I agree. III did the best job of being true to the original, in most respects. (For one thing, it was the one film that made any subtantial use of "The Plot," the Lalo Schifrin musical motif that was an integral part of every episode's score.) However, I didn't like the way it, even more than the rest of the movies, turned the IMF into this massive government operation. It works against the feel of the original series, that this was a small, off-the-books operation being run out of a guy's apartment, recruiting actors and models and engineers and circus strongmen instead of professional agents, so that the government would have deniability for its actions.
I concur, that was a weak point (I didn't really think Crudup's motivations made a lot of sense, either), but it's just one of those things you almost kinda expect from modern movies, unfortunately.
Well, that's the mark of a good character, isn't it? That he's complex enough that he's perceived differently by different people.
Now, I think that bad characters can be complex, too. But then, I guess we would just get into a semantic discussion about the definition of good or bad characters. But I think that a character doesn't necessarily have to be complex to be perceived differently by different viewers, because each viewer is
putting in something different. In fact, one could argue that even the most basic characters will be perceived differently by each viewer, because such a stripped-down character would require people to put even more of their own perspectives into it.
I don't know if that makes sense, I'm just thinking out loud. But the point is, I don't think that different interpretations necessarily indicates complexity.
So who knows? Maybe the next movie will develop Kirk in a way that will enable you to see more "Kirkness" in him. After all, this movie was the origin story, about getting him and the crew into place. In the next movie, they don't have to deal with all that and can go deeper into the characters.
Yeah, I've said this before, but since it's one of the few positives things about the movie I have in my arsenal, I might as well repeat it; I'm still very hopeful about the next one. Assuming it doesn't start before the end of STXI, before he's in the center seat, then Kirk will certainly be in a very different situation (official command), and only God and Kurtzman & Orci know how that will affect his character. I'm trying to be guarded in my optimism, because it was a rather steep drop for me after getting my hopes up about this movie (the Kelvin scene was
so good!), but I do still think there's a very good chance that I will like the next one a lot more.
Everyone in a capitalist society has to be concerned with profit on some level. Ultimately, no matter how much you may be doing it for the love of the craft, no matter how much you wish you could tell a certain kind of story, you won't be able to tell that kind of story if you can't stay in business.
$385 million far exceeds staying in business. They could've just made
less profit.
But anyway, that's really beside the point, because I wasn't saying it was wrong, as such. Aggravating at times, yes, but understandable. In fact, the point I was trying to make was essentially the same as yours, that it's just the nature of the movie business (I guess my bitterness did kinda creep in, though).
And no matter what your opinion about blockbusters, that's a good thing for the franchise. Because it's disproven the myth that ST was dead, and it's brought new attention and profit to the franchise, and that's probably good for the prospects of new TV shows, books, comics, etc. The movies are what raise the profile and create the buzz for the rest.
That's certainly one way to look at it. But I'm very much afraid that the success of Star Trek as an explosive summer blockbuster (much more successful than any of the first ten, right?) will just leave the suits thinking that this is the best medium for Star Trek, and they can just forget all that TV nonsense. Books, comics, t-shirts, fine; they're cheaper to make. But I'm starting to wonder if this success will actually make it much
less likely that we'll see small-screen Trek any time soon.
Rookiebatman said:
Even when I was excited about the upcoming movie, and hoping it might have some depth to it, I knew it wasn't really going to be anything more than a big, explosive, action-fest.
I thought it had plenty of depth. The plot was full of logic holes, but I thought there was an effective focus on character and emotion, that the action beats served the emotional beats rather than vice-versa. Abrams has always been good at balancing intense action with character-driven storytelling. One of the reasons M:I:III is so much better than its predecessors is because it humanizes Ethan Hunt, gives him a life beyond the job, and makes his relationship with his fiancee/wife pivotal to the movie.
Agreed about M:I3, but the difference is that I liked Ethan Hunt. A movie giving sufficient focus to a character, when I don't even like that character, doesn't help me.
But what I was trying to say there, is that even when I know it was gonna be "a big, explosive, action-fest," I still did have some hope of depth. I wasn't trying to suggest that the two are mutually exclusive. That point was really just about the fact that it being a big action movie was a foregone conclusion, whether there was any depth or not.
I mean, nothing shows this better than the Kelvin sequence. With all that big battle stuff going on, the real focus, of the script, the direction, the cinematography, the music, everything, is on the agonizing emotion of George and Winona leading up to the moment of Jim's birth. When I watched that sequence, I wasn't going "Gee whiz, look at all the bright explodey things," I was bawling my eyes out at the very human tragedy that the film clearly regarded as more important than the action.
