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Abrams is Destroying Star Trek like Lucas has Destroyed Star Wars — Page 11

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Davnes007 said:

I'd rather have aliens speaking English, than read subtitles all the time, like in foreign films - If I wanted to read for two hours, I wouldn't be watching a movie!

Learn to read faster.  Then you can read the subtitles and enjoy the movie.  I've been doing that with anime for 10 years.

 

F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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skyjedi2005 said:

You know what is a major failing these days not just for dvd cover art but comic cover art as well when they do cheap photoshop jobs digitally in a computer.  I like the illustrative arts. Sure you can't always have a Dave Dorman, Drew Struzan, or Hugh Fleming.  But The masters of the genre were Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, anyone who evokes that high level of illustration i like their work.  Al Williamson at his best came close to Raymond, this was imho during his days Pencilling Secret Agent Corrigan (better known as X-9) and Star Wars.

I feel the same about movie posters - the painted posters from teh seventies and eighties dick on the photoshop 'floating heads' collages of today.

 

War does not make one great.

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What baffles me is that the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series have wonderful posters by Drew Struzan, but do they use them for the DVD covers? No!

I have the pre-THX Star Wars VHS boxset (the one before the Faces set, in other words) and they used this artwork on the boxes. Why can't they do this again?

http://i.imgur.com/7N84TM8.jpg

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Nanner Split said:

What baffles me is that the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series have wonderful posters by Drew Struzan, but do they use them for the DVD covers? No!

I have the pre-THX Star Wars VHS boxset (the one before the Faces set, in other words) and they used this artwork on the boxes. Why can't they do this again?

 

Same thing with the Bond DVD & Blu-ray covers. It's sad.  They should just use the posters, everyone loves them.

 

“First feel fear, then get angry. Then go with your life into the fight.” - Bill Mollison

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I find it Ironic that we are less than a year away from the 30th anniversary of Star Trek the motion picture, and the JJ abrams brand of trek is coming out in may of the same year.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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 (Edited)

Remember when Lucas said "if fans want the original (original) trilogy, then they can find it on VHS".
For me that was the F.U. to the fans moment which made my dislike for Lucas into hate for Lucas.  

what JJ Abrams says here is a F.U. to the fans moment, but it is the underhanded punk-a@@ way he does it, that is making me NOW SAY: JJ ABRAMS IS WORST THEN LUCAS.

JJ Abrams saying: I think I benefited because I came into this movie as someone who appreciated "Star Trek" but wasn’t an insane fanatic about it.
http://trekmovie.com/2009/01/29/jj-abrams-talks-trek-humor-trek-purists-and-more/



also please read this Comment:
From Trekmovie Comments:
 131. McCoy - January 30, 2009

    You know, I’ve recently been pulling Star Wars collectables out of the closet and placing them on ebay. With no regrets. I guess for me, the importance and fond memories of the Star Wars universe were severely impacted by the last three Lucas attempts.

    I still find it strange that some people are open to letting someone basically come through the Star Trek door and make changes to TOS just for a romp in a theater. There are plenty of other movies capable of delivering action and new interpretations on space travel and phaser design—we didn’t need to attempt to re-brand Kirk’s era to this degree.

    I assume it’s my weakness that I see what could have been. I see that young men have come in and changed things that didn’t need to be changed, while at the same time exclaiming that what they changed wasn’t important anyway.

    Still, I carry some hope the timeline will be restored or time cops will remove all new technology. If I don’t hear that this has happened, I will be just fine staying and perhaps contemplate selling things from my Star Trek collection.

    To me, seeing the Enterprise like this is like watching R2D2 suddenly use booster rockets to fly around—simply because it looks cool. Seeing Scotty get excited about Pike’s ship is like watching Jar Jar jump up and down waving his hands. Looking at the generic communicator and phaser wondering where the classic gear is, is like wondering why the Millennium Falcon is MIA for three prequels.

    What am I worried about? That feeling.

