An Animated, Open Letter To J.J. Abrams About Star Wars 376
juliangamble writes "Designer Prescott Harvey has written and animated an open letter to J.J. Abrams about the plans for the next Star Wars movie. He says, 'Like so many people, I've spent most of my recent years wondering why the original Star Wars trilogy was so awesome, and the new movies were so terrible. What are the factors that make Star Wars Star Wars? I took an empirical approach, determining what elements were in the original movies that differed from the prequels. My first major epiphany was that, in the originals, the characters are always outside somewhere very remote. The environment and the wildlife are as much a threat as the empire. All three movies had this bushwacky, exploratory feel. Contrast that with the prequels, where the characters are often in cities, or in the galactic senate. In order for Star Wars to feel like a true adventure, the setting has to be the frontier, and this became my first rule.'"
Transcript please (Score:2)
Re:Transcript please (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The setting must be gritty. Star Wars needs to happen in the "frontier," and city settings and government intrigue are an anathema. (Apparently no one's ever set foot on the Death Star or Cloud City.)
2. Technology must be old. Shiny things are right out. (Again, apparently neither the Death Star nor Cloud City exist.)
3. The Force must remain mysterious. Ooh, mystery.
4. Cute things are bad. Gungans are right out. As is Anakin Skywalker. (Ewoks are okay though?)
...Basically, it's a load of nostalgia and action-flick obsession, and the letter's authors will be perfectly fine if the new Star Wars movies are indistinguishable from JJ Abrams's cookie-cutter take on Star Trek. Importantly, the authors completely failed to touch on any of the prequel trilogy's technical flaws—y'know, the incoherent plot, the stilted dialogue, the terrible directing, the miserable editing, the textbook cinematography. For anyone actually interested in understanding what's wrong with the prequel films, watch the Plinkett reviews [redlettermedia.com] of the three movies; there's some remarkable footage buried in there of the exact moment when George Lucas realized he had produced a heap of garbage called Episode I.
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1. The setting must be gritty. Star Wars needs to happen in the "frontier," and city settings and government intrigue are an anathema. (Apparently no one's ever set foot on the Death Star or Cloud City.)
Maybe they weren't gritty, but they were alien, unfamiliar, threatening places where anything could happen. The audience didn't know what was in a Death Star or a Cloud City (or space port or ice planet or desert igloo farm or jungle planet or whatever) or what could happen next, and they and the protagonists were uncomfortable.Galactic Senates and the city where Natalie Portman lived were just sci-fi updates of things I see every day. Yawn.
2. Technology must be old. Shiny things are right out. (Again, apparently neither the Death Star nor Cloud City exist.)
The idea doesn't have to be true 100% of the time, with no exceptio
Re:Transcript please (Score:5, Informative)
I actually agree with your perspective on those matters as well, and was mostly just trying to be flippant. Certainly they're key to the tone of what makes Firefl—I mean, Star Wars—what it is.
However, the prequels committed much worse crimes than merely not being Star Wars-y, as Plinkett thoroughly demonstrates, and that's a much more important consideration. If the prequel trilogy had been made with a competent and coherent artistic vision, it wouldn't have caused such a nostalgia-hugging cringe response. I bet these same people would now be accepting Star Wars as a bigger universe than just the operatic romp encoded in episodes IV–VI. The Expanded Universe covers a ton of subject matter (admittedly, I haven't read any), not just gritty frontiersing, and yet it's still been successful as a book series. This is despite having Spooky Space Mitochondria and Senate debates for decades. Perhaps most surprisingly, Midi-chlorians have been Star Wars canon since 1977 [wikia.com], before The Empire Strikes Back was even written.
That's not to say it wasn't good sense on Lucas's part to keep such exposition out of the actual films (especially the embarrassingly bad names—seriously? Darth Plagueis? You couldn't even remove the "e" so it would look like you were at least trying? Thank god he didn't get a shout-out or we'd never stop laughing), but they're not really barriers to competent or captivating cinema on their own. These other elements could most certainly have been put together into good pictures that could mesh naturally with the original trilogy, and they'd still feel like meaningful parts of the Star Wars world, despite the different tone, as demonstrated by the contrast between Battlestar Galactica and Caprica.
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The expanded universe novels and other media are hit and miss. Really hit and miss in some cases. Though you'll probably have most fans agree on at least one thing: Timothy Zahn's works are the best of the lot. Especially his original Thrawn trilogy, which was the first post-Return of the Jedi stories, and he had quite free reign as to how to handle the entire universe. His later works suffered somewhat for being saddled with baggage from some of the ... less-than-good novels. Though this wasn't all bad...
