What Amazes Me

[Jeyl]

"You needn't be "convinced" by anyone's reasons."
"No, but they aren't knowledgeable Trekkies either. You're forgetting this."
"Without it being explained away, you don't."
"Yeah, in other words they didn't say it, you did."

Hey Devon, I think you need to spend more time on the discussions and less time finger pointing at the posters. You're coming off as kind of a jerk. Why not try replying to someone's discussion without bringing them into it as a means to justify your arguments?

You needn't be "convinced" by anyone's reasons.

Well, I've been convinced by other people's reasons before, just not these. And honestly, I don't want to try and find reasons to like this film anymore. No movie can be made for everyone, even the ones that are made in the attempt to be made for everyone. There will always be that percentage, big or small, that just don't like it. I happen to fall in that percentage that didn't like it. Why? I don't know. Maybe I just like my Star Trek more when I didn't have to rely on "They're just getting started!". You know? This film is built around the whole notion that this isn't Star Trek yet and it's only going to be the next movie where we might get to see these characters do some really cool Star Trek stuff (i.e. not punch/shoot the bad guy).

 

[startrekrcks]

Do you not do reboots of films or tv shows that you grew up with Jeyl?

 

[Jeyl]

Do you not do reboots of films or tv shows that you grew up with Jeyl?

I give reboots a chance. I remember growing up with Tim Burton's Batman at an early age. That was one film that I declared to be my holy bible of comic book movies. It also helped that the film got better and better the more I watched it. When there was word about Batman Begins and how it was rebooting the franchise (I thought they did that already with Forever), I was curious about it. And I enjoyed it. Sure, it follows the origins format to the letter, but at least I liked Bruce Wayne as a character enough to tolerate the story of him becoming Batman. That's something I didn't get with NuKirk because he was always an insufferable a**hole.

Battlestar Galactica I did not get into for many reasons. Not reasons because the show was bad, it just wasn't the show for me.

Casino Royale? Now that was my cup of tea. I enjoyed how they took the James Bond character and just put him in a storyline that portrayed him as a more serious, non-silly type of guy. I especially liked how the film makers didn't try to carry over everything from the previous Bond movies that most movie goers associate him with. That scene where the bartender asks "Shaken or stirred" and he responds "Do I look like I give a damn?" was a bright moment for me as a fan because that just said we're doing Bond from the books and not the movies.

Star Trek? Well, first off I thought going back to the Kirk era was a mixed bag for many reasons. While I do love watching the original series, there are a lot of things about it that changed as the series progressed, and it was certainly for the better. The biggest one is giving the female characters more important roles to play with and giving them equal representation in the uniforms department (at least till Voyager). I also felt the inclusion of every original series main characters to be forced and unnecessary.

And on the whole, using the original series characters just feels like a wasted opportunity for JJ and crew. I have no doubt that they're all talented people when put in the right spot (NOT summer movies) and can create unique and interesting stories and characters to follow. But rather than adding their own addition to the Star Trek lore, they take someone else's characters and make it their own. That's kind of counterproductive in a franchise that's known for offering more characters to the franchise rather than relying solely on just Kirk and Spock. I liked how Star Trek grew to be something that wasn't heavily reliant on the original series characters, just the premise. Now we got nothing but the characters while the premise takes a back seat to the done to death story formula of good guys vs bad guys who hate everything for no good reason.

 

[JarodRussell]

No, but they aren't knowledgeable Trekkies either. You're forgetting this.

It is wrong to assume that only Trekkies would get this. How did the Trekkies learn all that stuff to begin with then?

I watched Star Trek III well before I ever watched a single episode of TOS and I knew what was going on there. And I can't remember it being explained there, it was simply shown.

How is it possible to make an original science fiction/fantasy/whatever movie that introduces stuff for the first time ever?

The context of a) Spock being from another world, b) Uhura being interested in foreign languages and cultures and c) a romantic moment inside a turbolift or the transporter platform would have explained what the hell the finger rubbing means.

 

[startrekrcks]

well it was needed a reboot you think Star Trek belongs to just Gene Roddenberry anyway I think that Trek XI was a loving homage to it's mother universe and am looking forward to more films sorry.

 

[JarodRussell]

well it was needed a reboot you think Star Trek belongs to just Gene Roddenberry anyway I think that Trek XI was a loving homage to it's mother universe and am looking forward to more films sorry.

Reboot or not. This movie feels like that they let the market research department write the script. "You can't show this because the audience is too stupid to notice", "you can't do this because the audience wouldn't get it", "you have to do this because the kids think it's cool". I noticed this in a lot of movies lately, Die Hard 4 for example. They inserted that silly On Star car breaking scene because market research told them that people wanted films that had more BMWs in it. Seriously, what the fuck?