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Oh man....Still bleating on about it. ;)

 

Chill dude...At least until you've seen the film. You never know... You could walk away having just watched the greatest piece of movie making in the history of cinema.

 

I doubt it being Star Trek, but you never know!!  :)

http://www.facebook.com/DirtyWookie

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Yeah, I can see his "insane fanatic" comment getting a lot of people irritated. ST has a lot of "insane fanatics" when you come out and and essentially say, "Well, it was a good thing I wasn't an insane fanatic, or I might have made a movie catering to them instead of to the people who don't give a damn about Trek and will forget about it the second they step out of the theater." You are stepping on a lot of toes, while almost sounding as if you are belittling "insane fanatics".

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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 (Edited)

Well this year like last year will have a plethora of expensively made cgi blockbusters that are crap and mildly entertaining for 2 hours if even certainly not memorable or worth a second viewing.  Too bad trek is looking to be one of them.

Here is the list i think so far:

Underworld Prequel

Transformers 2 Revenge of the Fallen

GI Joe Rise of Cobra

X-men origins Wolverine

Watchmen (might turn out to be this years dark knight or Ironman we shall see)

Street Fighter Chun LI

Dragonball

Terminator IV Revolution

Star Trek XI

 

Last year was:

Indiana Jones IV (Nominated for a Golden Raspberry for worst sequel or prequel for 2008)

For a movie that was such shit to be the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time before adjusting for inflation is silly to me.  It is behind the Dark Knight and Titanic.  Last i heard indy 4 made close to 800 million dollars worldwide.

Clone Wars 2008

Iron Man

Batman the Dark Knight

The Incredible Hulk Reboot

Hellboy II the Golden Army

The day the Earth Stood Still Remake

 

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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 (Edited)

Sky's post reminds me of an observation I made earlier this week. I decided to finally sit down and watch Peter Jackson's King Kong remake. I was actually really enjoying it for the first hour or so, slow moving, but interesting enough. Then they landed on the island and it got really boring as we spent the next hour or so watching a well rendered CG monkey dance around, small things, and fight dinosaurs, in a series of action sequences that get so boring and repetative I have no idea how anyone could stand to watch the movie more than once per lifetime. Sad thing is, I was actually enjoying the movie up until that point, but for the sake of my own sanity I turned it off and went to go do something else and have yet to finish it. Do people really find watching what is essentially computer generated cartoon characters beat the crap out of each other in endless and meandering battles to be entertaining? I just don't see it. 

Alright, back to my point. My point is back in 1993 I went to see a film called Jurassic Park, it pretty much defined awesome to me at the time. I had always loved dinosaurs, but I never really ever had a solid image in my mind of what a real dinosaur might have looked like, after seeing Jurassic Park I was convinced beyond a doubt that that is exactly how a real one would look. Any movie I had seen before with dinosaurs in it contained dinosaur models that were far from convincing. Jurassic Park mixed real physical animatronic models with CG elements, and it was down right amazing. I could care less about the later two films, but I still watch the first one sometimes, and am still impressed with how damn awesome those dinosaurs look. Maybe it is just my bias from having seen it in theaters back when it was state of the art, and thus is cemented in my mind as I originally saw it, I don't know, but I still think it looks amazing.

Now, flash forward to the year 2005. Over ten years later. Take a look back at 1993, remember those things people called cell phones? Remember those bricks people use to carry around on their hips called pagers? Look at cars, computers, televisions, cameras, and every piece of technology you can imagine. It was a different world, if we could zip back in time we would feel like we were in the stone age! 16 bit graphic consoles, PCs running Windows 3.1, no mp3 players, but kids carrying around massive clunky Walkmen with massive clunky headphones. Technologically, the difference is extreme. So why is it that in this massive budget movie we are back to having dinosaurs that look like cartoons? If a movie from the archaic early nineties managed to pull off dinosaurs that could make a 12 year old nearly pee his pants, why are we now making movies that look like Roger Rabbit or Pete's Dragon? How have we regressed so far in the evolution of special effects?

