Perhaps this BBS can foot the bill,since it's one of the few places I see this call.
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Star Trek's "Cinematic" Problem
- Thread starter Cryogenator
- Start date
Actions scenes can be great when you can actually see what's happening. Almost all new-Trek fight scenes are a blurry mess of something moving across the screen with rapid cuts so you don't even see who hits whom where how, accompanied by UGH! AGH! EGH! grunts. I quickly fast forward or skip through those cause it's pointless to watch. Remember The Matrix? Those fight scenes showed who hits where so you could keep track of the fight actions, even though they were fast. Why even choreograph all these new fight scenes if what ends up on the screen is just blurry blur?
3 suggestions for any action scene:
- There should be a sense of danger - Too many action scenes, whether it be a fist-fight or a space battle, feel inconsequential. A hero (or group of heroes) can't be seen as heroic if they're fighting idiots where you never fear for their safety at any part of the battle. A hero is only as heroic as the threat they're overcoming. It's part of the reason the John Wick movies have never really clicked for me, since at no point do I fear for John Wick when he's fighting a bunch of mooks.
- The audience should be able to follow what's going on - One thing that I think Star Trek has (usually) done well over the years is make the different sides have their own distinctive colors, ships, and visual language where you know who is who, what is going on, and whether things are going badly or well. I think stuff like the Battle against Control or the Battle at the Binary Stars are the exceptions, where it's just a bunch of flashing pew-pew lights and there's no coherent narrative to the whole thing.
- Damage and loss should be acknowledged - Someone just shrugging off getting a huge cut, or being shot in the shoulder, makes the fight mean less. Same thing goes for watching a ship go through a huge battle, suffer hull damage, and then everything is back to being a-ok when they turn the lights on the bridge back all the way on. One thing I love abut season 3 of Enterprise is that there's no quick fixes for all of the hull damage after "Azati Prime." They live with it for the rest of the season.
The funny thing is, that has made 80s-90s era Trek age better than expected; the slower and oftentimes contemplative pacing - along with a lack of swearing - makes me feel as though humanity has matured.
I prefer action scenes many times. It tells a story and I usually like it.
Star Trek's REAL Cinematic Problem: They're not showing TSFS on the Big Screen for the 40th Anniversary as far as I know!
I've seen all the Star Trek movies from TFF onward in the theater during their original cinematic runs. I saw TWOK in theaters through special screenings in 2010 and 2017. I saw TVH in the theater at a special screening in 2012. And I got to see the 40th Anniversary screening of TMP in 2019. One more movie, one more, and I'll have closed the gap.
But TSFS isn't a self-starter. No one watches TSFS in isolation. They watch it with TWOK and TVH. So now, because of this Cinematic Problem TSFS has, I won't be able to have seen all of the Star Trek movies in the theater.
I've seen all the Star Trek movies from TFF onward in the theater during their original cinematic runs. I saw TWOK in theaters through special screenings in 2010 and 2017. I saw TVH in the theater at a special screening in 2012. And I got to see the 40th Anniversary screening of TMP in 2019. One more movie, one more, and I'll have closed the gap.
But TSFS isn't a self-starter. No one watches TSFS in isolation. They watch it with TWOK and TVH. So now, because of this Cinematic Problem TSFS has, I won't be able to have seen all of the Star Trek movies in the theater.
Also think about this - neither Pike nor Cornwell actually did anything to disarm the torpedo, so what was the point of Cornwell staying in the room? Pike was just fine behind that blast door. Cornwell's sacrifice was stupid and nonsensical, much like a lot of the writing in the back half of season 2.
For a laptop or phone, yeah. For things I'm watching on my home (fairly large) screen, that would look way too pixelated.
Cinema is its own problem. Seattle, where I live, has a movie theatre that was called the Cinerama. Fantastic theatre building. They did show three-strip Cinerama film once in a while, and could also show pretty much every other common type of film, and a great sound system. The theatre was one of Paul Allen's toys and he gave them a blank check for upgrades. But then he died in 2018, and his will made no provision for the theatre continuing to operate: all his "fun toys" businesses were to be sold and the money donated to charity. (Computer History Museum, the former Experience Music Project, and probably some others too.) Fortunately the city intervened and sent money allowing the Seattle International Film Festival to buy the Cinerama, now renamed SIFF Downtown because the trademarked name Cinerama didn't pass along with the building. So, great, it did reopen late last year, but they've been showing nothing but newer movies that are basically excuses for improbable action sequences and special effects. I can't get that interested in characters when the only thing I see them doing to using their guns, swords, wands, or whatever. If they show the Lord of the Rings again, I'll go see it, just to see it on the big screen. But Mad Max? Please, just leave me out in the desert with no water bottle. The Cinerama used to show classics with great special effects too: Lawrence of Arabia, 2001, mixed in with the latest action films. Sometimes I miss seeing movies in a theatre, but first there have to be movies I want to see.
I might be a minority, but I've felt the cinematic nature of having to always be moving hasn't let the shows breathe long enough to explore, grow , and develop characters. Cinematics are great for action scenes, but it's a poor fit for introspection. Everything ramps up to the final exposition and climax, and each season seems to try to one-up the last. Not everything needs to be big and epic. These formats also rely a bit too much on the story-arcs to propel their seasons. If a story-arc is not too well-developed, then the season feels hindered.
And that's a great point. It's akin to the music industry's loudness war, wherein studios began to compress the sound to be as loud as could be possible to grab a listener's attention, but meanwhile losing out on the subtleties associated with a fluctuating sound level; everything mastered at the same level pretty much. Meanwhile, in terms of Trek, it's like, "Watch me, I can be an action movie!"
And that's a great point. It's akin to the music industry's loudness war, wherein studios began to compress the sound to be as loud as could be possible to grab a listener's attention, but meanwhile losing out on the subtleties associated with a fluctuating sound level; everything mastered at the same level pretty much. Meanwhile, in terms of Trek, it's like, "Watch me, I can be an action movie!"
Well, Star Trek started as an action/adventure series, so why not?
When they didn't have the money/the tech to make everything an fx massacre, they turned the deficit into a virtue and put more effort into dialogue and drama. Imo, that had always been Star Trek's strong side, compared to other franchises which have much more action hard coded into their DNA. So yes, I think Star Trek risks becoming generic and losing its identity, when there is too much focus on action and fx. That's also why imo, Star Trek has always been stronger on the small than on the large screen.
TMP started it.
Having each show/season being an "OMG! This is the BIGGEST threat/crisis/event ever!!!" until the next episode where the threat is "OMGx2!! This is now an even BIGGERx2 threat/crisis/event ever!!!!" and so on and so on. Each "threat" has to top the last one and this just gets tedious and even more ridiculous each time. Having a galactic-wide threat/crisis/event is fine for a singular movie but Star Trek is (or should be) an episodic character driven television/small screen show. Every episode DOES NOT need to be non-stop "something epic" happening all the time. As someone mentioned earlier using the analogy of to many sweets all the time it loses its rewards. Lobster and caviar everyday makes one crave a simple hamburger.
Shades of our elections every two years. But when TREK keeps the crisis at a certain distance, popularity rises (TRIBBLES, THE VOYAGE HOME, THE RESTAURANT ENTERPRISE).
Not quite. The episode which the entire franchise owes its life to had action, but it was largely a character-driven drama / moral dilemma story, which set the course for Star Trek (at least TOS).
I always found it had elements of both.
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