Thanks. Man, doc told me to watch my pressure. Gotta calm down now.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Baxter" <truthseeker...@lycos.com>
To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 12:11:00 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William
Shatner Or Khan
(standing ovation)
---------[ Received Mail Content ]----------
Subject : Re: [scifinoir2] Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William
Shatner Or Khan
Date : Sat, 16 May 2009 15:52:29 +0000 (UTC)
>From : Keith Johnson <keithbjohn...@comcast.net>
To : scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com
Cc : ggs...@yahoo.com, cinque3...@verizon.net
I'm sorry, but every time I listen to Abrams make statements like "The old
continuity was restrictive", it angers me. That's just lazy film making. The
Trek universe spans five series, ten movies, and --including
"enterprise"--about two centuries. You're telling me he couldn't find something
in *all that* to fuel new, action-driven stories? He couldn't have brought
together this crew in the movie in any way other than to reset the timeline?
Why not just have told the previously untold story of how Kirk assembled his
crew in the original continuity in this movie? It's not exactly as if anyone's
ever said there was only one way that could have been done.
My point is there is no reason to change history just to use young cast
members. Kirk in the movie is about 2 -3 years younger than Kirk was in the
original timeline when he became captain, but you can work around that. We
don't know the backstories of how Bones, Uhura, and Scotty were brought to the
Enterprise, so you can write that story. Just because Chekhov never showed up
in season one of the OS doesn't mean you can't finesse things a bit and bring
him in for the movie. Only three of the original five years of Kirk's original
mission were shown on TV. Nothing there to mine?
Like them or not, Brannon and Braga jiggered Trek continuity a bit for
"Enterprise": the Xindi attack on Earth...the Borg sphere found on Earth
(something blamed on "First Contact).... And while some of that made some of us
howl, as the series got better toward its end, we saw it was okay. Indeed, we
liked it precisely because it was exploring the themes from the OS that had
always been there. So, they changed things a bit, but at least they explored
the original universe, and to their credit, when B&B got it right, they did a
great job of updating the old, but staying true to it. Thus, we all loved the
storyline revealing the secret of the Green Orion "slaves"...the Augment
storyline, which continued the story of the Eugenics War, and set the stage for
Data's creation someday....the study of how Vulcan pulled itself back from the
brink of becoming violently emotional again, to embrace Surak's teachings
anew...the dude who was a disciple of Colonel Green's xenophobia! and racism--
All good stories, all told in *original* continuity for the most part.
I keep struggling to understand why we have to kill Kirk's father--oh, it just
makes it easy to create a young punk Kirk for contrast with the later hero
he'll become...why we had to destroy Vulcan.--oh, I guess it makes Spock's
feeling of being lost and alone more poignant..why we had to make Spock act
like he's undergoing ponfar all the time--oh, so we can really get the
struggle, as I guess the OS didn't do a good enough job of presenting that.
Abrams just didn't like old Trek and he wanted to eliminate it to recreate it.
There is no reason at all you can't tell new fresh stories in Trek within the
original continuity. I have felt all along that we we've had is a guy who
thinks Star Wars is superiour to Trek, who comes from the hit-you-over-the-head
school of filmmaking. Thus he all but destroys the Vulcan race and sees it as
opening up things, rather than a critical blow to what makes Trek, Trek.
I haven't seen or heard yet one thing to make me understand why you have to
destroy the past rather than honor it. Why you tear down the old instead of
building upon it. How eliminating forty years of great storytelling is
liberating.
Sorry: just lazy filmmaking from guys who just don't get it.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tracey de Morsella"
To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com, ggs...@yahoo.com, cinque3...@verizon.net
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 1:55:44 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [scifinoir2] Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William Shatner
Or Khan
Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William Shatner Or Khan
'I wouldn't rule out anything,' J.J. Abrams says of sequel ideas
After last weekend's $76.5 million opening , three phrases keep getting tossed
in the direction of "Star Trek" director J.J. Abrams: sequel, Khan, and William
Shatner.
On Friday, as the filmmaker hoped to maintain momentum heading into his second
weekend, Abrams told MTV News that he's open to all three.
"The fun of this [new alternate 'Trek' reality] is that the destiny of these
characters is in their hands — it's not constrained by the pre-existing films
or TV series," the "Lost" mastermind explained. "Believe me, whether it's
William Shatner or Khan ... it would be ridiculous to not be open to those
ideas."
As those who've seen the film know, Abrams' new "Star Trek" establishes an
alternate timeline for the series' key characters — one that veers off course
when the USS Kelvin is attacked in the film's opening scene, killing James T.
Kirk's father and causing the future Enterprise captain to be born in space.
Other events in the film also similarly impact the young "Trek" characters,
resulting in wholly new story lines.
"One of the reasons we wanted to break with the original 'Star Trek' timeline
was it felt restrictive," Abrams said of the plot device that could conceivably
fuel the venerable series for another five decades. "The idea, now that we are
in an independent timeline, allows us to use any of the ingredients from the
past — or come up with brand-new ones — to make potential stories."
One buzzed-about ingredient is Khan Noonien Singh — arguably the most memorable
villain ever to inhabit the "Trek" series — whom Kirk banished to a barren
world in an old story line. Writer/producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
have stated their hope of bringing Khan into the "Star Trek" sequel — and
Abrams told us that in his universe, the superhuman tyrant may never have been
stuck on Ceti Alpha V.
"It'll be fun to hear what Alex and Bob are thinking about Khan," Abrams said
of their impending meetings to discuss sequel plotlines. "The fun of this
timeline is arguing that different stories, with the same characters, could be
equally if not more compelling than what's been told before."
"[Khan and Kirk] exist — and while their history may not be exactly as people
are familiar with, I would argue that a person's character is what it is,"
Abrams said of the notion that his Khan could be just as evil, even if Kirk
never stranded him on Ceti Alpha V. "Certain people are destined to cross paths
and come together, and Khan is out there ... even if he doesn't have the same
issues."
Another intriguing possibility is that the door is seemingly open once again
for a William Shatner appearance, since the writers have said that Chris Pine's
Kirk won't die in the same manner as in the original franchise and could live
to be older.
"I wouldn't rule out anything," Abrams said of a possible flash-forward that
could make up for Shatner's near-miss inclusion in the new film. "The point of
creating this independent timeline is to not have the restrictions we had
coming into this one. And one of those restrictions was that Kirk was dead."
"But this all assumes that there's another story that's going to be told,"
Abrams cautioned, saying that there's a lot of work to be done before such
ideas can be sorted out. "We're all still coming down from making this movie."
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1611523/story.jhtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQdwk8Yntds
