DrCrowTStarwars

while eating cheese curls and

Well for Christmas I got bluray copies of Fargo, Xmen first class, Xmen days of Future past, Guardians of the Galaxy, and a copy of Skyfall to replace the one my brother barrowed and forgot he barrowed and thus never returned.

Also for the first time in a few weeks I am feeling happy today, so that is all good news.

I got a hair cut today and it looks fine but my hair never really looks right until it grows in enough to curl, so I am stuck waiting a month for my hair to grow out again, until then I will look a little silly.

Why can't we just find a way to program hair to grow to a certain point and then stop growing?  That would solve so many problems.

Thanks a lot Darth and the rest of you.  I am feeling better today, I think it was just the stress of the holidays, losing my favorite great aunt, and feeling lonely that caused me to lose it.

I saw my doctor today and I got a new med to take when I am hit with one of these waves.

Thank you all so much for your support and thank you Darth for starting this thread.

What is it with Steven King Mini-series starting out good and then somewhere around the half way point turning into a joke? I swear that is what happens to ever single one I have ever watched.  It's like he starts out with a good idea but then doesn't know what to do with it so he drags things out and then pulls some insane twist that the only reason you don't see it coming is that it is so stupid.

And then turn it into compost and replace it with mashed potatoes.

And now my rash will not stop itching painfully because we are having to run the heat 24/7 and I can't sleep, just perfect.

Look all I am saying is that they make you pull your own hair out at some point.  I have a huge collection of games for both systems, but I would be lying if I said I have not spent a good amount of time throwing my controller at the Tv in frustration.

So it is looking like the old script for the next Star Trek movie is being thrown out because it wasn't working, if there is a complete rewrite I wonder if Shatner will still be doing a cameo.

It seems to me that if Paramount ever wants these movies to become really big they need to let the new cast stand on their own and not keep reminding people that they are younger replacements for other actors they love by having the older actors pop up all the time.  TNG didn't become big by having a TOS cameo in every episode, maybe movie three with a new director and writer would be a good point to start letting the new cast stand on their own and blaze their own trail.  Then again with the movie set to come out in 2016 a Shatner cameo may not be something the studio wants to pass up.  It will be interesting to see what Paramount decides to do at this point.

Money is really tight right now but on the weeks where my family can't afford to go shopping we have our chickens who lay eggs for us to eat. Well a fox got in the middle of the chickens and killed them all, now I don't know what we will do.  I really need to find a job but there just aren't any around here.  You really should be allowed to shoot foxes but for some reason it's against the law.  This is just stupid a vermin who is killing off food for my family is protected by the law, I am so fed up with my whole life right now.

TV's Frink said:

I think you've confused NES with Intellivision.

 Oh that's right, NES games were just supposed to drive you insane.

I played with one Intellivision in my life and I have no idea how you were supposed to control games from the number pad from a telephone.

Possessed said:

One of my idiot friends decided to torrent season 5 of "Archer" without my permission and I got an email from FOX about copyright infringement that demanded I remove the files.  No actions will be taken against me or anything, that's not what I'm really bitching about, and it's understandable.

What I'm bitching about, is that if I'm getting emails from FOX for downloading a TV show, now should I be scared to download fanedits as well?  Also I was planning on someday releasing a fanedit of my own, and am now having serious cold feet about it.

 Ouch, I am not sure what to tell you.

I once got a friend in trouble because once while I was at his house I downloaded Adam West's Batman, now please bear in mind that this was years before it was released on DvD so I have no idea how someone could get in trouble for that it's not like anyone was losing any money so I have no idea how this stuff works or how anyone could get into trouble for a fan edit.

Since then I have used a prepaid phone card thing for all of my downloading and have never had another problem.

RicOlie_2 said:

Whoa, I didn't see that DrCrow had rewritten his post. I would never wish harm on you, DrCrow, but the exact opposite. I genuinely hope that things get better for you and you are able to see the world more positively.