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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You know, Abrams's comments there really didn't bug me at all.  I know I'm a nerd, and it's a fact I appreciate while trying to maintain a sense of humor about myself.  Therefore, being called an "insane fanatic" doesn't insult me.  It either humors me or actually compliments me.  And that said, I can understand what he's talking about.  With any kind of adaptation, a balance needs to be reached between serving the purists and serving the new medium.  As a Harry Potter fan, it's something I've been conscious of for a while, and I'm usually pretty lenient about it.  So I'm certainly going to give him the benefit of the doubt.  We'll see.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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You guys are whiny bitches. You can't ruin childhood memories. As a kid I had a good time watching Batman and Robin and did finding out it was horrible bother me? No it didn't. All my memories of Star Wars are still good memories. A lot of directors start sucking after a while not just Lucas.

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Well, I’m just a fan of "Star Wars." As a kid, "Star Wars" was much more my thing than "Star Trek" was. If you look at the last three "Star Wars" films (meaning: the prequels) and what technology allowed them to do, they covered so much terrain in terms of design, locations, characters, aliens, ships — so much of the spectacle has been done and it seems like every aspect has been covered, whether it’s geography or design of culture or weather system or character or ship type. Everything has been tapped in those movies. The challenge of doing "Star Trek" — despite the fact that it existed before "Star Wars" — is that we are clearly in the shadow of what George Lucas has done.
-JJ Abrams

http://trekmovie.com/2009/01/30/jj-abrams-star-trek-must-break-away-from-the-shadow-of-star-wars/

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My thoughts:

JJ Abrams really does not understand Star Trek or the fact that the Star Wars Prequels are bad.

As a kid I was like JJ ("Star Wars" was much more my thing than "Star Trek" was). Then at 16, I started to watch Star Trek and became a fan of it too. I can see both the trek-fan and non trek-fans sides of things. Star Wars and Star Trek are like the Yin/Yang of space sci-fi. They are opposing forces but the fact is both are rooted together. Star Trek is not in the the shadow of star wars becuase They are opposing forces. The Star Wars Prequels are like bad chi and Star Wars ineffected by them. Now, JJ Abrams is copying The Star Wars Prequels and he will ineffected by them too.

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Some Comments from trekmovie:

7. spock - January 30, 2009

    Wonder how he is going to do it, since he is making Star Trek look like Star Wars. JJ is getting to be annoying.

TBonz - January 30, 2009
The last three Star Wars movies sucked. They were visually appearing, but the stories and characters were lacking.


 42. JoeR - January 30, 2009

    Dude..WHAT?

    “Star Trek must escape the shadow of Star Wars”

    JJ!!!! You got the guy who works of Star Wars Designs to make the new Enterprise. Pine says he is making Kirk more like Han Solo!

    Nero is a guy (In the Comics and the movie) Who Starts out as a good guy and stuff happens to make him bad. Sound like Anakin Skywalker.

    So you want to turn Trek into Star Wars (Which you seem to love) and that is how you are going to take trek out of the shadows of Star Wars.

    Oh and for people who will say wait and see the movie. Let me tell you this. One if you pay and see the movie..Guess WHAT! Its too late, they have your money. You think they care what you have to say then. They got paid!

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sean wookie said:

You guys are whiny bitches. You can't ruin childhood memories. As a kid I had a good time watching Batman and Robin and did finding out it was horrible bother me? No it didn't. All my memories of Star Wars are still good memories. A lot of directors start sucking after a while not just Lucas.

 

Dude are you even following this thread? Because this post having nothing much to do with what is being discussed would indicate otherwise.

It is not that it is going to be ruining anybodies childhood memories. It is the future anybody that is whining about this is worried about. And it is nothing to do with a movie that sucked all along, but whining parties were to young to realize, it is a totally new film.