I know it's tiresome to bitch about the stardates, but seriously. Same thing. They again thought "the audience wouldn't get it", so they simply took the Earth date as a "stardate". I mean come on. The people in the 1960s must have been so fucking intelligent that they got everything what was going on in the show. I wonder what happened.

 

[Withers]

If anyone saw that poster and read that tag line, they would have been in Argentina (note the image URL,) one of only two countries in the world where that tag line was used, unless I'm mistaken.

I saw a movie poster just like it here in Seattle. I also saw one that had "Not Your Father's Trek" which serves to make exactly the same point. Then there were the television ads that did exactly the same thing. So I'll say again, if anyone saw those ads and thought to themselves, "This will be a continuation of TUC" they were laboring under a woefully misguided assumption. Anything else you'd like to add or was this just typical "I'll interject anywhere I can that Withers' posts with an unnecessary harangue of what he's said?" I thought so. Carry on. Oh, and I left your quote unattributed. I'd hate for you to run out of things to do around here. Feel free to edit.

well it was needed a reboot you think Star Trek belongs to just Gene Roddenberry anyway I think that Trek XI was a loving homage to it's mother universe and am looking forward to more films sorry.

It is alright for people to just not like this film. I didn't read anywhere in Jeyl's post that he thought Star Trek 'belongs to Gene Roddenberry' either. If it doesn't detract from your ability to enjoy the film then don't worry so much whether other people like it or not (mainly because so many people do- this isn't one you have to justify liking. Lots of people liked it.) But it is seriously alright for people to just not like it... whatever their reasons might be.

-Withers-​

 

[Jeyl]

well it was needed a reboot you think Star Trek belongs to just Gene Roddenberry anyway I think that Trek XI was a loving homage to it's mother universe and am looking forward to more films sorry.

Gene Roddenberry created something special that over time would be embraced and cherished by many. However, as much as I respect and praise Gene for what he did, I do not believe he was the best person to handle Star Trek compared to the other writers of the show. Some ideas he had were good, some not so much. Given a big budget and an A-list director, Roddenberry was responsible for bringing us the unfinished and widely underwhelming entry known as The Motion Picture. Next film had a way smaller budget, a reduced role for Roddenberry, a TV producer acting as main Producer and a director who's only directed one movie previous to this and they gave us The Wrath of Khan.

Also, it's kind of hard to say Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry when Gene himself left the show after season 2 of the original series.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

well it was needed a reboot you think Star Trek belongs to just Gene Roddenberry anyway I think that Trek XI was a loving homage to it's mother universe and am looking forward to more films sorry.

Gene Roddenberry created something special that over time would be embraced and cherished by many. However, as much as I respect and praise Gene for what he did, I do not believe he was the best person to handle Star Trek compared to the other writers of the show. Some ideas he had were good, some not so much. Given a big budget and an A-list director, Roddenberry was responsible for bringing us the unfinished and widely underwhelming entry known as The Motion Picture. Next film had a way smaller budget, a reduced role for Roddenberry, a TV producer acting as main Producer and a director who's only directed one movie previous to this and they gave us The Wrath of Khan.

Also, it's kind of hard to say Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry when Gene himself left the show after season 2 of the original series.

If you read any of the "history of" books NOT written by one of Roddenberry's acolytes, you can see just how little he really contributed to the show beyond the basic ideas.

Solo and Justman spent as much time reining in Gene as they did on other duties in order to make sure that what got filmed was something the studio would air.

Most of the things that Trek fans remember as being Great Things Trek Invented (like most of the stuff about Vulcans) came from associates like DC Fontanna.

You can argue that Gene was a good "idea man" (argue, not outright SAY, because Trek is the only really successful property he ever came up with), but his execution was terrible, and Trek succeeded despite more than because of him.

 

[Withers]

Also, it's kind of hard to say Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry when Gene himself left the show after season 2 of the original series.

Wow... learn something new everyday. I had no idea his actual role was so limited in scope.

-Withers-​

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Also, it's kind of hard to say Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry when Gene himself left the show after season 2 of the original series.

Wow... learn something new everyday. I had no idea his actual role was so limited in scope.

-Withers-​

The thing is that Gene was very good about getting out the message that "Gene was Trek and Trek was Gene", as it were. The people that knew better (Solo, Justman, et al) all stayed quiet for their own reasons until Gene's star was all but faded away.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I give reboots a chance. I remember growing up with Tim Burton's Batman at an early age.

And you anticipated you might have problems with "Batman Begins"?

How do you think 60s TV Batman fandom (and Adam West) coped with Tim Burton's reboot in 1989?

This movie feels like that they let the market research department write the script.

Only if you didn't enjoy it. To me, it looks like a film lovingly written by (at least one) avid professional fan of TOS, which it was.

Mind you, the film was marketed very successfully, so maybe they did the job Paramount expected of them.