I
Re:Transcript please (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The setting must be gritty. Star Wars needs to happen in the "frontier," and city settings and government intrigue are an anathema. (Apparently no one's ever set foot on the Death Star or Cloud City.)
Both the Death Star and the Cloud City seem, to my mind, are outside the usual milieu for Star Wars action and development. The Death Star was hyper-polished and space-age minimalist, unlike the maximally baroque surfaces of the Millennium Falcon or the claptrap hulls of the rebel alliance X-Wings. In a sense, the Death Star was the home of the Other, the mirror world of the Empire that (arguably) was one part of a two-chambered narrative setting that was "A New Hope".
The Cloud City seemed even more a "respite" from the action of the Star Wars narrative. It was a political and environmental paradise and the Star Wars narrative resumed the moment Calrissian revealed he had purchased the safety and sovereignty of his city by selling Jabba Solo.
tl;dr: The Death Star and the Cloud City in some ways are exceptions that prove the rule that Star Wars "happens" on the frontier.
Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces (Score:4, Informative)
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If you wanna know why the original trilogy worked,
I disagree (PDF) [drbeat.li]
I'm pretty fucking certain that the original saga worked because it was the 70's and people were fascinated by us pushing the human exploration space frontier (Now we just whip around in orbit, and joe 6-pack don't care), and that Lucas accidentally stumbled upon a the birth of a new type of special effects, and tripped into a cast with chemistry (Come on, it's not like Harrison Ford was destined for the role, he was a janitor), then bumbled into a plot with twists because he didn't know h
Abrams should watch this at least once daily: (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.slashfilm.com/watch-this-70-minute-video-review-of-star-wars-the-phantom-menace/
Re:Abrams should watch this at least once daily: (Score:5, Interesting)
I was hoping someone would mention that...but your link didn't work for me.
try this 7 parter on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI [youtube.com]
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Rule #4 (Score:5, Insightful)
Which brings me to rule #4. Have characters.
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Not likeable, just interesting. Alex from "Clockwork Orange" sure as hell wasn't likeable, but you still wanted to see what happens to him next.
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You betcha. You can like or dislike a character, but if your response is "meh", then the story-tellers have failed. It might be the script, direction, or acting, but someone, somewhere has not done their job.
Mr. Plinkett's epic review (Score:3)
More like rule #1, and it is illustrated ingeniously in Mr Plinkett's epic 70-minute Episode I review [redlettermedia.com].
The aforementioned review is also widely accepted as the best thing to come out of the wreck that is SW: Episode I.
Have someone who can say no to JJ Abrams (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently read about LucasArts and all the bizarre choices that were made there. Basically they jumped from whim to whim. Hopefully those people are left by the doorstep by Disney. I suspect that they will weasel their way into the "creative" process and ruin everything anyway.
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Re: Have someone who can say no to JJ Abrams (Score:2)
Yes. Yes. Yes. THIS.
For the prequels there was absolutely no one, not one single person that could or would say no to Lucas. I myself believe that with minor changes all of the prequel movies could have been great instead of jus merely ok.
This of course is ironic because what the prequels really need is some serious "special edition" treatment but Lucas is only willing to special editionize the original trilogy (again because one could tell him no).
Re:Have someone who can say no to JJ Abrams (Score:5, Interesting)
So much this.
I've long thought that Lucas is actually a really creative guy with a lot of good ideas. The only problem is that, just like the rest of us, not all of his ideas are good ones, and his success has led to him being given free reign to explore his ideas, regardless of whether they're good or bad. It's been my observation that pretty much everyone who is considered a visionary is full of really bad ideas too, and for as good as their good ideas are, their bad ideas are just as bad. If you read through the various rumors and stories circulating around Steve Jobs, you discover the same thing, but he had a group of people around him who were able to talk him down from various dumb ideas he had over the years (though not all of them).
I once saw an interview with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg about the writing process for Raiders of the Lost Ark, and in just reading through it, you really get the sense that Lucas is the "let's think of crazy stuff" guy and Spielberg was much more in the role of editing Lucas' ideas and figure out how to make all of those "ooh shiny!" things that Lucas gets distracted with actually become a part of a cohesive whole. The original trilogy had similar constraints on it as well that kept Lucas in check. He didn't have free reign on A New Hope since he wasn't wildly successful yet, and he had Kershner on Empire Strikes Back. For Return of the Jedi, he didn't really have a strong person in that role, and the film suffered for it, though not nearly as much as the prequels that came decades later when he tried to recapture the glory days.
