Gaffer Tape

Johnboy3434 said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

No way. The films shouldn't have to kow tow to the EU. The EU is by very nature non-canonical, no matter what certain Lucasfilm employees think, and Lucas is thoroughly justified in ignoring it or going counter to it. The only question is whether he should be allowing his employees to officially call it canon if he's not going to treat it as that in his work. I think he shouldn't. I think it's a con to call the stuff canon when it's clearly not treated as canon. I think it's called canon just to to aid sales and wouldn't be called canon if not for that. The EU needs to be soundly put in its place. They should do the honest and appropriate thing and declare it all non-canon.

That's not your call to make. Whatever their reasons for saying it's canon, the point is that they say it, and so it is. The company that owns the right to a franchise can define its canon however it wants, so the EU is not "by very nature" non-canonical. If GL disagreed so vehemently with the presence of EU in Star Wars canon, he would fire the entire team of individuals whose sole job is to maintain a massive database on what constitutes canon, and who keep threads in the official message boards open for questions from readers. High-visibility jobs like that wouldn't last long if they were as unnecessary as you think.

I've noticed from your previous posts that you seem to think you have much more authority in these matters than you actually do. First, you insist that the OOT is the canon version simply because you think GL has lost sight of some nebulous concept of what SW "is" (which smacks of the same self-styled elitist definition as the phrase "true fan"), despite having no involvement in the production of the films of even an affiliation with the companies that made them. Now, you use the fact that Lucas Licensing is a business to off-handedly dismiss any official statements on the definition of canon. There's no logical follow-through to these statements at all. Simply put, you know less about what Star Wars "is" than Lucas and company ever will, because they DECIDE what it "is".

OOT purists, if you ever wondered why people have a tendency to look down on you, you need only look at people like Vaderisnothayden.

Nope.  Gotta agree with Vaderisnothayden on this one.  Nearly all of us here consider the OOT to be Star Wars canon over the '04 editions, myself included.  That's why most of us are here.

And while I've been a fan of EU and oftentimes consider some parts canonical, and it's obvious that Lucas the company considers it, it's even more obvious that Lucas the man does not.  He's made several statements saying he ignores EU works and has no idea what happens in them.  Even that wouldn't be so damning except for the fact that the prequels outright contradict elements of EU that the company considers to be canon.

Granted, we get our jollies off on holding opposing views from Lucas, but it's extremely funny that the company is pulled in two different directions.  I agree with Vaderisnothayden that the books are given such high status solely to boost sales.  I whole-heartedly believe that.  It's a little bit contradictory for Vaderisnothayden to follow Lucas's opinion on this when he doesn't in any other situation, but I certainly believe the fact that George shits on EU validates Vaderisnothayden's opinion.

lordjedi said:

Gaffer Tape said:

Did they think people wouldn't understand the dates unless they were made to reflect our own?  I don't know.  It seems pretty clear to me that bigger number=later date than lower number, so I don't get why they changed this at all.

I think they figured the original stardate system was confusing.  I know that I never really understood how a stardate worked.  I knew that bigger number=later date, but I always figured the number was just random.  I know it was explained somewhere, I just don't know where.  I honestly didn't even notice that the stardate reflected the actual year in the movie.

 

Yeah, you're right.  In the original series, they were completely arbitrary.  They simply existed to make it seem more exotic and (at the time) help disguise when the series took place in relation to us.  Later series (TNG, DS9, and VOY) used a system where the second number was the TNG season number equivalent, but that's really the only major step in making stardates have any logical sense.

Since it's so arbitrary, I wouldn't have even noticed except that Nero/Spock's stardate only had four digits when it should have had five.  Then I realized that it was very close in number to the Kelvin stardate, and that left me scratching my head.  It annoys me.  There was no reason they couldn't have done that correctly.

I have to kinda agree with Vaderisnothayden here, actually.  I didn't find Raiders "bland" per se, but I certainly found that Last Crusade did Raiders with more energy and comedy.

Heh, I knew you'd like that, Anchorhead.

Another thing that bugged me that I haven't heard anybody bitch about is the "Stardates."  And I use that in quotes because they're not stardates in this movie, they're years!  Our years!  Years with decimals after them!  And I could almost force myself to accept that the alternate timeline altered how people count stardates, except that the only two prominent "Stardate" periods we're given is from Nero/Spock's time and from the Kelvin's time, both of which exist outside of the branched timeline and should therefore conform to existing Trek canon!

Did they think people wouldn't understand the dates unless they were made to reflect our own?  I don't know.  It seems pretty clear to me that bigger number=later date than lower number, so I don't get why they changed this at all.

You should know by now that Starfleet subscribes to the Main Character Promotion Track school of militarism.  It's the same way that Star Wars operates.  Remember?  When Han and Lando become generals for... reasons?

Ooh!  That's like one of those zen riddles!

Yeah, but like canofhumdingers said, it's not just big, extremely noticeable sequences like that.  Every special effects shot was recomposited and would require branching.

I think the point is that there are just so many things that were changed that seamless branching would be overkill.  Might as well separate them since you'd pretty much be branching in half the shots of every movie.

Yeah, and it's because of that that I am pretty convinced they'd go with the ridge-heads since there's already an in-continuity explanation that doesn't even need to be explained by the time travel.

I suppose the problem with Klingons would be over which style of Klingons to put in a future movie:  the original smooth-headed ones or the more familiar ridge-heads?  Most likely the latter, but you know some fans would bitch about that.

