Directed by Michael Bay & Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer!
The Movies They Should Have Made
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Directed by Michael Bay & Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer!
The award winning soundtrack consists of nothing but death french horns by Hans Zimmerman. Who also appeared in the film as Dr. Lewis Zimmerman's long lost brother.
I could also see this movie directed by Zack Snyder. 
+1
Even BEFORE Yesterday's Enterprise, I had hoped for something like that. In fact, October 1988, I remember reading this in Starlog Magazine....
Neat! But that Enterprise is a dog.
And what exactly would be the point of making a Mirror Universe TNG movie, other than for fanwank?
You're entitled to your opinion, but the definition of "fanwank" is something that only actual fans of the thing in question would be interested in or understand. By that definition, the Abrams films aren't fanwank in the least, based on the fact that everyone knows who Kirk and Spock are, and that people who weren't even fans of Star Trek went and saw those movies.
The idea of the doppelganger is ancient and ubiquitous. It speaks to countless questions of good and evil, individual worth, roads not taken in life, quantum physics, heredity vs. environment, on and on.
The Mirror Universe itself is a bit camp, but done right it could be both fun and highly philosophical. I think general audiences would have been intrigued to see Picard as a baddie in the same way evil Spock resonated with fans before.
It's really more a question of good vs bad writing/producing. Trek's been rather weak there for some time (e.g. INS/NEM esp could have been much much better), but that's not what this thread is about.
Re fanwank, when I think fankwank, it's of sleek super-starships (Prometheus), bristling with weapons (Scimitar), crewed by people who all manage to know each other from somewhere (or with people we know from other series), who Foxtrot Charlie Tango Section 31 have to make sacrifices to save purple mountains majesty. There's little sci-fi or broader thematic exploration to iy beyond a Tom Clancy-like military/intelligence procedural. What are others' ideas of fanwank?
The Mirror Universe itself is a bit camp, but done right it could be both fun and highly philosophical. I think general audiences would have been intrigued to see Picard as a baddie in the same way evil Spock resonated with fans before.
It's really more a question of good vs bad writing/producing. Trek's been rather weak there for some time (e.g. INS/NEM esp could have been much much better), but that's not what this thread is about.
Re fanwank, when I think fankwank, it's of sleek super-starships (Prometheus), bristling with weapons (Scimitar), crewed by people who all manage to know each other from somewhere (or with people we know from other series), who Foxtrot Charlie Tango Section 31 have to make sacrifices to save purple mountains majesty. There's little sci-fi or broader thematic exploration to iy beyond a Tom Clancy-like military/intelligence procedural. What are others' ideas of fanwank?
I think that, in common usage, "fanwank" is used to ridicule ideas and plots that are likely to be of vastly more interest to us hardcore, continuity-obsessed fans than the average moviegoer. Fanwank, as opposed to "general-audience-wank."
"What if Captain Robert April teamed up with Q against an army of borgified Orion slave girls--and they had to use the Guardian of Forever to go back in time to change the outcome of the Dominion War!"
Which actually sounds like a lot of fun, but, yeah, that kinda thing. See also: "continuity porn."
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By this definition, a Mirror universe movie featuring Kirk and Spock would not be fanwank since everyone knows who Kirk and Spock are and it's highly likely people who aren't fans would go see the movie. I mean, people who aren't fans saw the Abrams movies so why not any other Trek movie?
Your statement implies that only fans recognize who Picard and Data are and that non-fans would not go see a TNG movie, let alone one set in the Mirror Universe. I just don't follow that logic. Why would non-fans go see a Kirk and Spock movie but not a TNG movie? Why would non-fans go see an X-Men movie for that matter?
Yeah, pretty much this. Uber ships bristling with weapons, invulnerability shields and armor and brimming with 47 warp nacelles. Basically what I imagine I would have come up with when I was 13.
Fanwank: Fanwank, originating in comics fandom letters-page practice, is a verb that refers to fannish justification of continuity or other errors. When used as a noun, it refers to the explanation itself.
Or, from Urban Dictionary: A term used in Doctor Who fiction to refer to any piece of work which reuses old monsters or characters purely in an attempt to stir feelings in the groins of sad anal fanboys.
Fan1 "In this new book, the Daleks, the Cybermen and Yartek team up to fight a war against the Doctor, UNIT and the Time-Lords. The Doctor finally defeats The Master on the planet Skaro with help from Leela, K9 and the Sonic Screwdriver."
Fan2 "Sounds like a load of fanwank to me!"
Now you might consider the Mirror Universe a fanwank because all the fans seem to love it or that it's been overused (TOS, DS9, VOY had a mirrorish episode, STContinues, plus books and comics). That is your right. I don't see how simply mentioning the Mirror Universe automatically makes it Fanwank.
In my defense - the Abrams Universe has an Uber Enterprise that fought an even bigger Uber Starship. The Narada is some simple mining ship that can destroy a planet plus eviscerated several starships from the time of Kirk's birth to present. Not only that, but let's bring back Khan along with the villian Uber starship. The crashing of the Vengance and the fight between Spock and Khan was, in my opinion, over the top. Oh, and let's do a scene by scene recreation of Spock's death only let's have Kirk die instead. Then we'll have Kirk saved from death by magic blood taken from Khan or one of his fellow supermen.
Nemesis is no better in my opinion what with it's own Uber Romulan/Reman ship, a clone of Picard, a clone or replacement Data. Let's kill Data off but not really because we have B-4 to replace him. Oh, and everyone loved the nebula battle in ST:WOK so let's do our own version of that. We'll even throw in the USS Archer as a continuity reference.
But your mileage may vary.