And then you look at the latest Indiana Jones. As I understand it, Spielberg basically left it up to Lucas to do almost all of the writing, and then directed the thing, rather than having a major hand in putting it together from the get-go like he did with the earlier ones. Which isn't to say that he was uninvolved with writing, simply that he wasn't as involved, and it showed.
A friend was the press agent for Star Wars (Score:2)
... and he liked this. Enough said.
He's made two Star Wars movies already (Score:3)
He already turned Star Trek into a battle-oriented space opera. If anything that shows he has a decent handle of what Star Wars is. More than he has on Star Trek at least.
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He already turned Star Trek into a battle-oriented space opera. If anything that shows he has a decent handle of what Star Wars is. More than he has on Star Trek at least.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
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Re:He's made two Star Wars movies already (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps most remarkably, Into Darkness is not even the first weird amalgam of The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country in the Star Trek film catalogue; that honour belongs to Nemesis [redlettermedia.com].
Nemesis ranks up there with the last Matrix movie though. It was horrible.
Wrath of Khan is probably the most memorable moment of the entire franchise's universe. My point was, Star Trek wasn't turned into war operas by anything recent. It's been that way ever since it had a 2 hour format.
Re:He's made two Star Wars movies already (Score:4, Interesting)
He already turned Star Trek into a battle-oriented space opera. If anything that shows he has a decent handle of what Star Wars is. More than he has on Star Trek at least.
He was never into Star Trek. At one point in an interview he stated that he never 'got' Star Trek, which is why the new Star Trek movies don't feel like Star Trek at all. There was always more of an audience (unfortunately) for space action rather than the hardcore sci-fi and intense Socratic dialogue that Star Trek is famous for. On the other-hand, he has stated multiple times that he was always a Star Wars fan, so theirs something to be said for that. Being a fan himself, he would probably be better equipped to make a movie about it.
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As Enterprise approached the planet, its engines were badly damaged, and Spock sacrificed his life to get them back online in time for Kirk to fight the Reliant off. Later, Khan and Kirk would fight a psychic battle in a variety of exotic locations, using quarterstaffs, whips, and swords. Khan, who had acquired impressive mental powers during his isolation, eventually won, but Kirk survived because he understood that the weapons were only illusory. The film ended with a pitched space battle in orbit around the planet, in which Kirk defeated his enemy with his superior tactics. (source [memory-alpha.org])
But, then again, the people making the original Star Trek films weren't always in
Original Versus The Prequels (Score:2, Redundant)
I always felt that the original trilogy was a better story (and better written), underdog heroes fighting a massively superior enemy and the story of the rebirth of the Jedi and their fight against the sith. I felt that the prequels on the other hand were poorly written and they didn't mesh properly with the original three movies, there were severe continuity issues. Some of the characters were utterly ridiculous, such as the much reviled (and deservedly so) Jar Jar Binks and we all knew that our heroes and
Re:Original Versus The Prequels (Score:5, Funny)
Oh man! You could have least put {SPOILER ALERT] in the subject of your post.
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Who wants to watch a series of movies where the hero is going to go over to the dark side and....
Doctor Horrible was a good example.
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Bad guys win? The legitimate government of the Republic overthrew the tyranny of the Jedi theocracy and restored law and order.
Star Wars is Firefly? (Score:4, Interesting)
Rule 1: On the frontier.
Rule 2: Old (well, at least broken) Not 'squeaky clean.'
Rule 3: The force is mysterious?
Rule 4: It's not cute.
All of those perfectly describe Firefly, (except the Force thing, and that's not really applicable.)
In fact, Malcolm Reynolds is a pretty accurate analogue for Han Solo, as Serenity is to the Millennium Falcon.
Who knew we liked Firefly for the same reasons we originally liked Star Wars?
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Considering Firefly came a quarter of a century after Star Wars, your question should be "Firefly is Star Wars?"
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Cut out the CGI (Score:2)
There's something about actual models and props that makes the interaction with humans so much more lifelike and realistic than _any_ greenscreen "let's pretend we're talking/holding/prodding something imaginary" type of activity. And don't get me started with painting over scenes with computer gener
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(I mean, none of the immersive stuff that's supposed to integrate seamlessly with scenes, not talking about the primitive graphics displayed on targeting computers)
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Yeah. The CGI in LOTR totally sucked. I kept thinking how much better Gollum would have looked as an actual puppet. Actually I didn't think that at all.
