Well, we're talking about the character of James T. Kirk here. What I mean is that that character has been featured in many different stories and been interpreted in many different ways by writers, directors, and actors (since even Shatner had more than one interpretation of Kirk over the years) as well as by audiences. This is an interpretation of Kirk by a team of actor, writers, and director who haven't interpreted the character before, so naturally they bring something new in their approach to that character. What they see in the character isn't going to be the same thing other people see, so not every fan is going to agree with their way of interpreting the character. There have been stories that have interpreted Kirk in ways I don't agree with. But Kirk is not a character defined by a single story. All the different interpretations are just different facets of the whole.
Yeah, I agree with all that. But I don't see how that's intrinsically the mark of a good character.
And been fired by the bosses and/or stockholders who demand that they do everything they can to make more profit. After all, they're in competition with other businesses, and if they underperform, they get outcompeted and suffer for it. That's how business works.
I like how you didn't quote the part where I said that wasn't the point. I'm not stupid, I understand that's just the way the business works. Again, as I said later in that same paragraph, I'm actually agreeing with you here:
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.
That doesn't make any sense. It was the consistent success of the first four ST movies that led to Paramount bringing ST back to television with TNG. And there are tons of other examples of studios developing TV spinoffs and tie-ins to try to build on the success of movie franchises.
I don't see any spinoffs for Batman, Spider-Man, or any of the other big explosive action movies that most closely resemble the format that this Star Trek movie had (unless you count cartoons). Sure, 2-4 were big action movies, but they were moderately successful B-movies, and besides, the glory days of TV Trek were still fresh in some people's minds (especially since it was cleaning up in syndication for many years after cancellation). The freshest TV Trek memory now is Enterprise (now, I personally liked Enterprise, but like it or not, it wasn't successful).
I'm not stating this as any kind of insider knowledge, but my pessimistic read of the situation is that the suits may be saying, "See, Trek on TV isn't working anymore, we just need to stick with the movies for a while, and not ruin the good thing we got." I would be the first person to be thrilled if I'm wrong about that, but until we see a show on the air, I won't be holding my breath.
Besides, you're forgetting who the "suits" in charge of the franchise are these days. When CBS and Paramount split, the former got the TV properties and the latter got the movie properties. And ST is intrinsically, primarily a TV property, so CBS got ownership of the whole franchise. Because it's also a movie property, Paramount got to keep a license to make more ST movies (similarly to how CBS licenses Pocket to make ST novels, IDW to make ST comics, and so on). But it's still CBS, the television side of the corporate split, that owns Star Trek and decides its future. Paramount retains the motion picture rights as long as it keeps making movies, but it can't stop CBS from deciding to make a TV series. And I can't see why CBS wouldn't want to make a new series to increase their profits from the franchise's new life. It doesn't make sense that they'd leave it exclusively in the hands of a licensee. As I said the other day (though maybe not in this thread, I forget), I think I've read that they're holding off on a new TV series until after the next movie or two, just to give the movie series more traction, but I don't see them holding off perpetually.
This, at least, is good news. Hopefully, it'll be more like the next movie and not two.
Within the context of the fictional "reality," of course you can. If someone says that Spock had four arms, that can be conclusively debunked with a single screencap. If someone says that Starfleet's first major battle with the Borg was at Wolf 358, that can be debunked by pointing out all the references to Wolf 359. And if someone says that the arrowhead insignia was exclusively or originally the Enterprise's insignia until after TOS, that can be conclusively disproven by reference to "Court-martial," "Friendship One," and now ST XI.
You're absolutely right about that. I realized after I had posted that what I had meant to say was "you can't debunk something that isn't being purported as fact (even within that fictional reality)." I didn't think that a parenthetical clause of a completely unrelated point would be ripped apart for factual accuracy. It was, again, just an anecdote, the point of which was to illustrate how easily such quirks as the trial result in TVH could be explained. I didn't think I'd have to run it by Richard Arnold first.
And I don't deny that that probably was the intent of the producers at the time.
Thank you, that's all I was saying. The rest is fairly incidental to me. As long as I don't write official novels, my version of Star Trek is not beholden to canon.
The bottom line is, movies cannot be expected to be entirely logical, coherent, or intelligent stories, especially in this day and age. They're a particular class of storytelling that demands extreme narrative shorthand and an emphasis on the immediacy of the moment. They make huge leaps of plot and logic that you typically wouldn't find in a book or a TV series. That's because they have such a limited amount of time to tell such big stories. It's just an inherent attribute of the medium. And the modern climate of moviemaking exacerbates it in a lot of ways -- by the demands of relentless pacing, and by a climate where the director is god and scripts are considered disposable so that narrative logic is routinely discarded in favor of moments of coolness.
This I agree with, but didn't you already refute
JarodRussel's point earlier? It's a completely fair point, but it does sound kinda familiar. (I suppose in a thread this long, some things can be restated.)
So this is probably the smartest, most coherent ST feature film we could've realistically expected anyone in Hollywood to make.
I really, really hope you're wrong about that. Aren't you a little worried that movies are just gonna get stupider and stupider until they don't make any coherent sense at all? Maybe that's a bit fatalistic, but it does seem like that's what they're aiming for.
So me, I'm grateful we got as good a movie as we did. I don't think anyone could've realistically done better given the nature of the feature film industry today.
That sounds more like a reason to be depressed, not grateful. Granted, about the movie industry, not Star Trek. I just saw the A-Team movie, and I found it very reminiscent of STXI (in all the ways I disliked, although the main characters were more likable). Made by a whole different creative crew, of course. I'll be glad to accept that the problems I have with the movie are a product of the soul-sucking entertainment industry, and not Abrams personally.