ST III was originally to feature Romulans instead of Klingons (hence terms like "bird of prey", cloaking devices, and Klingons such as Valkris, who anticipated the she was on a suicide mission, and the lover who killed her mentioning the importance of honor and duty). There was grave concern that general audiences wouldn't "get" that the Romulans, who looked exactly like Spock, Saavik and Sarek, were the bad guys and yet Spock, Saavik and Sarek were the good guys.

To some, this was a "dumbing down" of the original script proposal - certainly it may have enabled them to make some use of of Saavik's half Romulan heritage - but then the final film also lost "Return to Genesis"'s vampiric Spock spirit, apppearing in people's mirrors and urging them to retrieve his body from Genesis. So maybe that was a good thing.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Wow... learn something new everyday. I had no idea his actual role was so limited in scope.

GR was still Executive Producer of Season Three. He ending up refusing to report to the lot every, as Line Producer, which he'd promised to do if NBC gave him the timeslot they'd agreed upon.

 

[Devon]

"You needn't be "convinced" by anyone's reasons."
"No, but they aren't knowledgeable Trekkies either. You're forgetting this."
"Without it being explained away, you don't."
"Yeah, in other words they didn't say it, you did."

Hey Devon, I think you need to spend more time on the discussions and less time finger pointing at the posters. You're coming off as kind of a jerk. Why not try replying to someone's discussion without bringing them into it as a means to justify your arguments?

Are you "finger pointing" or discussing?

You needn't be "convinced" by anyone's reasons.

Well, I've been convinced by other people's reasons before, just not these.

You make it seem like you suspect people are lying for their reasons for liking it with this "convincing you of their reasons for liking the film" thing.

And honestly, I don't want to try and find reasons to like this film anymore.

Then don't.

No, but they aren't knowledgeable Trekkies either. You're forgetting this.

It is wrong to assume that only Trekkies would get this. How did the Trekkies learn all that stuff to begin with then?

It is wrong to assume that all or even most Trekkies would know what that was at first. And I'm willing to bet some still don't. That shows you how important an issue it really is, or isn't.

I watched Star Trek III well before I ever watched a single episode of TOS and I knew what was going on there. And I can't remember it being explained there, it was simply shown.

You guessed.

The context of a) Spock being from another world, b) Uhura being interested in foreign languages and cultures and c) a romantic moment inside a turbolift or the transporter platform would have explained what the hell the finger rubbing means.

Explain it then.

 

[startrekrcks]

No it doesn't detract my ability to keep on loving Trek XI that is great in my opinion.

 

[Pauln6]

Reboot or not. This movie feels like that they let the market research department write the script. "You can't show this because the audience is too stupid to notice", "you can't do this because the audience wouldn't get it", "you have to do this because the kids think it's cool".

I know it's tiresome to bitch about the stardates, but seriously. Same thing. They again thought "the audience wouldn't get it", so they simply took the Earth date as a "stardate". I mean come on. The people in the 1960s must have been so fucking intelligent that they got everything what was going on in the show. I wonder what happened.

Lol - yes it's very odd to be so insulting to your audience's intelligence. I go back to the Simpsons as a prime example here. Most of the people who wouldn't get it wouldn't care or even notice, including the children. I don't recall them ever explaining the finger-rubbing in TOS or STIII - it was just an endearing custom of an alien race. Why would every alien race kiss each other, particularly a telepathic race - who knows what filthy telepathic projections those two fingers can convey?

Clearly they thought that the non-sci-fi fans wouldn't connect with the relationship as much unless they hammered it home. I'd have been fine with kissing in the turbolift but I felt the snogging was just wrong on the transporter pad - that was done to because the writers felt that KIRK wouldn't have got the subtlelties of finger rubbing. Quite the opposite, I think Pine could have carried it off easily personally.

 

[Devon]

I don't recall them ever explaining the finger-rubbing in TOS or STIII - it was just an endearing custom of an alien race. Why would every alien race kiss each other, particularly a telepathic race - who knows what filthy telepathic projections those two fingers can convey?

Were aren't talking about two people of an alien race from ours. Just one (and half of one at that.) So why can't they kiss? Truth is they can and they did.

 

[Pauln6]

Sure, but why can't they finger rub too? Truth is they could and they didn't.

 

[startrekrcks]

i think it is a unusual pairing but Spock seemed to accept Uhura kissing him don't you

 

[Pauln6]

I rather liked their relationship and I will admit that I wasn't really expecting it to be so full on in spite of hearing rumours about a 'love triangle'. The only thing I disliked was the very public display of affection on the transporter pad. Officers are trained to be sent on dangerous missions - their partners are not supposed to kiss them goodbye. A bit of subtle finger rubbing for a telepathic goodbye would have had more credibility for me and as long as Kirk notices (he is meant to be an observant genius) the scene plays out exactly the same without unnecessary and unprofessional smooching while on duty.