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OTOH, I could have lived without the bunny sled.
THAT was not necessary.
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tooo complicated (Score:5, Insightful)
Star wars is no better or worse than any other story, except that it had the potential to be told over a number of movies.
Movies are also pressured to maximize the use of technology to tell a story. This can work, but with episodes i,ii,and iii I think the advanced technology worked against the story, and in any future movies will be a fx tour de force, rather than story telling.
Short version (Score:5, Insightful)
We heard you're making the next Star Wars movie. Please don't fuck it up like George Lucas did with the first two prequels.
Thanks,
Star Wars fans everywhere
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"Romulan Mining Ship" == "Death Star"
Don't worry, he's been practicing for this job for a while...
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This guy has some of the most constructive criticism I've heard for the prequels. Seriously if you're reading this JJ hire this guy as a Co-writer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgICnbC2-_Y [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAbug3AhYmw [youtube.com]
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I can, and I'll do it using only three words: "The Lone Ranger [forbes.com]"
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ts Disney, so big budget + Disney = Johnny Depp as main character.
d00d! They could remake the PotC movies set in the SW universe! Reuse the plots, rename the characters, switch sailing ships for space ships. It'll be the biggest hit since last week's canned fare.
How do you ask... (Score:2)
a clueless whore (sorry, I don't usually call people names but I simply have no better word for someone who does anything for money) not to be himself? To him and the studios is all about making money. JJ Abrams has no clue how to design a story line, have plausible characters, or stay true to the spirit of the series. He tramples over everything that was there before him, ignores the fans that are begging him to stop and comes up with the most idiotic ways to justify cramming in more special effects. But w
it is not the setting (Score:2)
It is the guy in charge...Lucas had help directing AND producing the first round of movies. By the time the prequels came out Lucas had grown to believe his own hype, that he was the 2nd coming of Christ in the form of a director and producer, which we all quickly found out was not true...
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Let's just be glad he hasn't decided to rewrite other stories based on this belief. I can see it now. From the Gospel of Lucas, 24.1-4:
Somebody else already figured this formula out... (Score:2)
... many years ago and did something about it. The result was called Firefly and Serenity. Harvey described Firefly! There might be something wrong with the theory, though, because look how that turned out: one series that didn't even make it to Season Two and a single movie, no "franchise" in sight.
I'm not at all convinced that Prescott Harvey is a cinematic genius. If Joss Whedon can't make it work, the formula ain't ready to leave the drawing board.
Abrams Lucased himself (Score:5, Interesting)
ST:2009 was the best film [wikipedia.org] by Academy Awards, inflation-adjusted box office, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDB. Abrams blew it with ST:ID. While ST:2009 had great special effects, Abrams was so overly focused on special effects with his Trek-unprecedented $190m ST:ID budget that he forgot about the plot.
Lucas suffered a similar problem. Oh, Lucas didn't forget about the plot in the prequel trilogy -- in fact it was richer in the prequels. Lucas was so focused on special effects in the prequels that he left all the character development on the cutting room floor. The prequels would have been much better with the cut scenes that are available on the DVDs. Couldn't let the special effects budget go to waste on the cutting room floor, you know.
Resource constraints increase creativity. Thus, I sadly have little hope for Abrams Wars.
Re:Abrams Lucased himself (Score:5, Insightful)
ST:2009 was the best film by Academy Awards, inflation-adjusted box office, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDB.
Seriously, FUCK everyone who gave that piece of shit a good review. The writing was horrible, chock-full of plot holes and contrived coincidences.
No more midichlorians! (Score:2)
First rule is get rid of the midichlorians and get an alternate explanation for the Force. That's something that could actually be explored in the first movie.
Han Solo finds a strange artifact that turns out to be a communication device which puts him in contact with an enigmatic race of time travellers. These time travellers lead Han Solo and a group of adventurers to a distant planet from far in the future. But during the time jump the Millennium Falcon is severely damaged and starts to plummet towards th
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:( I'm getting the sad feeling you get when you try to make a joke and people respond in a serious manner.
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Yes, ignore the scientific aspect of the joke!
Can we do something else now? (Score:2)
Enough of Star [Trek|Wars|Gate]! Been there, done that. We need to move on.