 Sorry.  I have been going through a lot lately. Money is tight and I am having to take half doses of my meds, I have been through every government program but still can not get a job even pushing carts, and to top it all off the one event I look forward to every year Christmas with the family didn't happen so I am feeling very depressed at the moment and I guess it all came out in that post.  Sorry.

I think my biggest problem with JJ's Trek isn't that they chose to take Kirk's character form selfish jerk to hero it's that they are not doing it well.  The trouble is he is not growing. He went through that inter character arc in the first movie but then in the second one he was acting like even more of a jerk then he was at the start of the first movie. Why should I care about a character who only seems to repeat the same beats over and over again and never learn anything. T

he reason I can't stand JJ's trek is the same reason I couldn't stand Voyager, at the end of the day there may be a good idea at the center but we will never see it because the reset button is always hit and the characters just keep going through the same motions over and over again. You want to see this character arc done right read the CS Forester books that cover Hornblower's early years(Or just watch the Tv series.), watch the first iron man movie or The Avengers, watch the first three seasons of Castle, watch Chuck, watch Peter Bishop in Fringe, watch GOTG any one of those handles this character character arc much better. Heck I would say that Voyager did it better with Tom Paris because he seemed to learn and care about people and by the end of the pilot I liked him, we are two movies in and I still find "kirk" a selfish prick who doesn't care who dies as long as he get the promotion at the end.

My problem with JJ's movies are not that they are bad ideas from the start(if they were that would be a lot less maddening)but that they are so badly exicuted. If i want action there are better action movies out there where I can see what is going on and if I want this type of character arc there are tons of other movies and Tv shows that pull it off better. For the first time in my life there is no reason for me to choose to watch star trek over other films and that is just sad if you ask me.

It's an NES, it's not supposed to be fun to play. It's supposed to be a test to see how long you can "play" the thing before you scream at the top of your lungs and then pull all of your hair out.

Like boot camp it is supposed to tear you down and then build you back up as a new stronger man, the only difference is the average NES game is more painful then boot camp.

TV's Frink said:

I stopped reading as soon as I realized you still don't know how many times the letter "d" appears in the word "advertisements."

You think I don't know what a worthless lump of garbage I am. I am well aware that everyone on earth would be better off if my mother had gotten an abortion.  I know that I have no value, I know I should be dead. The fact is that suicide is still a crime in this stupid backwards country and I my family has made it clear that that they don't see the truth of how worthless I am and how my corps should just be left to rot in the woods so they insist that if I die they will bury me but they can't afford that without life insurrance, so I would be putting burdan on them if I killed myself. Believe me the moment the law is changed or I find a way to do it where inssurrance will pay up I will do the right thing and end my worthless life, I just have not found the answer to this last problem yet. Hopefully none of you will have to put up with me much longer.

DominicCobb said:

Tobar said:

DominicCobb said:

The other thing people forget is that they are MOVIES. With a TV show you have more time to explore those things.

 Most Star Trek episodes are self-contained stories. They have about 45 minutes after commercials to tell a complete story and were easily capable of doing so. With a movie you have anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes to tell a story.

That excuse does not compute.

I'm not saying that you can't tell a philosophical story or whatever in a short amount of time. Just by nature of there being multiple episodes of TV show, you have far more time and chances to explore all those big ideas. With a movie, obviously there are movies that explore big ideas and what not (the film that my avatar comes from touches on a lot of those points, for example), but the thing is, when you have a MOVIE, it needs to be something big. There's a reason why people hate Insurrection. A MOVIE needs to be exciting so you have to dial in, and you can't necessarily focus on all of those ideas.

DominicCobb said:

What I always loved in the original Star Trek was the adventure and the character dynamics. As far as I can tell JJ's got that, so I am satisfied.

TOS had a charismatic captain that adamantly believed in what the Federation stood for and strived to follow its laws and edicts to the best of his ability. It had a half-Vulcan First Officer who quietly struggled with his humanity. Lastly, it had an honorable if ornery Chief Medical Officer who found joy in taking jabs at his green blooded friend.

