Creators that ruined their own works — Page 3

So if the director makes himself the star of the show, that's okay, but if the director's cameo imparts a vital clue to the main character, that's narcissistic?

generalfrevious said:

Ugh. I guess you like The Happening and The Last Airbender as well.

Nope. Never saw either of 'em.

If M. Night's performance was handled well, I would be all right with the director giving a vital clue to the main character.

Uh...ok. Again, it sorta seems like you're going out of your way to manufacture things to gripe about. Do you ever just, y'know...relax?

EDIT: Having glanced over the cracked article you linked to, I'd have to say the same observation applies to Jonathan Kimak as well: it's like he's just manufacturing stuff to gripe about. So apparently if you cast an actor in your movie who happens to be well-known known for a disparate role in another franchise, that constitutes a "cameo?" And it also "ruins the film?" I guess he'd rather just have all actors play the same fundamental roles in every project in which they appear. No, then he'd probably gripe about typecasting.

(I will say his analysis of the Ocean's 12 cameo is pretty accurate, but it didn't "just about ruin the movie." That particular movie was ruined long before Bruce Willis appeared on-screen...)

generalfrevious said:

Akwat Kbrana said:

Does it also bother you when directors star in their own movies?

Not if they are actually good actors. It never really bothers me if the director is also the star. What angers me is vanity projects that go nowhere.

Gene Roddenberry.  Or at least he would have on two separate occasions had control not been slapped out of his hands, or if fate hadn't stepped in.

Having read William Shatner's Star Trek Memories and Movie Memories books, it seems the actors thought really highly of Gene's abilities to write Star Trek scripts and fix any script that was sub par during the first two seasons.  But at some point after that, he just lost it somehow.  Either he forgot what Star Trek was supposed to be, or he forgot what NBC had made Star Trek into during the original series.  Case in point:  The Motionless Picture, a boring, vapid storyless mess that had Gene's fingerprints mucking about all over it, mostly to sabotage whenever anything didn't go his way.  Thank goodness Paramount kicked him upstairs and turned the reins over to Harve Bennett because another Trek movie like that would surely have killed the franchise.  The direction that Nicholas Meyer got off the ground in Star Trek II, which was largely continued for the rest of the TOS movies, was what Trek needed to be and, hell, much more akin to the original series than TMP was!

Then, of course, he got his second chance on TNG and that show spent its first year manned with a crew of smug, pontificating, sterile weirdos who couldn't go two minutes without bragging about how much better they were than anybody else.  And that show only got good when Gene's health, sadly, began to deteriorate, and he finally passed on.  The amazing strides in storytelling that happened on late TNG and DS9 would not have been possible with Roddenberry around.  His concepts were just too limiting.

I've just never been able to understand some of the tenets that Gene espoused for Trek:  the perfect humanity, the non-military presence, the no conflict between characters.  I've seen every episode of TOS, and, I'm sorry, but none of those things existed there.  Yes, humanity was better, yes, there was none of the same earth bigotry we had back in the 60s, but there were tons of examples of humans behaving like humans and having to learn.  The best example off the top of my head was Lt. Stiles attitude towards Spock in "Balance of Terror."  And Starfleet's (or UESPA's, or whatever agency they belonged to that week) agenda was mostly exploration, but they were certainly packing, certainly followed a militaristic hierarchy, and were always presented as a military presence.  Gene's refusal to acknowledge any of that shows a complete misunderstanding of his own original work.

Gaffer Tape said:

... Case in point:  The Motionless Picture, a boring, vapid storyless mess that had Gene's fingerprints mucking about all over it, mostly to sabotage ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlOTRxt-dIw

Bingowings said:

It's about exploration and contact with the alien.

The problem is is that's ALL that happened in that movie.  They explored a bit.  They made contact with an alien.  And that's it.  But it somehow took over two hours of gratuitous (and boring) special effects, and the Enterprise crew contributing little more than staring at the viewscreen, to get that to happen.

If Gene screwed up it was by allowing the film series to slip through his fingers and by allowing TNG to fall into the wrong hands before he died.

Rick Berman's hands weren't the best, but, then again, he was the one following Gene's terrible mission statements.  If it had stayed in Gene's hands, I can't imagine TNG reaching any of the level of success it did without him... or even lasting seven seasons.

RE:  Whoops.  Almost forgot.  "Lame attempts at political allegory" isn't Gene's Trek?  Aren't we forgetting the Yangs and the Kohms?

RE: Bingowings: 

I find it funny that, in RLM's review of Star Trek (2009), he referred to it and TMP as his two favorite Trek films, despite being on what he considered the opposite spectrum of how Trek films worked.  But I consider them to both be the two worst Trek films and precisely because they're so similar:  bloated, special effects-driven films with not enough story.  The only difference is that TMP's effects are boring and pad out the film, and 2009's effects are loud and gawdy.

In regards to the Enterprise docking sequence, my argument is always that TWOK used the exact same footage and still managed to convey a sense of scale and wonder.  But since they cut it down to an acceptable length, it actually worked a hell of a lot better and didn't risk putting the audience to sleep!  The first time I saw TMP, that was a defining moment for me.  I remember my reaction almost exactly.  "Wow.  What amazing music.  What a grandiose shot!  The Enterprise looks so amazing, and Kirk is getting it back.  This must be so thrilling for him!  Oh, and Scotty's smiling too.  That's good.  And now they're smiling at each other.  Oh, and there's the ship again.  Oh, and here's the ship from a different angle.  And Kirk's still smiling...  And there's the ship again?  And here's the ship from the back?  Um, can we get on with it?  Has it really been over three minutes?!  And now four minutes of nothing but docking?!  Somebody make it stop!!!!"

You say that TMP wasn't meant to be a TV movie, but, honestly, if it had been, it might have been better.  There's only about an hour's worth of story there (if that), but since its effects pad it out to twice that length, it just becomes nothing but tedious.

Every account on the making of this movie that I have read shows a revolving door of writers either quitting or fired for being unable to make the story work, Gene making their lives miserable the entire time they were there, the script still being unfinished into production (sound familiar to Star Wars fans?), and most of the actors being extremely displeased with what was going on around them.  It just seemed to be a mess from all facets, so it doesn't surprise me that, in my estimation, it came out to be mostly unwatchable and meandering.  But I'm glad you enjoyed it more than I did.

Eh, I suppose we will just have to agree to disagree on this one, but, if you don't mind, I'd love to shift over to the other part of this argument:  Gene's influence on TNG, and whether that show would have survived if he had stuck around.

Eh, for my money, I'd go with "The Changeling."  Same story clocking in at half the time, and at least the characters have something to do besides look at things, although that bit with Uhura is damn silly...

Whether he intended it or not, it was still basically the same plot, just done better.  Hell, the V'Ger plot was once going to be used as the pilot for Star Trek: Phase II, if I recall correctly.

EDIT:  What freaked me out about that episode was what happened with Uhura.  The damn thing wiped her entire brain... yet they're able to re-educate her?!  Were they able to re-educate all her memories and feelings and instincts?  Or is the Uhura we see from that point on basically a whole new person?