"Harry Potter" did it right. They did the series of novels, in sequence, and then stopped. There's no "Hogwarts, the Next Generation".
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"Harry Potter" did it right. They did the series of novels, in sequence, and then stopped. There's no "Hogwarts, the Next Generation".
Yet. . .
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A better idea (Score:2)
Okay, bear with me.
While thinking about good and bad sci-fi inspired by the success of "Star Wars," I thought about "The Black Hole," an example of the latter. And since I was already using my internet-box-thing, I checked the wikipedia entry. And I came across this gem:
In November 2009, it was reported that Disney has plans to remake the movie. Director Joseph Kosinski (who directed Disney's 2010 blockbuster Tron: Legacy) and producer Sean Bailey are attached to the production,[5][13] and Jon Spaihts, who wrote the original script for the Alien prequel Prometheus, was confirmed as writer for the project on April 5, 2013
Light bulb.
Give this project to Abrams instead -- he can't make it much worse -- and we let Star Wars rest in peace without further damage to the series. Everyone's happy.
CHARACTERS AND CONFLICT (Score:5, Insightful)
How hard does it have to be to see this?
They were all likable and they argued and sniped and competed with each other bitterly while also being friends.
Meanwhile, the next set of movies had essentially no character conflict at all except Jar Jar.
Darth Maul vs Qui-Gon
They fight.. then they sit.
And they sit.
And they sit.
And then they fight and Darth Maul wins.
We don't learn a thing about either of them.
meanwhile Jar Jar.. spearfishing Fruit irritates the hell out of the otherwise completely stoic Qui-Gon. "STOP!"
In fact, some of the only character building banter (such as the whether the welded door will hold or not between Anakin and Kenobi) are CUT from the film-- giving us more scenes of people not saying anything and being pulled up the sides of buildings on magic ropes.
Give us characters.
Have those characters say things.
Give them points of view.
Have them show ordinary emotions like...
Romantic Interest
Foolishness
Excitement
Overconfidence
Lust
Depression
Happiness
Enjoyment of food and drink.
Snarkiness
Rude statements they regret.
Make them believe they are the best and then throw them in with each other and see which ones are best and how they react to finding out they are not quite so good- or that they are good (confident? humble?)
One of the great things about Admiral Thrawn was that he was brilliant-- he kept figuring out every move the rebels made-- and then he made an error-- a reasonable error but he was so smart he couldn't believe he could make an error. Fantastic! The plot flowed FROM the character's traits. A very strong villain makes the hero's seem even stronger.
Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters Characters
It's not about the scenary. Good writing with good characters can take place in a one room set and be fully engaging-- because we care.
The original 3 insulted each other. Almost constantly. And they also liked each other.
And the actors found ways to make the characters likable-- that's what actors do.
But actors need good writing to start with. Then they put little twists on the words or in the way those words or delivered-- the subtext.
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I hated how he brought in decent writing, exciting setpieces, and competent directing. What an asshole. What I really wanted was two hours about an autistic robot learning to cry.
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
I've only seen the first of the 'new' Star Trek movies, but the only thing I noticed him bring in was explosions.
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:4, Informative)
He brought an alternative timeline in the New Star Trek (two spok's and all that) which means it doesn't have to stick to the original or be loyal to mythology around it.
I have only seen the original too. But I saw where it was setting up the ability run off in any direction it wanted to. From what other people have told me, the other movie has taken advantage of that. Imagine a prequil that can ignore the future that has already happened. But it gets pretty stupid in the process. A better critique can be found here with a lot of spoiler information and a jackass who doesn't like the movie at all it seems.
http://io9.com/star-trek-into-darkness-the-spoiler-faq-508927844 [io9.com]
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It's "canon [wikipedia.org]" not "mythology [wikipedia.org]," unless Star Trek: The Original Series was actually written in ancient Greece.
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:4, Interesting)
Well the problem is that the second movie _didn't_ take advantage of that since it's a mere rewrite of The Wrath of Kahn, where the rewritten parts is about adding the superhuman powers that is common in the modern mutant/superheroe movies.
I respectfully disagree. The first movie not only set up the alternate timeline, but it set up the push for a militarized Federation, which was, I think, explored fairly well in the second film. I submit that this was the real plot, and the Kahn elements were more like collateral damage.