JJ Trek has a reckless maverick with a complete disregard for the rules who skirts by on the seat of his pants. It has a pointy eared psychopath who regular pummels others when he loses control of his constant seething rage. Lastly it has an ornery Chief Medical Officer who doesn't get to do much.

JJ Trek just takes the pop culture stereotypes of the characters and turns up the dial.

 Yes the characters are not exactly the same. That's kind of the point. They're permutations on the existing characters. Firstly we're seeing them in their early years, and secondly there are some huge differences between the timelines. I don't want to see the cast play the exact same characters, because those aren't there characters. (notice how each Bond is really a different character in many ways.)

Which brings us to McCoy, who is pretty much exactly the same as his TOS counterpart. This is where I'll concede, you're right, he doesn't get to do much, which annoys me because he's one of my favorites. 

But they supplanted him with a monumentally more interesting Uhura than in the show so it wasn't just all the boys club (people like to talk about Star Trek's diversity, but please, female characters were never given anything to do on that show).

 Really because in the show Uhura didn't reflect any stereotypes of woman or blacks of the time.  She was the person who was called to take over any post on the bridge when someone was hurt, that means she knew how to do every job on the bridge, she had as many scenes as every other supporting character on the show, and she was clearly very well educated.  Go back and watch some films and Tv shows from the 1960s and tell me how many female or black characters you can say that about.

In the new movies you does nothing that cry when things get hard. She only got her job by giving Spock blow jobs, and she interrupts life or death missions to butch at her boyfriend for not sharing his feelings more when he is from a race that never share their feelings.

Maybe I am just too simple minded but I know which version of this character I find more interesting and I like more.

Oh and again if the characters are not going to act like themselves then why give them the names of the classic characters? The answer I can come up with is to try and sell more action figures.

You have to give Gene Roddenbury credit, when he got tired of writing for Kirk and Spock he didn't reboot and then call two characters that where nothing like them Kirk and Spock, he had the guts to create all new characters and write for them and a lot of people(Including Lenord Nimoy)predicted that it wouldn't work but for all of his faults he at least had the guts not to play it so insanely safe.

Oh and you want to show the characters younger?  That is okay but they still need to share the same basic character of their older counter parts and not just be young idiots who get people killed and have no sense of right or wrong if you want me to care about them. As i said there are way to see them grow into being heroes without making them into selfish jerks who have nothing in common. A character who was a huge inspiration for Kirk was Hornblower, read the C S Foster books that cover his early life if you want to see how to tell this type of story without wrecking the character, or watch the Tv show, or if you want a more recent example watch GOTG a movie that did much better at the box office then ITD.

Rebooting does not mean that you have to ignore what people like about a character, in fact it should mean getting back to those things.  If you are not going to stick to the basics of what made a character that character then you are not really writing that character you are just writing a new character but sticking the name of a older better loved character on them to make a qucik buck.

Shatner is in his 80s and seen as something of an icon because his Kirk is so loved, I find it hard to believe the same will be true of Chris Pine fifty years from now. Star Trek is coasting on nolstolgia right now and I think we are reaching the limit where that will keep it going.  Either they need new ideas and new character or they need to get back to the basics of why these characters are so loved in the first place.

Well first off all a movie has to make at least twice it's budget just to break even, anyone who has read anything about how the movie business works knows that.  Second most blockbusters like ITD spend more then $100 million on adds, so you have to factor that in as well.  So when you factor all of that in you have a company that answers to stock holders producing a product for over $200 million that either just barely broke even or may have lost money. Do you really think that is the type of return they were looking for, just barely making a profit once home video sales were factored in?  Why do you think ever Hollywood insider talks about ITD as a dissapointment for Paramount? Why do you think Paramount got rid of the people who worked on ITD, and why do you think all of their statements about the next movie seem to be designed to assure fans that it will be nothing like ITD if they were so happy with the return they got for something that cost them out of pocket at least $300 million?  because for the amount of money they spent they needed it to be a huge hit, not just break even.

Remember back in the day when Star Trek wasn't cool?  Well back then when they were not spending more then $30 on the movies Nemisis was the only one to come in at a loss and even the movies that were seen as bombs made between 3 and 12 times their production budget at the box office.  Now Paramount is having to pay for top talent behind the camera and the films are not cheap to make any more because of a lack of standing sets and they are just reaching the breaking even point, believe me Paramount wants something to change big time.  We live in a world where the $15 million film the King's Speech that was not part of a franchise that had a loyal fan base and didn't have ads everywhere grossed $414 million world wide, plus home media.  Do you really think Paramount's goal when they spent more then ten times that amount was to just barely pull ahead of it at the box office.  Not to mention that kind of money isn't much for summer blockbusters these days.  Man of Steel grossed $200 million more then that and Warner Brothers' reaction was to add Batman and Wonder Woman to the sequel and get Nolan off of the project in order to boost it's box office appeal.

In modern Hollywood it take more then passing the production budget to make a profit and Paramount is not acting like a studio who is happy with how their last film did at the box office.

I think if they returned to Star Trek's heart and soul and found writers and directors who could capture that without giving up action scenes they would find the box office take doing better. The least they should do is try a director who is used to working on TV or low budget films so that they can bring the next film in for less then $190 million, that is an insane price tag for a Star trek movie.  Star Trek will never be Star Wars, it has always done better on Tv then at the movies and it doesn't do well when release against other big summer movies, if Paramount wants to make any money off of this franchise they need to come to terms with those facts and adjust the way these movies are produced to reflect that.

So if it has nothing to do with Star Trek or the characters then why calling it Star Trek.  If these movies are so much fun on their own and Star trek is so awful that anything that sticks to it's spirit is a losing idea then why not call these 'films" something else?

Why not call them Galactic Patrol or something like that and leave Star Trek alone?  Let JJ make his own thing and if Star Trek is going to come back let it come back on it's own terms.

Just because they call this Star Trek doesn't mean that it didn't miss the point and it doesn't mean that it is the only way to bring back Star Trek.

As I stated above there are plenty of ways to reboot Star Trek with action and humor while still letting it be Star Trek and while letting Kirk be Kirk, this just was not the way to do it and as long as Paramount lets the movies continue to be insanely expensive to produce and miss the whole heart and soul of Star Trek they will have trouble breaking even.  The long term fans will not care about them and to the casual movie goer they will just be another summer action movie that they have no reason to go see above any other. These films need to stand out from the crowd and so far they have not done that, if they got back to the basics of what Star Trek was about i think everyone would be surprised by the response Paramount would get from all movie goers and not just fans.  Sadly it does not look like that will happen any time soon.

Tobar said:

DominicCobb said:

The other thing people forget is that they are MOVIES. With a TV show you have more time to explore those things.

 Most Star Trek episodes are self-contained stories. They have about 45 minutes after commercials to tell a complete story and were easily capable of doing so. With a movie you have anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes to tell a story.

That excuse does not compute.

DominicCobb said:

What I always loved in the original Star Trek was the adventure and the character dynamics. As far as I can tell JJ's got that, so I am satisfied.

TOS had a charismatic captain that adamantly believed in what the Federation stood for and strived to follow its laws and edicts to the best of his ability. It had a half-Vulcan First Officer who quietly struggled with his humanity. Lastly, it had an honorable if ornery Chief Medical Officer who found joy in taking jabs at his green blooded friend.

JJ Trek has a reckless maverick with a complete disregard for the rules who skirts by on the seat of his pants. It has a pointy eared psychopath who regular pummels others when he loses control of his constant seething rage. Lastly it has an ornery Chief Medical Officer who doesn't get to do much.

JJ Trek just takes the pop culture stereotypes of the characters and turns up the dial.

 Also and here is a big point the biggest reason I liked Kirk when I was a kid was that he was a man of honor and didn't expect others to fall on the sword or lie for him, when he broke the rules he owned up to it.  Remember that the premise of Star Trek is that these stories are taken from Kirk's official logs so every time we hear about him breaking the rules he told those above him in the chain of command what he did and why he did it but he didn't expect his crew to lie or get in trouble for him.  Every time we saw Kirk called out for breaking the rules he was honest and told the truth, that is why he got away with it because his commanding officers knew they could trust him and that if he broke the rules there was a good reason for it.  In Star trek 3 Kirk gives his crew every chance not to go along with him and in Star Trek 4 there is no question that when they return to earth they will plead guilty instead of trying to cover up or make excuses for their crimes and in Star Trek 6 Kirk takes responsiblity for the actions of crewmen who he had n way of stopping while he is on trial.

Compare this to the last Star Trek movie where not only does Kirk lie to Pike but he then treats Spock like dirt for not lying as well when he knows full well Vulcans don't lie, and then he tries to pressure Scotty to sign for something that puts the whole ship in danger.  There is nothing of the old crew dynamic in JJ's Trek and the plot is stupid, if someone with half a brain or any kind of sense of honor were put in charge of the ship for thirty seconds every single one of the villain's plots would fail. 

Oh and were we supposed to be surprised by the twist where the guy who plays the villain in every movie and Tv show turned out to be the villain?

The really sad part is this movies didn't have to be bad and they didn't have to give up having action scenes in order to be good.  Look at GOTG, there are scenes in that movie that give us a sense of wonder while we are in space and give you an idea of what the politics of the galaxy are and they make the villain relatible without making him so nice that we are rooting for him and Starlord is given the exact same character arc they tried to pull with Kirk and James Gunn pulls it off with less then half of the run time of JJ's movies, so it can be done.

Another good example of how they could have made these good comes in the form of the book and film series Hornblower. The books about the adult Hornblower were one of the things that inspired the character of Captain Kirk so why not use the books about the teenage Hornblower as a blueprint for what to do with Kirk in the new movies?  You want it action based, fine then make it action based but make it smart and write the character so I can root for him.  Put the Federation at war with the Klingons and have it be a coming of age tale of a boy who is learning the ropes and making mistakes but his Captain sees something special in him and helps him learn at a realistic pace and watch this boy have to out think the Klingons and form bonds of friendship that will last the rest of his life.  You don't even have to read the books to see how this works, just watch the TV movies, they all had a run time of just 100 minutes and they all were smarter, had more plot, and had a more compelling character moments and bonds then both of the last two Star Trek movies combined and none of the characters had to act like idiots to make the plots work.

What makes me mad is that these movies didn't have to lose the heart and soul of Star Trek or not be smart in order to give Paramount what they wanted in big screen Trek but JJ and his team were lazy and took the easy rout and just remade the Transformers movies with the names of Star Trek characters and places and that is just sad if you ask me.

This is why I wish NM was directing the next movie, because he like Roddenbury was inspired by the Hornblower stories and knows how to handle this type of action adventure story and could make it work while still letting it focus on action scenes.

I guess to me JJ Trek is like the zombie of someone I once loved, sure it may look like that person and even be walking around but the heart and soul are gone so it's just a rotting corpse. Everything I love about it died a long time ago.

I have been watching Star Trek since I was two but now I have lost interest in it and don't care about the next movie and this sums up why.

Does anyone have an idea what happened to the forum?  I mean the error message didn't really tell us anything.

I guess I am alone in this and maybe I am just getting too old so I don't like sitting for too long in one place, but I have to say I like having the story told in three movies that run just over two hours each then one or two three to four hour movies.  Again maybe that is just me but I like the format of the Hobbit movies.

Yeah whatever.

Not that we have anything to be merry about but if it makes you feel better, merry christmas.

Yeah seems like nothing works these days.  I guess we shouldn't be surprised, life sucks.

Last Christmas I swore I would not be in the same place I was this christmas but after working hard for a whole year I am worse off then I was last year and the world is just falling apart.  I can't find one thing in my life to be happy about the holidays just rub it in that life is a depressing mess where you just sit around and wait for death.

Why couldn't North Korea have nuked my state?