The Case Against Kirk
- Thread starter YARN
- Start date
Have they said that anywhere, or is that just your assumption?
Like I said, the public perception of Kirk, as shaped by forty years of movies and tv episodes starring William Shatner, is of a cocky, womanizing, rule-breaking maverick who boldly rushes in where angels fear to tread. That's who Kirk is in the popular imagination.
So when you're introducing a younger, greener Kirk to modern audiences, those are the character traits you're going want to emphasise. Because that's what we expect of Kirk.
(As opposed to a "stack of books" who has never, ever appeared on screen.)
Yes, it is a generalization because there can be exceptions.
Well, as aforementioned, the best filmmakers have characters who grow and learn from their situations; I have faith we'll see Kirk grow over the series.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
Other than one mention in the credits we know nothing about Kirk's "stepfather". Since he didn't appear we don't even know that Kirk had a stepfather. We know that he lived in the same house as the man who's car he stole. He could be his uncle, his mother's boyfriend, his grandfather even. We certainly don't know he was abusive. He does threaten to kick Jimmy's ass but that's because he's angry about having his car stolen.
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You think you can get away with this just because your mother's off planet.
You get your ass back home now!
You live in my house buddy.
You live in my house and that's my car.
You get one scratch on that car and I'm gonna whip your ass...
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No indication in the movie that he's Kirk's stepfather or that he's abusive. We just know he owns the house Kirk lives in and he just had his car stolen.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
How exactly did Kirk grow? He's still breaking every rule. He started stealing a car. Later he stole a Starship by deliberately provoking a response in Spock. He doesn't ask Spock to be his first officer. From the way Spock speaks, he isn't even assigned to the Enterprise.
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Mr. Sulu, prepare to engage thrusters.
Permission to come aboard, Captain.
Permission granted.
As you have yet to select a first officer,
respectfully I would like to submit my candidacy.
---
Spock would not request permission to come aboard a ship that he was assigned to. Kirk is ready to depart (note the thruster command) and has no First Officer. Kirk doesn't recognize the value of Spcok. If he had, he would have sought him out and asked him to be his XO. Kirk's the same rash little boy that drove a corvette off a cliff.
I would hardly call those who wrote ST09 "of the best filmmakers."
As for his academy days, Kirk said to McCoy in "Shore Leave" that he was so serious at the academy that it made him a target for an upper classman named Finnegan. And he got to finally do what he wanted to do at the academy in this episode - beat up Finnegan.
The "stack of books" from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is actually when Lieutenant Kirk was teaching at the academy.
As to reinforcing his "stack of books" line - there were several episodes where Kirk goes, "yes so-and-so were required reading at the academy" and a few where he suggests a solution to Spock/Scotty with "isn't there a theory that...".
The younger TOS Kirk would have probably been more of a serious book-knowledge/resourceful type that picked up his daredevil/real-world knowledge and character traits from his mentors and heroes (Captains Garrovick and Garth) as he worked his way up through the ranks and distinguished himself, IMHO.
As to the JJ-Kirk, it's only been one movie. His character had apparently a different upbringing and different mentor helping him into the academy. His character still has time to mature. Look at Craig's Bond character - very rough around the edges in the beginning and he doesn't become 007 until the end of the second movie.
Well, Trek 2009 was the first of a series, so we would hopefully see him grow over the course of the series. True, there could have been growth during the film, but that would add time to the film which had already had so much going on: Intro of characters, Vulcan, Nero, Earth...etc...
If the writers are smart, Kirk realizes that being cocky and reckless is going to get him and his crew into trouble; as Kirk not only has himself to worry about...but 400+ people.
I do have to agree with you.
I'm not a huge fan of the director or the writers (LOST, Transformers 1 & 2, Alias) but they happened to make a film--Star Trek--I thought was really good story-wise as well as entertainment-wise.
Star Trek was fun again.
Even though they (Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman) are not on the same level: Peter Jackson, who even has films I'm not too big on, really did a good job with the Lord of the Rings series. Looking back at his earlier filmography, you probably wouldn't link him to LOTR, but you can see the love he and the actors put into the characters, settings, and situations throughout the series.
Same with Abrams and the other individuals. Like LOTR and Peter Jackson; if ST fails, it will be on them. There are people other than ST fans who want to see these films, and be entertained and be able to step away from reality for two hours...and really have a series they can come back to.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
TOS Kirk - attended lectures by knowledgeable professors.
NuKirk - Slept with knowledgeable professors (the female ones anyway).
How deep of space could it really be in anyway? At one percent of the speed of light it would only travel about one and a half light years or so. More likely the Botany Bay was in the outer portion of the Oort cloud, it was still in the solar system.
If you think about it, nuKirk wasn't much of a womanizer. He only got one female down to her knickers and never did close the deal. He never even got Uhura's first name through his own efforts, he overheard it.
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The "stack of books" was definitively established on more than one occasion. But since the film is a reboot then they can ignore it.
But the film was nothing but fulfilling cliched expectations by a majority audience who doesn't really know the characters, only the caricatures of them. Instead of writing a film adhering to what Star Trek is they made a film about what John and Jane Q. Public expected it to be. Pine's Kirk plays to cliches the general public holds of Kirk and not the Kirk that TOS portrayed.
A small example is a case in point. For decades there has been the running joke of Kirk making it with all the chicks and particularly the green skinned alien ones. And yet nowhere in the series does this actually happen. The one green skinned alien female he does encounter is nutso and intent on killing him an understandably he wants nothing to do with her. And yet this unsubstantiated cliche was played to for the general audience.
NuKirk was played in a way that affirms erroneous assumptions of TOS Kirk and in extant indicting the TOS Kirk as outdated and not worthy of appreciation.
Now the details don't really matter in a reboot because what happened before doesn't really count anymore. But from the get-go the TOS Kirk was a character to be admired and he would be shown to be worthy of appreciation and respect even with his character flaws. But the end result for NuKirk is not a character worthy of respect and admiration but a cocky, mouthy brat who gets lucky and doesn't earn the things handed to him.
Not yet, anyways.
Like I said, we were introduced to TOS Kirk in the middle of his story AFTER all that background stuff already happened and all his development. We never found out anything about his life before Starfleet, actually.
NuKirk, with a reboot and all, it's not really an option to just drop us off in the middle of his story.
Like I said, we were introduced to TOS Kirk in the middle of his story AFTER all that background stuff already happened and all his development. We never found out anything about his life before Starfleet, actually.
NuKirk, with a reboot and all, it's not really an option to just drop us off in the middle of his story.
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."--The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
If your audience expects to see Kirk with a green girl, where's the harm in giving them what they want?
Especially if you get a fun, sexy scene out of it . . . .
I love the way TOS die-hards obsessively dry hump the "stack of books with legs" line (from a guy who thought Kirk's middle initial was "R"), and yet William Shatner's young Kirk in his novel Collision Course is almost exactly the same as nuKirk - and that book came out a couple of years before the film!
But we are talking about the same TOS obsessives who insist Nimoy has to be an alternate Old Spock in STXI because they didn't like the film
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But we are talking about the same TOS obsessives who insist Nimoy has to be an alternate Old Spock in STXI because they didn't like the film
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But it wasn't so fun and sexy if you watch the deleted scenes. You see that Kirk was just using her.
That's exactly my point. You can do that because it's a reboot, but they are certainly reimagining the character.
...we are talking about the same TOS obsessives who insist Nimoy has to be an alternate Old Spock in STXI because they didn't like the film
Hence the scene being deleted and not actually being part of the film.
Even so, in another deleted scene Kirk did apologize. Sort of.
