Star Trek

POSSIBLE SPOILERS:

I'll just pop in and say when the trailer played before QOS at the theaters, and the kid in the trailer said his name...everyone was left with digital snow going on up in their heads. The line was so cheesy and weird lol. I think I heard 20 other people including me go..."huh?"

Idk, I'm not a trekkie but I'm sure I'll see the film, doesn't look amazing though.
 
I always loved watching the original Star Trek (I'm 40) series on channel 11 with my folks (though I haven't really watched any of the series that followed) and I hope they don't F this new movie up like they did with the remake of Godzilla (different films, but you get what I'm saying).

I hope that the reason Kirk is driving a classic car and motorcycle is that perhaps all of the vehicles in the future have built in automatic tracking/GPS/shutoff units and Kirk would rather go 'unnoticed'. This is my attempt as a screenwriter to justify the clips :)

Anyway, I do hope the film is good (as a kid I always wanted to be in a Star Trek film, so if they make another film maybe I'll get my chance :) )

Todd
 
I saw the trailer. The blonde hair and style of the young Kirk caught me off. But later as a teen he has the dark hair and a different style more like the recent Shatner Kirk. Maybe they'll explain that. As maybe there is a reason for the abrupt change? I'll bet on it.

I like that the young trek characters are protrayed as rebelious youths, as they would turn out to be as adults.

I like the look of the new ship. Not comparing it to the original, but what it more than likely would have looked like if we had decent CG back in the 60's. Same story, better tech at telling it is how I'm looking at it.

Despite all the nay say on the web in general, director choice ect, as usual, I think this could be a great story and a decent film.

'If' it goes sour, along the lines of typical assembly line crap, it will be another stab to the heart of Hollywood and take it's course. If not it will be a delight.

I'm wishing for the latter. We'll see.
 
Raptor365 said:
I like the look of the new ship. Not comparing it to the original, but what it more than likely would have looked like if we had decent CG back in the 60's.
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Yeah, as opposed to all the crap CG that people did back in the 60's. :D

Seriously, though, I get what you're saying, but if they'd had CG back in the 60's, the Enterprise would've looked like this:

originale-2008.jpg


There's nothing wrong with Matt Jefferies' original design, and there's (IMO) not much left of it in that one screenshot we've gotten of the new ship...
 
I'm going to toss my hat towards enjoying the corvette sequence.

Why?

Because it shows that James T Kirk was more of a badass at 11 years old then the rest will be in our entire lives. :-)

Though I hope the purpose of that scene is more profound then that he miscalculated length of road...
 
Whew! Long thread, got in pretty late here.
So...

The art design just does not jibe with TOS at all. If you consider how TOS looked and that this is a prequel to TOS, why does older tech look way more advanced than TOS universe? It's got Star Wars written all over it.

And who had the bright idea to bring in a director with little exposure or appreciation for the Star Trek experience? What's perhaps the oldest tenet related to screenwriting? Write what you know. It relates to directing as well. Going against the grain is best left for film school projects.

As stated already, the unitiated would have no idea whether say the original 1701 design or some slick new Star Wars looking starship was ending up on the screen. Here's a studio that just didn't have the balls to match the 60's version of the 23rd century.
 
jimpatro said:
What's perhaps the oldest tenet related to screenwriting? Write what you know.
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That tenet was meant to apply more to personal experience. Take what you have experienced and put it into your work. I think it's safe to assume Gene Roddenberry never piloted a starship so 'write what you know' doesn't really apply here. I think exactly what has been wrong with Star Trek for the past 20 years is that it's gotten too insular to the point where it only appealed to die hards. JJ is exactly what they needed, someone with vision to come look at it with a fresh eye and perspective. That doesn't mean the movie will be any good, and I actually think they haven't gone far enough in revamping things, especially with the look of the Enterprise. Something more functional would have been better, not something that looks so overly designed. Enterprise is a military vessel, and military vessels usually place a premium on functionality and durability first and foremost. But, at the end of the day, as science fiction Star Trek is pretty dated and is hanging onto concepts about space travel and the future that are about 50 years old. I see it more as an entertaining fantasy that lives on due to the strength of some of its characters, in particular Kirk, Spock and McCoy. As long as they get that dynamic right in this film, they should live long and prosper (yes, I went there.)
 
Uh, nobody has piloted a starship.

Do you think Star Trek is all about piloting a starship?
You get somebody who knows what Star Trek is all about.
They might as well have started from scratch and called it 90210BC or something.
 