 

Gaffer makes a good point about adaptions. It is hard to think of this as a new adaption of the old series though. Mostly because they based some major plot points around not making it to.

Gaffer, imagine if J. K. Rowling had felt it nessecary to tie the books in with a film in order to explain away their variations. Let's say the Harry from the book went and somehow met the Harry from the movies, and they had a discussion about how things might happen differently in each of their timelines for some reason or another. Kind of silly isn't it?

Now we have not seem the new Trek, but this plot point of Spock time traveling and the explaination of the differences has been public knowledge for sometime now, and it hardly even considered a spoiler. If it really is how it seems it is, it is pretty silly, and it tries to make this a sequel to Nemesis, when that is exactly what it does not need to be. They tied Generations in with the original crew, to make it more of a sequel to The Undiscovered Country instead of a new series. That was kind of cool, sort of provided closure to the TOS series of movies. I respect that is what they are trying to do with the new one, but it still feels cheap to me, and it keeps this from being a true reboot or adaption, which it should have been in my opinion. I am not really still complaining about it. I have said how I felt a few pages back and I am good to go. I am not going to see it in the theaters, because I don't want to waste money on it. When it comes to video I will probably barrow it or rent it.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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C3PX said:

Sky's post reminds me of an observation I made earlier this week. I decided to finally sit down and watch Peter Jackson's King Kong remake. I was actually really enjoying it for the first hour or so, slow moving, but interesting enough. Then they landed on the island and it got really boring as we spent the next hour or so watching a well rendered CG monkey dance around, small things, and fight dinosaurs, in a series of action sequences that get so boring and repetative I have no idea how anyone could stand to watch the movie more than once per lifetime. Sad thing is, I was actually enjoying the movie up until that point, but for the sake of my own sanity I turned it off and went to go do something else and have yet to finish it. Do people really find watching what is essentially computer generated cartoon characters beat the crap out of each other in endless and meandering battles to be entertaining? I just don't see it. 

Alright, back to my point. My point is back in 1993 I went to see a film called Jurassic Park, it pretty much defined awesome to me at the time. I had always loved dinosaurs, but I never really ever had a solid image in my mind of what a real dinosaur might have looked like, after seeing Jurassic Park I was convinced beyond a doubt that that is exactly how a real one would look. Any movie I had seen before with dinosaurs in it contained dinosaur models that were far from convincing. Jurassic Park mixed real physical animatronic models with CG elements, and it was down right amazing. I could care less about the later two films, but I still watch the first one sometimes, and am still impressed with how damn awesome those dinosaurs look. Maybe it is just my bias from having seen it in theaters back when it was state of the art, and thus is cemented in my mind as I originally saw it, I don't know, but I still think it looks amazing.

Now, flash forward to the year 2005. Over ten years later. Take a look back at 1993, remember those things people called cell phones? Remember those bricks people use to carry around on their hips called pagers? Look at cars, computers, televisions, cameras, and every piece of technology you can imagine. It was a different world, if we could zip back in time we would feel like we were in the stone age! 16 bit graphic consoles, PCs running Windows 3.1, no mp3 players, but kids carrying around massive clunky Walkmen with massive clunky headphones. Technologically, the difference is extreme. So why is it that in this massive budget movie we are back to having dinosaurs that look like cartoons? If a movie from the archaic early nineties managed to pull off dinosaurs that could make a 12 year old nearly pee his pants, why are we now making movies that look like Roger Rabbit or Pete's Dragon? How have we regressed so far in the evolution of special effects?

I have to disagree. Jackson was going for more surreal fantasy "monster" type Dinosaur's while Spielberg was going for realism. They don't look like cartoon characters at all IMO.

 

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C3PX said:

Gaffer makes a good point about adaptions. It is hard to think of this as a new adaption of the old series though. Mostly because they based some major plot points around not making it to.

Gaffer, imagine if J. K. Rowling had felt it nessecary to tie the books in with a film in order to explain away their variations. Let's say the Harry from the book went and somehow met the Harry from the movies, and they had a discussion about how things might happen differently in each of their timelines for some reason or another. Kind of silly isn't it?

