Well...what is it you nay-sayers want?
I want someone to have a better argument than calling us "you nay-sayers." Not everyone who has reservations about the new movie does so simply because it's "not exactly like TOS" or even because it eschews continuity as if that were the 'only way to tell a good story.'
Star Trek XI has to get butts in the seats of those theaters.
Agreed. This is a basic hope for
any movie, so it is, essentially, a moot point for this argument.
To do this, the plot can not be mired in confusing scifi lingo.
Agreed. Nor is there any reason why it would
have to be. Frankly, TOS never had a problem with that, at Roddenberry's insistence - the characters should act and speak as if they live in that universe; they don't need to explain everything to each other
or to us. And most of TOS's writers had written dramatic plays long before
Trek, so they knew how to tell a story without indulging in technobabble. It wasn't until TNG appeared that that started to be a problem, culminating in the senseless drivel that was the hallmark of VOY & ENT.
It also can't look like a two-hour episode of a STAR TREK TV show (most TREK movies have this problem).
Also agreed. However, it
also doesn't need to be yet another 'how they all came together' story; we had 4 wasted years of that with ENT. Let's face it: the main characters are familiar enough to even the average viewer that it's not necessary to spend half the film telling us who they are and how they all came together. Most good movies can introduce and develop characters over the course of 2 hours without blatantly indulging in this. I think the big problem here is that a) J.J. really doesn't know who the characters are, and he wants to establish that they're 'his vision,' and b) nowadays, many studios are trying to hang their fortunes on creating the 'next big franchise,' and they seem to all take the route of making the 'first' film an introduction to the characters instead of treating it like a single story and just getting the hell on with it. Just drop us in at a logical point in the story, and let the characters develop organically as the story progresses, so we see
by their actions who they are, how they relate to one another, and what brings them to their particular resolution(s) to the obstacle(s) of the plot.
So...you nay-sayers. WHAT is your problem. And if your answers do not include the following;
1. What is your favorite TREK movie (so as to gage what you think is a good movie)
Then your answer is useless.
Bull$#!+ We don't need to use
Star Trek as a gauge for what a good movie is - most of them
aren't "good movies" so much as just fun romps. Or complete wastes of our time and money. If my only gauge of a good movie is a
Star Trek movie, then I don't know what a good movie
is.
First off, make it
Star Trek. You can do that either by taking the core concepts, even the core characters, and dropping
all of the fiddly continuity out, and just move forward with a good story that doesn't contradict the ideas and values of
Star Trek -
i.e. don't make it
Star Wars or
The Matrix with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock -
or you can keep the continuity intact and merely tell a good, fresh story which, above all, doesn't need to
contradict that continuity in order to function. Many fans don't seem to comprehend this very simple concept, that continuity exists without needing to bring it up every five minutes! If a character died, don't make him a pivotal figure in your story! If a certain ship didn't exist yet, don't hang the entire picture on
that ship in order to tell it. It's not that flippin' hard to do, folks!
What you
don't do is say, "I don't know
Star Trek and the audience doesn't know
Star Trek, so we can't make a
Star Trek movie, but we
have to make a
Star Trek movie, and the fans
want a
Star Trek movie, so let's use
time travel as an excuse for changing everything so it's 'not'
Star Trek and I can tell 'my' story and the audience who don't care about
Trek will love it and the fans obviously
love time travel because it's 'hard core sci-fi' and we'll give them all kinds of nods in the story to let them know we really, really love and admire them, despite the fact that they're a lunatic fringe whose numbers can't justify the cost of making 'my' movie." You
don't sit there, as Paramount, and say, "Gee,
Star Trek sure is in the toilet, but we own the name, so let's make
another film, even though we've got plenty of evidence that the people who
do love
Star Trek can't pay for it, and the audience that
can pay for it
won't pay for it because, well, they're not clueless geeks who live in their parents' basements like our research shows us, but they really did dig that stuff that Lucas did that started with "Star," so obviously they're hungry for more and, well, we want that money." This whole thing is seriously schizophrenic - they desperately want
Star Trek to make money, and they think that people who've already dismissed the franchise are their core audience, while the core audience is more of a nuisance than a business model. They'd be far better off starting a new franchise, or, frankly, just creating
one solid film, and if it takes off, then consider doing a follow-up. Lots less baggage that way.
In the same way that I don't think it's even difficult, let alone impossible, to tell a good
Star Trek story that fits easily into the existing material, I also
don't think it's possible to tell a good story that tries to serve so many masters, the story itself being the
least of them. If you think the old visual styles won't work with the modern audience, change them
and really mean it - redesigning the ship because 'the old one just won't work with today's audience' is no good excuse when you make it so similar that 'today's audience' can't, frankly,
tell the difference; if you can make the "almost right' design look good on the big screen, then by God you can make the
right one look
great! And if you
can't, then start with a fresh piece of paper, just like you did with the story - none of this half-assed 'compromise' stuff. And lest someone say I'm ragging on the new design because it's not the original design, that's not the case at all - I just don't think the new design is very good, from a design standpoint. IMO, the original looks better because it
is better, not because it's the original.
If you think the old characters and their places in the universe don't work, create new characters, instead of trying to shoehorn the 'fan favorite' aspects of the originals into completely different characters. It's easier on you as a creator, and it's easier on the audience - the mainstream audience either don't care, in which case it's effort wasted, or they don't understand why these odd moments exist, in which case the characters don't make sense; to the fans, it just seems like pandering when what they want to see is the characters that belong there, instead of other characters pretending to be them.
The story should be one that can stand on its own - it doesn't need prior knowledge, and it doesn't need a sequel to tie up its loose ends. In a galaxy as big as the one in which Starfleet supposedly exists, it's pretty stupid that they keep focusing on the same species, even the same characters, and that's for the
fans - it's just idiotic to do it for the non-fans, because then they've got to explain
that, too. Just come up with a good story, with a protagonist and his supporting characters, an antagonist and
his supporting characters, and build a plot that takes both of them through their particular, intertwined journey. If the antagonist is an alien, make him an alien that doesn't need prior knowledge and doesn't need to be explained to the audience, although there's nothing wrong with explaining him to the characters
if it is important to the story's progress. Make him believable, not a megalomaniac who just "hates Kirk" for purely selfish reasons (or, as in
Nemesis, who just 'hates Picard' for purely selfish reasons - let's be honest: MiniJeanLuc had no good reason for his psychotic desire for revenge on his DNA donor
nor on the Federation - he was a cartoon villain).
See? I don't
want the new movie to be 'like' any existing
Star Trek movie. But I
do want it to be
Star Trek - I want it to look and feel like
Star Trek, and I can accept a 'modern' visual style if it makes sense, and doesn't try to be both 'modern' and 'original' at the same time. I want it to have strong characters, and if they claim to be the originals, then I want them to
be the originals (not the actors, obviously, but don't go changing the characters just because
The O.C. and
Twilight are the so-called 'standards' for 'modern' characters now
). I want it to have a strong story with drama and excitement and hope, and which, if you took everything that was
Star Trek out of it, would
still be a strong story with drama, excitement and hope.
The biggest mistake they ever made with the
Star Trek franchise was falling into the rut, in which they still wallow, of first asking, "What's a good
Star Trek story to tell?" instead of asking, first and foremost, "What's a good
story to tell?" and
then fitting it into the framework of
Star Trek.