Batutta said:
I think exactly what has been wrong with Star Trek for the past 20 years is that it's gotten too insular to the point where it only appealed to die hards.
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No, the problem with Star Trek for the last 20 years is that it has increasingly diverged from what did appeal to the die hards. DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise each got farther and farther away from what TOS and TNG were. Enterprise, in particular, threw just about everything else out the window and tried to get a younger "sex and violence" crowd, which it apparently failed to do, and a good number of people who had been Trek fans stopped watching, and so they were left with a ratings disaster.


Enterprise is a military vessel, and military vessels usually place a premium on functionality and durability first and foremost.
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Any Starfleet vessel is partially a military vessel and partially a lot of other things. That said, the fact that you're intending to send the ship out on a five-year mission (or even longer, in the case of TNG) should certainly also place a premium on function and durability. The problem is that it's far too easy for lazy writers to say, "Hey, let's have the transporter break down again!" (Substitute holodeck/replicator/warp drive as necessary.) There's nothing inherently nonfunctional or undurable about any of the ships we've seen when viewed within the standards of the Trek universe.

But, at the end of the day, as science fiction Star Trek is pretty dated and is hanging onto concepts about space travel and the future that are about 50 years old.
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Just a little over forty, but even so, what exactly is so "dated" about Trek's concept of the future? Jesus, have we gotten so used to shows with casts of characters that are entirely composed of unlikeable assholes (like, say, the new BSG) that anything that shows optimism about what people could be like in a couple hundred years is now "dated?" (And just for the record, I know you didn't say or even imply that, Batutta, but I've seen it a lot, and not just on this forum.)

I see it more as an entertaining fantasy that lives on due to the strength of some of its characters, in particular Kirk, Spock and McCoy. As long as they get that dynamic right in this film, they should live long and prosper (yes, I went there.)
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This I agree with 100%. Most of the die hards like me will be able to get over the ship, and bridge, and that sort of thing if we can actually believe that these are the same characters.
 
jimpatro said:
Uh, nobody has piloted a starship.

Do you think Star Trek is all about piloting a starship?
You get somebody who knows what Star Trek is all about.
They might as well have started from scratch and called it 90210BC or something.
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JJ Abrams isn't a moron. He knew what Star Trek was about. He just wasn't a huge fan. The problem is that Star Trek has fans who are evangelical in their worship, so the fact that he never thought Trek was the greatest thing that ever existed in life has these fans all a twitter. His reason for taking on the project was that he liked the script (written by trek fans) so much that he didn't want anyone else directing it, which to me is a more promising way to start a film.
 
And, jimpattro, hiring a fan is no guarantee of a quality movie or one that's even good Trek. I submit "Nemesis" into evidence again; its writer claimed to be a fan, and look at the steaming turd he wrote.

I don't have a problem with Abrams not being a fan. (As long as he doesn't say "Jesus, I hate that show," as Rick Berman basically did about TOS--not in so many words, but you could definitely get that feeling from what little he said about it.) Not being a fan of Trek doesn't mean that he can't look at the show and get what's right about. Neither Harve Bennett nor Nick Meyer, IIRC, were really fans of Star Trek, and yet they made what is widely regarded as the best Star Trek movie ever, The Wrath of Khan.
 
Captain Pierce said:
Just a little over forty, but even so, what exactly is so "dated" about Trek's concept of the future? Jesus, have we gotten so used to shows with casts of characters that are entirely composed of unlikeable assholes (like, say, the new BSG) that anything that shows optimism about what people could be like in a couple hundred years is now "dated?"
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Many contemporary sci-fi authors and futurists think that in a few hundred years we'll be living in a post-human world. People, as we know them now, may not even exist. A good portrait of our possible future can be read in Accelerando by Charles Stross, which you can download for free online--

http://www.accelerando.org/book/

It's also in paperback if you like dead trees. Warning though, the book is pretty thick with techno-babble. I've read it twice and still don't understand half of it, but it FEELS like the future.
 
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Film narrative deals with humanity and our varied issues in dealing with life.
A story that deals with a post human world would be really interesting. But I bet it would eventually resort to anthropomorphic traits bestowed upon whatever characters that inhabit this new world. Watch a wildlife documentary and see how it always comes back to a comparison with human experience.

We want to see people up there. And we want to relate to them and feel for them or hate them. That's what Star Trek was all about.
 
According to Roddenbery himself, Trek was supposed to be "A wagon train to the stars". He was an ex Cop who wrote Westerns, and that was his base for the Enterprise- Exploring the new frontier, and dealing with the inhabitants in a diplomatic way if possible to forge new treatise and settlements. Most of the shows dealt with the differences between our species and the others in direct comparison to the cultural events happening on Earth at the time it was written.
 
even though I am not into trex at all, everything JJ touches turns to gold so it will be amazing. I will probably see it in the cinema and really hope it caters to those who have not seen star trek before!
 
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