If he was just John Harrison the rogue section 31 supersoldier, the film could have stood on its own. As it is now, it latches itself to a superior film.
Why is toxic fandom destroying everything?
- Thread starter Sgt. Sacrament
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I agree to a point. I don't think it latches on to a superior film, well because I don't regard TWOK as superior. But, I digress.
I think that the Kelvin Films would always exist with that "What if?" style component. Kirk asking Spock Prime about knowing his dad shows an insight in to the character that is further illuminated if you know what Kirk Prime was like. What differences there are in the character are enhanced by that knowledge.
Same with Into Darkness. I agree that Harrison would be the better choice but Kirk's decision in the film based on knowledge of Khan is just as enjoyable to me.
Mileage will vary.
Orci and Lindelof actually spent an entire year not writing the script because they were arguing over whether or not to use Khan. It's why the movie couldn't meet its originally announced 2012 release date.
Of the three Kelvin-verse films, I enjoyed Beyond the most. It felt most like a Trek episode to me--with a movie budget of course. My only complaint is that we didn't need to see the destruction of yet another Enterprise.
It works very well for Kelvin Kirk and his sex
No comparison required.
No comparison required.
That's my issue. STIII's destruction of the Enterprise was a bold and shocking story telling move. Even by Generations, destroying the ship was repetitive.
In Generations, we had 7 years and over 100 new hours of attachment to the ship, that was a sad moment for sure.
With ST3, we had, what, 4 hours worth of attachment to that model of the ship? It was the characters that sold it more than the act.
Kirk's relationship to that Enterprise always sold it. It carried a dream for him in 09, he saved it in ID, and then he had to watch it burn, helpless. Kelvin Kirk's reactions to the Enterprise sell that ship as important, sometimes more than Prime Kirk.
Agreed, though my bad, I thought the comparison was for the first Star Trek 3 (haha) and Generations, not the 2nd Star Trek 3. Which is funny now, seeing that pattern...
What made movies like WOK and TSFS stand out was the precedent they set more than anything. Wrath of Khan was the first time we'd seen the Enterprise take that kind of beating on screen compared to how Invincible the ship always seemed in the TV show and the first big action story we'd seen for the crew on the big screen as well.
TSFS, same deal. This was the classic Enterprise being destroyed, for the first time. At first we just thought there'd be internal explosions and it would just go off into space adrift...then the whole darn saucer blows up and the rest of it burns up and we're all "Oh wow, she's really gone..."
Naturally those "first time" things hit harder than the later takes that...well, just came later
TSFS, same deal. This was the classic Enterprise being destroyed, for the first time. At first we just thought there'd be internal explosions and it would just go off into space adrift...then the whole darn saucer blows up and the rest of it burns up and we're all "Oh wow, she's really gone..."
Naturally those "first time" things hit harder than the later takes that...well, just came later
And both Star Trek 2s had Khan, yes, what a hilarious pattern, quite the knee-slapper
The other thing too about using Khan is that it ends up making their universe feel smaller as a result. I mean look, they had the freedom to do almost everything they wanted based on previous arguments of the reboot and because of that they had the perfect opportunity to explore the franchise in a way that wasn't originally possible. If they wanted to touch on the Eugenics War for instance, who's to say that in this timeline, it had anything to do with Khan in the first place? Why not explore that? Explore how the alternate timeline and results of the previous movie altered its history. That would have been fascinating to watch unfold. But no, we got Khan, which is precisely the kind of thing they'd originally wanted to avoid via canon constraints.
Well… 4 hours with that model, but we always understood this to be the same ship from TOS, with a makeover. So as far as I was concerned at the time, we’d had eighteen years with that ship, which at the time was longer than I’d been alive. It hurt.
Here's the thing about the JJ Trek movies; It was never about making something new and different, it was about slapping their name on someone else's art and claiming it as their own. There's a reason why remakes of *good* movies are almost universally terrible; they're creatively bankrupt. The motivation isn't artistic, it's mercantile.
It's the same basic thing that tainted much of the Star Wars ST for me. Everything I liked about it was where it tried to do something new and different, and what dragged it down for me is where it just tried to recreate what's already been done, but without understanding what made it work in the first place was that it was new and bold. It's all so superficial. That's not the product of a coherent creative and philosophical vision; it's a cargo cult.
The more time passes, the more and more I think the people that say that Lucas needed someone to tell him "no" in the PT are just flat wrong. He knew what he wanted, he knew what he was doing; he was very deliberately not just mindlessly repeating the greatest hits. He was doing something new! Same thing he did before with the OT, same thing he did after with Clone Wars.
Can you imagine what "Star Wars II" would have been had Fox kept hold of the sequel rights instead of letting Lucas keep them in lieu of his fee? You don't have to imagine it; just go watch 'The Force Awakens'.
It's the same basic thing that tainted much of the Star Wars ST for me. Everything I liked about it was where it tried to do something new and different, and what dragged it down for me is where it just tried to recreate what's already been done, but without understanding what made it work in the first place was that it was new and bold. It's all so superficial. That's not the product of a coherent creative and philosophical vision; it's a cargo cult.
The more time passes, the more and more I think the people that say that Lucas needed someone to tell him "no" in the PT are just flat wrong. He knew what he wanted, he knew what he was doing; he was very deliberately not just mindlessly repeating the greatest hits. He was doing something new! Same thing he did before with the OT, same thing he did after with Clone Wars.
Can you imagine what "Star Wars II" would have been had Fox kept hold of the sequel rights instead of letting Lucas keep them in lieu of his fee? You don't have to imagine it; just go watch 'The Force Awakens'.
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I got something new from it.
Mercantile interests have always driven these franchises.
Mercantile interests have always driven these franchises.
Star Trek has always been "mercantile." It was created for commercial television. It became a movie franchise in response to the commercial success of Star Wars. TWOK was just as much "slapping one's name" on something as any of the JJ films. Bennett and Meyer were just as much hired hands as Abrams. Berman was a hired hand as well. They all had a mission to put butts in seats and money in the bank.
Lucas did something similar with Flash Gordon. He didn't get the rights to the childhood franchise he actually wanted, so he created something that was going to feel like his childhood. He secured the merchandising rights because the actual success of the film was uncertain.
Abrams did something very similar for similar reasons. It wasn't just "slap their name on it" but to evoke a certain feeling in audience members that he remembered. And to make money.
It's not like Abrams or Disney invented greed or profit motive. Though, I think they could learn a thing or two about PR from Lucas being portrayed as an altruistic saint for making Star Wars
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