I think most of the time, anyone who sets out to purposely make an epic is doomed to failure. Generally, epics happen, they aren't planned. When he conceived 2001, Stanley Kubrick suggested to Arthur C. Clarke that they needed to make "the proverbial good science fiction movie." He didn't say "let's make something epic that people will still be analyzing 40 years from now." I think if the next Trek film turns out to be epic in scope, that will be a benefit, but that Abrams should not set out to make an epic per se.
(And, as a side note, I'm as big a fan of 2001 as anyone, but I wonder how many people actually find that film to be entertaining. Dazzling, thought-provoking, epic, revolutionary. I hear those terms thrown around all the time. But do people actually find it to be an entertaining movie, or do they simply like watching it because of all the stuff there is to analyze and discuss?)
(And, as a side note, I'm as big a fan of 2001 as anyone, but I wonder how many people actually find that film to be entertaining. Dazzling, thought-provoking, epic, revolutionary. I hear those terms thrown around all the time. But do people actually find it to be an entertaining movie, or do they simply like watching it because of all the stuff there is to analyze and discuss?)
L
Lord Garth
Guest
I don't analyze or discuss the movie -- who out there would I be able to discuss it to? Unfortunately, I don't know anyone else who has the stamina to sit through the movie IRL. I tried watching it once when I was 13 but everyone else in my house threw such a ruckus that I had to turn it off just to shut them up. I finally got to watch the movie in its entirety when I was 26 and thought, "That's it?!"
I find the movie gets more "entertaining" as it goes along but I myself really watch it more because I'm impressed with the production than anything else.
2001 gets overlooked too often in favor of Star Wars as a film that set the visual standard for the space setting. Star Trek: The Motion Picture seems like it would fit in better if it were made closer to 1970 than 1980.
I'm not sure what people mean when they say they want Trek XI to be epic. Do they mean epic in terms of story or epic in terms of visuals?
Personally, I'd like to see something that mingles the two to good effect. I'm hoping that JJ Abrams can elevate this movie above the "extended TV episode" syndrome that so catastrophically afflicted the TNG movies (First Contact aside) whereby their initially grand stories were pared back to small scale, TV-esque offerings obviously written with one eye firmly on the limited budget.
All four of the TNG movies could've been epic, the scope was certainly there in their initial stories, but Paramount never had the balls to free up enough funding for the full scope of said stories to be realised on the screen, so the production designers never really had enough money to convey the interior scale of the ships, and the effects people couldn't realise a truly epic fleet battle of gargantuan proportions. Instead they cheaped out, and gave us three out of four movies that constrained the scope of their story within an aesthetic that looked no more expensive than the average episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I'm hoping that now there's no Star Trek TV series currently in production, and with a totally new creative team driving the movie, that we might finally see something that can be regarded as visually epic in the way that Star Trek: The Motion Picture was (preferably without its ponderous, slow moving, supposedly "epic" storytelling though).
Personally, I'd like to see something that mingles the two to good effect. I'm hoping that JJ Abrams can elevate this movie above the "extended TV episode" syndrome that so catastrophically afflicted the TNG movies (First Contact aside) whereby their initially grand stories were pared back to small scale, TV-esque offerings obviously written with one eye firmly on the limited budget.
All four of the TNG movies could've been epic, the scope was certainly there in their initial stories, but Paramount never had the balls to free up enough funding for the full scope of said stories to be realised on the screen, so the production designers never really had enough money to convey the interior scale of the ships, and the effects people couldn't realise a truly epic fleet battle of gargantuan proportions. Instead they cheaped out, and gave us three out of four movies that constrained the scope of their story within an aesthetic that looked no more expensive than the average episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I'm hoping that now there's no Star Trek TV series currently in production, and with a totally new creative team driving the movie, that we might finally see something that can be regarded as visually epic in the way that Star Trek: The Motion Picture was (preferably without its ponderous, slow moving, supposedly "epic" storytelling though).
I think the movie should be EPIC on the scale of "Plan 9 From Outer Space". That flick has the best special effects EVER! TMP's visuals pale in comparison to Plan 9. 