After a bit of a break, I'm back!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjmKwklF-Q

More Batman and Robin goodness... or badness.  Anyway, come on by and stroke my ego!

skyjedi2005 said:

Just wanted to point out the Enterprise 1701 was run mostly by Cadets and trainees The Wrath of Khan.  The only difference is the command crew were not cadets or trainees.

Well, another major difference is that it was being used as a training ship in Wrath of Khan.  It was no longer the flagship of the Federation.  And they certainly weren't prepared to go into battle.  Oh, and only one cadet (Saavik) got to do anything substantial in the face of the established command crew.  In the new film, Pike says it's the flagship, but it seems fully packed with cadets who quickly fill the roles of senior crew.  I do have to give the movie credit, though.  At least when an emergency came up, they had an entire fleet of ships to go to work.  Too many Star Trek television episodes and movies (Wrath of Khan is an offender in this category as well) have the amazing coincidence that the Enterprise is the only ship around that's close enough to be able to do anything about any given problem.

Well, I saw it last night, and I found it enjoying and entertaining.  At the same time, the story was completely stupid and made no sense.  I liked the way the score finally used the Star Trek theme at the end, and I like the way they used it.  Other than that, the score didn't do much for me, and I could have sworn I heard pieces directly from the Star Wars prequel trilogy in it.  Probably my imagination, but several cues felt directly lifted from them.  And Spock's spaceship sounded just like that stupid lizard monster that Obi-Wan rode in ROTS.  I wasn't surprised to see Ben Burtt's name attached to the sound effects.

Karl Urban was amazing as Bones.  A lot of the actors impressed me, but, after having had some time to think about it, I wonder if that's just because all the actors were just standing around regurgitating lines the original actors had said in the past, and I think my nostalgia factor just kicked in.  "Oh, Bones just called Spock green-blooded!  And he sounds just like DeForest Kelley!"

I have to say I didn't like the Spock recitation at the end.  It would have fit for the movie to have ended on the classic declaration, but I think they screwed it up.  I think it should have been Kirk saying it, and it should have been in its original form "five year mission," "no man has gone before..." etc, since it seemed to me like this would be starting the five year mission of the TV show.

Finally, my biggest complaint about the film was that it seemed very much like either a type of show like The Flinstone Kids or Muppet Babies or an episode where all the characters are turned into children and no longer have the capacity to function in their roles and have to overcome that.  The fact is, nearly every position seemed arbitrary.  Kirk has to become captain!  Why?  Because he's Kirk!  Well, Scotty has to come with us and be chief engineer!  Why?  Because he's Scotty.  And there were moments like that for nearly every character.  Why is Sulu at the helm?  Because the real helmsman got sick.  Why is Uhura communications officer?  Because the real communications officer can't distinguish Romulan from Vulcan.  In fact, the only bridge characters who seemed to belong on the bridge rather than just being placed there were Spock and Chekov (of all people!) who really should have been about five!  But I can forgive that age discrepancy.  I don't know.  I just had this moment towards the end of the movie, as they were rushing in to confront Nero for the last time that this ship was just being run completely by cadets, and none of them seemed to know what they were doing.  And this is the Federation flagship.  It just felt weird and a bit contrived.

Okay, but other than that, I enjoyed the movie, and I'd probably like to see it again at some point.

Maybe I should make a video about this.  Everybody else is doing it.  ^_~

I was going to throw in my two cents, but I really don't have to since ferris summed up how I feel about it so perfectly. 

Apparently my local theatre is showing Star Trek VI alongside the new movie.  Squee!  Guess which one I'll be seeing!

Amazing.  Loved it.

Wow.  I like that Endor Leia.  I've never seen that particular picture before!  My only nitpick is that the new movie logos don't really go with the retro packaging, but otherwise, I'm quite pleased.

C3PX said:

Disney is evil.

 

Amen to that.

Maybe I overlooked the miniscule bit of prequel bashing.  I just saw vaderisnothayden/DF stuff, so I sorta glossed over it.

You know, 3PX, you've really been giving me the business over the past 24 hours!  Might want to look into that... =P

AxiaEuxine said:

So hear I made a completely OT friendly thread and somehow you all mangaed to make it a prequel hating thread. Now talk about my cards and stop the hating or else!!!!

Ha!  See, C3PX?!  A complaint!  You'd be hard pressed to call that anything but a complaint!

Although... I'm not sure how any of this was a prequel hating thread.  It got derailed into mafioso alpha male and Dragon Ball (both of which were a good deal my fault), but I don't recall any prequel bashing happening.

AxiaEuxine said:

Someone suggested that I post some of MY favorite cards. So here are some that I really like in an attempt to re-hijack this film from DBZ. (I also have never seen an episode, nor do I plan on it)

Well, maybe "complain" is too strong a word, but it was obvious he preferred to talk about his own stuff in his thread.

DarkFather said:

I've always been a fan of talking about whatever in whatever thread. The "stay on topic" police annoy the hell out of me. I honestly think that most of the time they're trying to look all responsible so they can become a moderator someday. Not saying that's the case with you, Gaffer.

There's "stay on topic" and "we already have a thread about this."

I say who cares.

No, I agree, and I thank you for not lumping me into the "aspiring mod" bunch.  I only made an exception this time because the original poster complained about it, and because the debate was just between the two of us, and nobody else seemed to give a damn about it.  So it just seemed pretty selfish to me.

Hmm.  Good point.  You might make a good consigliere after all.  Gee, I hope I can reach my capos in time before they kill you.