Again, I loved the Kelvin scene. You'll get no arguments from me there.
And yet the fans' hunger for origin stories has given us Enterprise: The First Adventure, Vulcan's Forge, Mike Barr's superb "All Those Years Ago..." annual from DC, Marvel's Early Voyages series, IDW's Crew, etc. It's not just viewers, it's readers.
I don't have a problem with origin stories in general. And despite the fact that I used TOS as an example of not needing an origin, I don't even mind them in TV shows. Note that I said "I hate origin
movies." The problem I have is when you spend the better part of a whole movie explaining the origins of a character or group, when we won't get another one for three years, and there probably won't be more than three before the whole thing is reinvented. It's almost like Tristram Shandy spending half of his book getting born.
Essentially, my line of thought is "time is short, let's get into it." And I don't for a moment believe that you can't give a character depth and meaning without explaining his whole backstory. Look at Casablanca; it doesn't start out by explaining how Rick got there or why he's so selfish; we get little glimpses of it throughout the movie, but in the meantime, we're telling the real story, instead of the story of how everyone got to the story. And the little glimpses we do get might make the basis for a good tie-in novel, but I'm glad they weren't in the movie itself, because that would've taken away from the excellent movie it ended up being without that.
This is the second time this week that's come up and I've had to debunk it. "Court-martial" showed a number of non-Enterprise personnel wearing the delta insignia (or arrowhead, as I prefer to call it), and VGR: "Friendship One" established it as a UESPA logo in use in 2067. Not to mention the new movie further debunking it by showing the Kelvin crew using the arrowhead in 2233.
You can't "debunk" something that's completely fabricated anyway. I'm not purporting this as something that could be canonical, it's just a fun part of my personal continuity. But it seems very likely to me that the
intent in TOS was for other ships/stations to have their own insignia, and when they didn't (as in Court Martial) that was just due to the budgetary limitations they had at the time. Contraindications from Voyager or STXI don't sway me therefore, since that has nothing to do with the intent of the TOS production staff. Again, I'm not trying to prove this as something that should be accepted as a fact of the greater Star Trek universe. It's just a part of my personal, purely subjective Star Trek "tapestry" (just like someone else might say that this or that episode isn't a part of their personal continuity). Perhaps I shouldn't have shared something so personal, or anecdotal, but I thought some people might be entertained by it (as I have been entertained by many other completely unnecessary pieces of continuity-Spackle I've read here). So sue me.
So, yeah, I'll grant you that in the greater Star Trek continuity, the Enterprise wasn't the only one to have the delta (even without the new movie, since I just considered that a continuity error anyway). But, if you want to argue the
intent of Roddenberry and the TOS production crew, we should probably start a separate thread.
Besides, the idea of Starfleet adopting one ship's logo to honor it is fannish and ridiculous. Wouldn't that be a huge insult to the valiant crews of all the other ships in the fleet? And I don't buy the idea that the E was the first ship to return intact from a 5-year mission, for one thing because I don't buy the unsupported assumption that 5-year missions are in any way standard. We have evidence that one ship had one 5-year mission. One data point is not evidence of a pattern. It's also a bad case of small-universe syndrome, the assumption that the events we were presented with on a television series were the only important things that happened in the entire universe.
Again, since this was only my personal continuity, and I didn't expect to have to prove it to anyone else, I considered the noncanonical intent of people like Roddenberry. He said in the TMP novelization (and I think the Phase II writer's guide) that the Ent was the first ship to come back relatively intact from a five-year mission, so I decided to assimilate that into my personal continuity. You are certainly correct that there's no canonical evidence that any ship besides the Enterprise went on five-year missions, but that doesn't mean it can't be a part of my own version of Star Trek. That's all this ever was, just an amusing anecdote. Like saying Khan recognized Chekov because he tried to retake engineering. It's just for fun. With all due respect to your zeal for accuracy, you could probably stand to lighten up just a little in this case. (But if you want to start another thread, I'll be glad to engage in a purely academic discussion with you.)
Rookiebatman said:
But yeah, while I wouldn't call it "a thousand times more believable," I'm sure nuKirk's promotion could be explained just as easily.
You're right. It's at least fifty thousand times more believable.
I wonder if, back in 1986, you were saying that what happened in TVH was 50,000 times more believable than "Spock's Brain."
Making fun of TVH isn't gonna make me like STXI any more, you know. I'm not sure what you think this will prove.
