had leaked out about this idea even during preproduction, and this is one reason the Kobayashi Maru scenario was invented - to make people unsure whether the rumors about Spock's death were true or just rumors.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
The KB was in the early scripts, just not as the opener with the fake spock death.
The Kirk Khan thing is discussed in old STARLOG, the Sowards interview, as well as making of st2.
What I found interesting (in terms of how Meyer could screw good stuff up as well as improve not so good stuff, with most of his work falling under improvement) is that Sowards didn't have all that fire extinguisher crap in the radiation room, it was just Spock in there resetting switches and being bathed in a colored glow.
I think Meyer's hyping of THAT action was a bad mistake ... even the optical enhancements to the unscrewing of the flask don't help it.
The Kirk Khan thing is discussed in old STARLOG, the Sowards interview, as well as making of st2.
What I found interesting (in terms of how Meyer could screw good stuff up as well as improve not so good stuff, with most of his work falling under improvement) is that Sowards didn't have all that fire extinguisher crap in the radiation room, it was just Spock in there resetting switches and being bathed in a colored glow.
I think Meyer's hyping of THAT action was a bad mistake ... even the optical enhancements to the unscrewing of the flask don't help it.
It's easy to see why TWoK is popular. It's a likeable and very accessible film because it hits all the right marks for most people. It has good pacing, a good serving of character moments, decent f/x, good musical scoring and a decent story at the heart of it. It has energy.
That all said I'm always bothered by too many of its logic flaws. All TV episodes and films have logic flaws yet for me it's a matter of how obvious are they or to what extent they jar me out of the story.
I enjoyed TWoK when it premiered, but subsequent viewings have soured me because of so many things that could easily have fixed with some smarter rewriting as well as correcting things that shouldn't have been changed from TMP or at least not changed so drastically.
One BIG thing that bothers me about the film is its obvious (to me) restart feeling. It seems so obvious they were trying to pretend the events of TMP didn't happen. The refit Enterprise went from being a highly advanced far future starship with its crew ready for new voyages to a scow practically ready for decommisioning (and Christ they had CRT monitors that made the flatscreens of TOS look more advanced!). The characters act like senile cadets. The goddamned Reliant doesn't even know what planet they're orbiting. Everyone in the film comes off as dumb. The more colourful new uniforms look ludicrous.
Candidly I feel pretty much all the Trek films suffer from overt logic flaws, some more so than others. I find things in them all I like, but for most I find too many things that bother me. And overall I don't think they're as well written and executed as TOS' better episodes. And I think that's even more true of the TNG movies compared to the best TNG episodes.
Oh well, I've made my point.
That all said I'm always bothered by too many of its logic flaws. All TV episodes and films have logic flaws yet for me it's a matter of how obvious are they or to what extent they jar me out of the story.
I enjoyed TWoK when it premiered, but subsequent viewings have soured me because of so many things that could easily have fixed with some smarter rewriting as well as correcting things that shouldn't have been changed from TMP or at least not changed so drastically.
One BIG thing that bothers me about the film is its obvious (to me) restart feeling. It seems so obvious they were trying to pretend the events of TMP didn't happen. The refit Enterprise went from being a highly advanced far future starship with its crew ready for new voyages to a scow practically ready for decommisioning (and Christ they had CRT monitors that made the flatscreens of TOS look more advanced!). The characters act like senile cadets. The goddamned Reliant doesn't even know what planet they're orbiting. Everyone in the film comes off as dumb. The more colourful new uniforms look ludicrous.
Candidly I feel pretty much all the Trek films suffer from overt logic flaws, some more so than others. I find things in them all I like, but for most I find too many things that bother me. And overall I don't think they're as well written and executed as TOS' better episodes. And I think that's even more true of the TNG movies compared to the best TNG episodes.
Oh well, I've made my point.
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I can definitely see where you're coming from, Warped9. I would have probably seen TWOK as something of an intellectual letdown after TMP, too, and I can of course see the logical flaws. I think the difference between you and I is age. When I was growing up, I-V were all already out, and VI came out when I was six. But I-V more or less simply were there for me - IIRC, II and IV were the first Trek movies I ever saw (on television.)
Naturally, I don't see them all as great or perfect, but I didn't experience the letdown that you did after TMP and therefore perhaps I'm slightly less passionate about those differences in quality? I guess I see them more as one body of work instead of one great movie followed by five less great movies. (And of course, I grew up on TNG so my taste might not be as refined.
) I might also equate the feeling you felt in that regard with how I felt when TNG went to the films. Grr. 
Generally, however, I also think Trek doesn't translate perfectly to film anyway. I think it loses something.
Naturally, I don't see them all as great or perfect, but I didn't experience the letdown that you did after TMP and therefore perhaps I'm slightly less passionate about those differences in quality? I guess I see them more as one body of work instead of one great movie followed by five less great movies. (And of course, I grew up on TNG so my taste might not be as refined.
) I might also equate the feeling you felt in that regard with how I felt when TNG went to the films. Grr. Generally, however, I also think Trek doesn't translate perfectly to film anyway. I think it loses something.
I think TWOK is good, but it's not the Messiah by any means. I think The Undiscovered Country is by far the better movie out of the original six.
I do think TWoK is better than TUC which has problems all its own. It's so obviously a send-off film with all sorts of tiresome nudge-and-wink moments. And I found a lot of the humour forced and somewhat out of character. And once again the Enterprise is made to be more like something just-around-the-corner rather than what it was in TMP.