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You misunderstood me. My point wasn't whether people would go see either a TOS or a TNG movie about the Mirror Universe. My point was using the Mirror Universe at all as the basis for your movie's plot. What is the casual moviegoer's incentive for seeing a film where the entire cast has to fight stereotypically evil versions of themselves? To me, that's fanwank no matter who the cast is.
For my part the current franchise is wasting opportunities to mine the original franchise's stories. Imagine a reworked 'Doomsday Machine' with, let's say, not one but three planet killers coming at the Federation, and a Borg sub plot....
Now you're just being dismissive. Zombie-cyborgs? Who's gonna be afraid of that? Pointy-eared elf aliens? They're going to laugh you off the airwaves! ...It's about the execution. I think I mentioned in my last reply reasons why it could work.
Do you have any idea how many different books, tv shows, movies, etc, have played with the evil twin stereotype? It's not some sci-fi exclusive high concept. Plenty of people find the idea entertaining enough. To a general audience, it's easily as potentially successful as an enemy who's invisible (STIV), a stereotypical old rival out for revenge (STII), a fountain of youth planet (STIX), etc. That's not even getting into the whales, or 'god'. Either of those ideas should've been far, far more suspect from a GA pov than the MU.
Also - the mirror universe wasn't exclusively stereotypical evil twins, and any movie would obviously have the option to take the concept to a rather more serious place that what the shows had done (just as the movie Klingons were very different from the TOS Klingons).
No, I'm not being dismissive. I'm thinking like a movie producer who wants to make money off of his work, not like a Star trek fan. The Borg in FC worked because at the time, the Borg were popular. The Mirror Universe was never popular enough to warrant an entire film about it.
The Borg was popular. But from a producer's point of view, zombies are always popular, which is all the Borg really are.
*quietly crumples up script and throws in garbage and walks away whistling*
What about a movie where a smuggling vessel from an alternate universe helps defeat the Borg cube during Star Trek: First Contact.
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Most people had no idea who the Borg were. To casual viewers they were just cybernetic baddies, and they worked because the movie worked, not because everyone loves cybernetic baddies. Who knew who Khan was in 1982?
Doppelgangers would work just as easily as cyborgs or zombies. Alternate Universes have been on the covers of National Geographic, Popular Science, Time Magazine, and countless others. How I Met Your Mother had a running gag about each character running into their doppelganger, goateed Spock-like evil twins were on Southpark, and Orphan Black is a TV show... It's not that casual viewers wouldn't understand or enjoy an alternate universe crew.
Again, it's more about the execution, and maybe this is really your issue, Dukhat. Trek has done a pretty shoddy job of portraying the Mirror Universe. Characters are usually over-the-top mustache-twirling villains and I'd hate to have seen such a movie. But I think done right, it would have been both intellectually stimulating and viscerally chilling. Mirror Spock was a complex character in a bad situation. Mirror Sisko was tragic and half insane...then again our Sisko poisoned and entire planet to get a few Maquis outlaws, but I digress.
I think especially with TNG being at the height of its popularity in '94 (Shatner and Stewart on the cover of Time) I think seeing the utopian heroes dealing with issues of identity and society posed by the Mirror Universe would have had the same effect on general audiences as it did with fans originally. And I think people would have gone nuts for an evil Picard - people love Stewart. "Best villain since Khan" it would have gone down as.
Doppelgangers would work just as easily as cyborgs or zombies. Alternate Universes have been on the covers of National Geographic, Popular Science, Time Magazine, and countless others. How I Met Your Mother had a running gag about each character running into their doppelganger, goateed Spock-like evil twins were on Southpark, and Orphan Black is a TV show... It's not that casual viewers wouldn't understand or enjoy an alternate universe crew.
Again, it's more about the execution, and maybe this is really your issue, Dukhat. Trek has done a pretty shoddy job of portraying the Mirror Universe. Characters are usually over-the-top mustache-twirling villains and I'd hate to have seen such a movie. But I think done right, it would have been both intellectually stimulating and viscerally chilling. Mirror Spock was a complex character in a bad situation. Mirror Sisko was tragic and half insane...then again our Sisko poisoned and entire planet to get a few Maquis outlaws, but I digress.
I think especially with TNG being at the height of its popularity in '94 (Shatner and Stewart on the cover of Time) I think seeing the utopian heroes dealing with issues of identity and society posed by the Mirror Universe would have had the same effect on general audiences as it did with fans originally. And I think people would have gone nuts for an evil Picard - people love Stewart. "Best villain since Khan" it would have gone down as.
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+1
Even BEFORE Yesterday's Enterprise, I had hoped for something like that. In fact, October 1988, I remember reading this in Starlog Magazine....
Neat! But that Enterprise is a dog.
Well I was more referring to the TOS meets TNG art there
But now that you mention it, back in the day (1988, mind you), I thought that Enterprise looked pretty cool. Now, not so much, compared to what came after. Looks too boxy and also derivative of the Excelsior, but it does get an E for effort. Here's a site with other angles:
http://culttvman.com/main/brian-pimentas-ncx-2701-concept-starship/
But I think it is interesting that:
1. The anterior section where the neck meets the saucer reminds me of the canon on the AGT Enterprise-D
2. The warp nacelles resemble the Enterprise-E nacelles.
3. The overall silhouette of the ship reminds me of the USS Vengeance .
Funny enough, IDW's 'Five Year Mission''s current arc is a Mirror verse story. Mirror CumberkHan is going to have a big role (apparently.)
Mind you, those are aimed squarely at a niche group of fans even amongst Trekkies and comic fans. Though judging by certain cover previews, they're attempting to branch out to the Cumber-whatever-his-fans-are-calling-themselves-now.
Mind you, those are aimed squarely at a niche group of fans even amongst Trekkies and comic fans. Though judging by certain cover previews, they're attempting to branch out to the Cumber-whatever-his-fans-are-calling-themselves-now.
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