Keith
One of the things I love about this list are your posts. I'm saying that up
front because I am gonna respectfully disagree with you.I LOVE the new Trek
Film. I will say without question it's the best Trek Film EVER. It's not lazy.
That's partly because it's Trek and partly because it's not. It's not lazy.
It's just not what you want. It's clear that a tremendous amount of research,
thought and work went into this film. Because Abrams made choices you would not
have does not make him a lazy story teller.
I have always loved science fiction because it creates other possibilities and
amazing worlds
of "what if." The constraints of reality have always been cast away for better
story telling. That's exactly what the new Trek film DOES WELL!!!
I've also made no secret of late that one of the things I love about the new
Trek Film is the way it INFURIATES the Trek nerds. It's freakin awesome that it
has been so successful, so good and produced a reaction so strong. Indicative,
I think, that Abrams got it EXACTLY right in order to breathe life into the
franchise. Let's face it, it WAS DEAD, Jim. The fact that some of the older
generation of Trek fans can't let go of the bloated corpse of
what was, simply makes me giggle. I'm sorry for your loss but unless some
"Trekditionalists" get a bunch of funds together to make another in long line
of generally subpar science fiction films, it's Abrams world now and we're just
visiting. Time to find a way to move on.
Bosco
--- On Sat, 5/16/09, Keith Johnson <keithbjohn...@comcast.net> wrote:
From: Keith Johnson <keithbjohn...@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William
Shatner Or Khan
To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com
Cc: ggs...@yahoo.com, cinque3...@verizon.net
Date: Saturday, May 16, 2009, 10:52 AM
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.