Oh, yes, it certainly is.  And I'm not saying I agree with everything done in adaptations.  I generally think, for example, that the Harry Potter films are done well and respectfully, but, as a fan, there are things that annoy me, or I think could have done better, or simply think were botched.  But since I think they were done well overall, I can overlook those things.

My point is, the majority of revisionism, if done well, I can put up with.  I mean, I'm one of the few who argue that the NCC-1701 could work in its original design in this movie, as long as the effects are done well enough.  I don't think it needs to be changed at all and would prefer it not be.  But if I see it, and it ends up being good, then I will let it slide. 

I'm not at all sure how this dual Spock thing will work out.  When you put it like that, it seems pretty dumb.  But maybe it will work out.  I don't know.  I was simply defending J.J.'s assertion that balances need to be reached in adapations a lot of the time.  I agree with the concept, and I disagree that fans need to necessarily get up in arms because of that statement.  That doesn't necessarily mean I agree with specific ideas and concepts he's put into the movie.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Interesting.  Very weird aspect ratio, but interesting to watch nonetheless.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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 (Edited)

Yeah, it's a silly game.  I don't know what they were thinking.

EDIT:  And interesting trailer.  Some new stuff I hadn't seen before, and it's nice to actually see some footage of McCoy.  So far it's been the usual Spirk love affair.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Finally some footage to go with the Kirk / Pike exchange...

But we still aren't really seeing anything much new, Maybe they are trying to maintain suprises, or maybe they are worried we wont front up with the cash...

 

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Oh, Pike is the seemingly omniscient voice telling Kirk he's destined for something more?  I never picked up on that!

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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 (Edited)

While the dialogue in the superbowl trailer is not as bad as i thought the film would be the acting is horrible.  Lets hope that is not the selected takes, and they did more for the finished film.  My god the dialogue whilenot horrible is as cheasetastic as the prequels of star wars.  They had two options either write better dialogue and a better script or get good actors who can deliver these impossible to read lines.

Harrison Ford could pull it off in Star Wars.  He said " George you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can't say it"  Christopher Pine is no Harrison Ford,  he is not even the caliber of a Hayden Christensen.  He's an unknown element in this movie.  Though he is not as bad as spocklar who i thought would work because i admired his acting on Heroes playing the villain, but he is awful.  And that dude playing scotty is the worst of the lot.  God knows how bad Sulu will sound and Chekov as we have not heard any dialogue from them yet.  Mckoy is middle of the road not great but not awful.  The villain voice work sounds completely phoned in and not compelling or terrifying at all.

Even Bruce Greenfield who i thought was awsome as Thomas Vale on the UPN series Nowhere Man sounds tired and uninterested.  I don't blame him try acting against a greenscreen with nothing there.  Thanks to the George Lucas style of directing films in the modern era are mostly souless.

I thought that in reviving Trek they would do away with the bad comic book villains, the cheaseball acting and technobable and give us a realized future.  At least that is what JJ promised to deliver.

He promised no Galaxy Quest camp.

 

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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 (Edited)
Octorox said:

I have to disagree. Jackson was going for more surreal fantasy "monster" type Dinosaur's while Spielberg was going for realism. They don't look like cartoon characters at all IMO.

 

 

I dunno man. Sounds like a lousy excuse for some poorly rendered and lazily done dinosaurs to me. Can't be a surreal fantasy and still have decent looking CG? The realism of JP makes it a much more "surreal" viewing experience in my opinion. The monkey looked real enough. It is just the other creatures that looked poorly done, obviously a lot more time would be spent on Kong's model, but those dinos looked pretty lame for such a big budget movie.

 

Wow, that new ST trailer, if you cut out McCoy's line, and removed the words Star Trek from the end, you could watch the thing and think you were watching the trailer for some generic action sci-fi flick.

 

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape