Gaffer Tape

Kev, you are my hero.  I would never known about this if not for you.

"Hehellhellno"?  I'm not familiar with that word.

I hadn't been following this film, and I haven't seen any of the Alien films.  Hell, when I saw the trailer last night, I had no idea it was connected to the Alien films other than the fact I noticed Ridley Scott's name attached.  So I have absolutely no attachments or preconceived notions about this project.  But the trailer just killed whatever interest I might have had in it.  Besides the fact that, just like every other trailer I saw preceding The Avengers, it was too obnoxiously loud and too obnoxiously explody, there is this long stretch of the last 30 seconds or so of the trailer where the soundtrack is replaced by this pulsing screaming sound that. does. not. stop.  I swear I wanted my ears to fall off and shrivel up just so I wouldn't have to hear it anymore.  Forget waterboarding.  This is torture.  I never want to be subjected to that sound ever again, so I have absolutely no intention of ever seeing this movie.

The Avengers.  Enjoyed it quite a bit, even though I probably wouldn't have bothered to see it if my girlfriend hadn't twisted my arm.  Hell, she twisted my arm to watch nearly all of the lead-up movies to this, except The Incredible Hulk, most of which I hadn't seen.  It was certainly a good deal better than Iron Man 2, which, well, was just a waste of time with no story.  I agree that Joss Whedon should write all of Tony Stark's dialogue!

Yeah, the lack of burned-in subtitles is something that has pissed me off to no end, especially the tendency for the subtitle track subtitles to not even exist inside the frame but instead placed in the matte!  Of all the stupid decisions Lucasfilm has made... this is one of them.

I can't speak for Sith, as I haven't seen it in a while, but the reason you can't find any in Empire is because... there aren't any!  There isn't a single alien subtitle in that movie, so stop your search, or you'll just drive yourself crazy. =P

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?

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...

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.

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?

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.

Hmm.  I don't think I was part of that thread.  I moved back to Nashville at the end of April 2011, and my inconsistent Internet led to my posting habits here being somewhat diminished until a couple of months ago.  So it seems like you moved there just a few months before I left since I left in January.  Still a shame.  I has a sad...

Warbler said: 

I don't blame Gordon or Batman at all for what happened to Harvey.   Joker is to blame for that.

I don't blame them either.  But you're not the one going around killing people, and neither am I, so it doesn't really matter if we blame them or not.  I'm just trying to tell you why Harvey blames them, because that's what matters.

now a days, the comics seem change significantly all the time if you ask me.    I think I've lost count of the number different Robins there have been in the past 15 years.

Most stories move like a progressing line.  Comic books are like a hub.  They branch out in one direction for a while before getting scared and returning to the status quo.  Then they go out in another direction and come back.  Occasionally, the hub shifts a few inches in one direction and re-centers itself from there.  Obviously there are benefits to that.  If Batman hadn't stayed largely the same, he wouldn't have lasted 70+ years, but there is a reason why comics are having a harder and harder time gaining an audience, and that's why, in my opinion.

Warbler said:

Gaffer Tape said: Harvey Dent/Two-Face got an entire movie to steal the spotlight.  I don't think he needed another one.  What we got was perfect, in my opinion.

I could be wrong, but TDK seemed to be Joker's movie, not  Harvey/Two-Face's.   Two-Face was only in the movie for a very brief time.

That's like saying that an earthquake disaster movie is about the earthquake.  The Joker did things, which propelled a bunch of people into action, but the movie was never about him.  He was never a pivotal character.  We never learned about him.  He never changed or engaged with anyone.  He just did things.  Hell, that last sentence is pretty much a direct quote of one of his own lines.  That's nothing against The Joker character or the performance.  They're both great, and I love it, but the movie has nothing to do with him.  It's about Bruce and Harvey:  the former putting his trust in the latter to be the symbol he can't be, and the latter becoming corrupted and broken despite his belief in true justice.  The Joker is simply the catalyst in all of this.

I still just don't see his scope being that broad.  He was a very personal villain, with personal motivations, and being a terrorist against random people just doesn't seem like something this Two Face would have done.  I will give you that it could have been made plausible.  But then again, it also would have completely changed the course of where this current movie is, as Batman couldn't take the fall for a guy who's openly terrorizing Gotham, and it would have completely diminished the whole Dark Knight/White Knight concept.

I don't know.  I just get this Avengers mentality, that people who watch comic book movies expect everything to be a setup for some other movie because it so often is lately.  That's all well and good, but I just don't think it would have done this series or that character any favors.  Harvey Dent/Two-Face got an entire movie to steal the spotlight.  I don't think he needed another one.  What we got was perfect, in my opinion.

Warbler said:

Gaffer Tape said:

.  He fell into madness for very specific reasons, and his only criminal acts were against very specific people who had wronged him or Rachel.

just how did Batman or Gordon wrong Harvey or Rachel?   Gordon and his cops tried to say Rachel, they just couldn't get there in time.   Batman wanted to rescue Rachel,  but the Joker lied to him and gave  Harvey's location as the location where Rachel was.    One thing I never understood is why Gordon and Batman never tried to tell him about the mix up.   Harvey was pissed off that they went after him instead of Rachel, informing of the mix up might have been helpful. 

It was Gordon's corrupt cops, that Harvey had warned Gordon about, that betrayed him.  Harvey was the only one of the three who would not make compromises on morality, while Batman and Gordon worked outside of the rules to accomplish the greater good, and in so doing, Harvey was a casualty. 

Saving either Harvey or Rachel came down to chance, to random chance, and it ended up being he who was saved and Rachel who died.  Knowing about the mix-up wouldn't have changed anything in his mind.

Gaffer Tape said:

I'm not sure about missing the point of Two Face.  I'm really more interested in the point of this continuity's Two Face, and this Two Face just wouldn't have the motivation to be a career criminal, unless you fall back on the cliche of, "Well, his burns just made him go crazy," which isn't a very compelling motivation, not on par with what we were given in TDK.

it was a compelling enough motivation in all the other incarnations of Two Face, why not this one?

Gaffer Tape said:

But to bring it back around, I got TAS for Christmas, and the one thing I found myself a bit disappointed by is the fact that so many villains are so... human.  That's not what bothers me about it.  That's awesome.  But it means their villainy is tied to a very specific wrong committed against them, and, by the end of their origin story episodes, that's usually resolved... leaving them very little motivation to continue as villains.  But then they keep showing up to do their shtick just because they're supposed to be villains, robbing them of their humanity and sympathetic nature that made them so compelling in their inaugural appearances, but which are almost impossible to maintain if you want to keep using them regularly.  And that's what I appreciate about Harvey so much in this movie.  He had his specific story arc.  He fulfilled it.  He got out of the way before he became tired.  And his actions influence Batman's direction for the next film.  I honestly can't see that being handled any better.

You do realize that in the comics the villain you talking about come back again and again, right?    Would you really have wanted these villains to be in only one episode?

These two points rather go hand in hand as far as I'm concerned.  This version of Harvey is a different one than the one in the comics, just like their Joker is different.  It's true in spirit but more realistic, and the more realistic, the harder it is to buy into anyone just being a career criminal for the sake of a gimmick.  It worked well for the Joker, but Harvey, as he is presented in The Dark Knight, is not that person.  Other versions of Harvey could have and have been that person.  But this Harvey isn't the Joker.  He's not out to prove anything to Gotham, he's not out to show the public at large that chance is the only true justice.  That's not how he was written here.  His only motivation as Two-Face is to put those people who helped cause Rachel's death in the same situation she was in:  a 50/50 chance for life or death.  He accomplished that.  There was nothing else for him to do.  To try would have missed the whole point of his character and turned him into someone else entirely.

As for your last point, yes, I know that.  And that's why I have a hard time reading American comics anymore because nothing is allowed to change in any significant way.  I'm content with just reading plot summaries every few years to see what interesting thing has come along.  That's where the movies have the advantage, because they are allowed to tell a complete story that has a beginning, middle, and end, while comics are only allowed to continue indefinitely until they reboot and start over again.  As for only wanting them to be in one episode, it depends on how well they could have pulled off sequels.  And, yes, I call them sequels because the creators admitted they wrote each episode as if it was a mini-movie, which is why those origin stories feel so complete.  But it has the side-effect of making it harder to give them compelling reasons to come back.

But I feel we got that in spades already.  In my opinion, The Dark Knight was about Harvey.  It was his story more than any other character's.  And it was about his journey from putting all of his faith in systematized justice to him losing everything to random injustice.

I'm not sure about missing the point of Two Face.  I'm really more interested in the point of this continuity's Two Face, and this Two Face just wouldn't have the motivation to be a career criminal, unless you fall back on the cliche of, "Well, his burns just made him go crazy," which isn't a very compelling motivation, not on par with what we were given in TDK.

I agree that I'm not entirely convinced that killing off villains is always the way to go.  But, really, that's not what we've gotten either.  Two Face and Ra's are the only major villains to be killed off so far.  It's just a bit of a shame that one of the villains Nolan spared ended up dying anyway.

But to bring it back around, I got TAS for Christmas, and the one thing I found myself a bit disappointed by is the fact that so many villains are so... human.  That's not what bothers me about it.  That's awesome.  But it means their villainy is tied to a very specific wrong committed against them, and, by the end of their origin story episodes, that's usually resolved... leaving them very little motivation to continue as villains.  But then they keep showing up to do their shtick just because they're supposed to be villains, robbing them of their humanity and sympathetic nature that made them so compelling in their inaugural appearances, but which are almost impossible to maintain if you want to keep using them regularly.  And that's what I appreciate about Harvey so much in this movie.  He had his specific story arc.  He fulfilled it.  He got out of the way before he became tired.  And his actions influence Batman's direction for the next film.  I honestly can't see that being handled any better.

I admit I've never understood why anyone would have wanted Two-Face to be a setup for the next film.  That's not to say I didn't like him.  On the contrary, Harvey was my favorite character, and I thought his arc was the strongest aspect of the film.  But that's my point.  The Harvey in this movie wouldn't go on a crime spree.  It's not in his character.  He fell into madness for very specific reasons, and his only criminal acts were against very specific people who had wronged him or Rachel.  I thought we saw exactly as much of him as we needed to see.  To have taken him any further would have made him into just another ad-hoc villain.

Aww, come on twister.  I was waiting for your confirmation on the glitch, etc!  Ah, well, in the meantime:

DBD:  The 21st Tenkaichi Budoukai Arc Part 1!

Also, this will be announced officially when I post the result video of the contest (thanks to everyone who entered!), but due to demand in the comments section of the contest video, I have decided to bow to pressure and start social networking.  And I've decided to let OT.com know first!

http://www.facebook.com/MistareFusion

http://www.twitter.com/MistareFusion

They're still a bit on the under-construction side, so be gentle.  I'm still new at this. =P

Okay, let me try this again.  Ahem...

Damn!  When did we have this discussion?  When did you move to Tennessee?  I've only been through Knoxville once, and that was when my girlfriend and I were on the way to camping in Gatlingburg.  I'd hate to think you'd moved there while I was living there, and we never got to hang out.  Sadly, I don't see myself visiting that area anytime soon.  The life of a lingerie clerk is not a well-paying one, and since my prospective job at the second largest theatre in the eastern U.S. fell through after two interviews, I can't really afford to make a trip to TN right now.

CP3S said:

I just moved here not to long ago. I think we've had this discussion before, right? You were near Nashville, and I am near Knox. Not that far really. We should have made it a point to meet up. Having met the lovely Gaffer Tape in real life would be some serious bragging rights on this site.

Any chance you'll be visiting the area in the future? You should move to Knoxville. I desperately need a room mate. :D

Bingowings said:

True but three years later he is still only a Commander and a squadron leader (and only really recently if you include the Radio scripts into your personal canon).

Things only get this silly in ROTJ where everyone with a stripe up HIS trousers becomes a General.

RE: Silverwook:  Yes, to Bingowings you listen!  To paraphrase my favorite Trek reviewer, SFDebris:  It looked like they promoted Kirk just to put an ass in the seat... in more ways than one.

Well, considering Star Trek:  Enterprise still went with the whole individual ships having individual assignment patches route when the mirror universe crew finds the Defiant or Valiant or whatever, I'd say it's pretty damn hard to figure that the official stance had retconned that out of existence.

Anyway, I never had a problem with Spock.  He was one of the few highlights of that movie.  It was Kirk that constantly pissed me the fuck off.  And the fact that he went from suspended cadet to captain of the flagship in the span of an hour shifts the movie from good time implausiblity to eye-rolling what the fuckery.

So... are we trying to do new things with these characters, or are we just trying to get them to exactly where they were in the original series as soon as possible?  Choose a direction, guys, because waffling somewhere in the middle led to all sorts of nonsensical screw-ups.  I'd much rather have had a completely true to canon movie or a completely rebooted movie than this lukewarm compromise.

CP3S said:

But dude, Shinzon and the Remans went back in time and killed Kirk's dad

I see what you did there.

Also keep in mind that the latest film's Enterprise is a ship commanded and manned by recent grads. These are kids, not seasoned veterans. Some goofy antics and shenanigans should be expected.

Sigh, don't remind me.  I found that to be one of the most abhorrent elements.  I felt like I was watching Muppet Babies in Space, and Pike was one pair of striped socks away from being Barbara Billingsley.

You live in TN, CP3S?  I just moved from Tennessee.  What part do you live in?