Not to seem too much of a Trek geek (I was such in TOS days, lost it in the Berman days, and regained it in the Bad Robot days) but I see the second film as having a lot of elements from Carey's TOS novel "Dreadnought". A giant battleship built in secret, a civil war within the federation, a strong female lead trying to make things right, and an starfleet admiral as the bad guy. It worked for me.
But it doesn't have to work for you -- that's why they make different kinds of movies, because there are different tastes. You'll always have the Berman-era series and films. I'm looking forward to the next film. And I'm guardedly (very guardedly) looking forward to the next SW film.
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Funny)
I know, right? When we saw it in theater, and they panned across the models on the Admiral's desk, I said "That's a Dreadnought!" Daughter whispered "Ok, dad. Calm down."
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And the lens flare.
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHqjmlM3kxs [youtube.com]
Funny little lens flare bit
Honest trailer for JJ's Star Trek..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTfBH-XFdSc [youtube.com]
Funny star wars comparison at 2:09.
And ..... lens flare at 2:55
And... even more lens flares....
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Interesting)
I only saw the second star trek movie and I noticed him bring in 15 minute warp trip back to earth from Klingon home planet, a space mobile phone capable of calling said earth-klingon distance, a rehashed plot but still manages to fuck even that up, a borderline joke call to spock, a fucking earth-klingon teleportation device(rendering all warp and spaceship technology obsolete)... making total tally for earth space forces something like 4 ships(which I suppose makes sense if everyone with any sensibility was using teleportation).
the other stuff in the movie that took you out of the star trek spirit were so fucked up that one barely remembers the opening scene with underwater enterprise and their grand plan to freeze a fucking volcano. at least breaking the prime directive was done straight at the beginning so that was out of the way and the rest of the plot didn't need to involve any aliens(except klingon, who appear just to provide a far away place of warriors, a company of who get shot in the eye by a single super human so not much of warriors and since it's fucking 15 minutes of a trip away from earth it doesn't matter that much. oh well at least we had some battle IN WARP SPACE).
fuck jj. really. fuck him in the ass with a chainsaw. and I'm not even a trek fan but fuck if you do a joke scifi why don't you add jokes and then why the fuck pay for star trek license... where the fuck did all the money go?
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Put up new-khan next to old-khan and it all doesn't seem that bad really. Much like with STAR WARS, a lot of us have forgotten how genuinely cheesey and flawed the original source material is. In some ways, reboots can be more genuine because they interrupt whatever slow and steady distortion of the source material that may have occured in recent memory.
Young minds, fresh ideas...
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And lens flare. Oh so much lens flare.
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you fucking kidding me? The first one had it's plot holes but it was okay and some stuff only struck you after you walked out of the theater.
The second one was pathetic for anyone with half a brain during viewing. The beginning started well enough until the attack/secret mission, then it was all swiss cheese. Just for example: the head admiral is building a ship 3x the size of anything they have with next to no crew needed, and Scotty can fly to the shipyard from earth in a couple hours, and get in a construction patrol with no big problem.... but it's super secret? And this same admiral secretly puts Khan's men in missiles as some type of ransome rather than holding onto them himself?
And a million WTFs!
It was eyecandy, it was your typical (for the last 10-15 years) epic movie in the vein of Iron Man, etc with Star Trek simply as the setting. Pretty, glitzy, and uninspiring. It sucked to think about.
It made Avatar seem like a written masterpiece, because in reality man going native was a much older theme than Dances with Wolves and it held up under it's own weight.
Was the big problem with Star Wars that it didn't have enough action or glitz and glamor? I don't think so.
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes it is possible to heavily automate a ship whose sole purpose is to fight by Star Trek cannon. It is usually not done because most Federation ships are multi-role exploration ships.
And it is trivial to go from Earth to Jupiter in a couple hours by the same cannon as long as you have a warp capable ship.
Last but not least, the best way to make something secret is to make it in a hiding place few people know about, and you do that by heavily automating the dock too, which makes it a nice target for a genius engineer that is informed where it is.
All in all it was a very good movie with great actors and just a few plot roles (less than the average Star Trek movie for sure, and much less than the average Sci-fi movie)
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:4, Interesting)
And being fair it is not worse than Picard being able to come with the Enterprise from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth to combat the Borgs in a few hours, or, God preserve me, the Enterprise going from the border to the center of the Galaxy in a few days in the 5th movie (the one that never existed), or Scott recursively inventing Transparent Aluminium in the 4th movie.
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All in all it is like the can of worms they opened when they decided to use time travel in the movies. Although I liked both movies that used it, it was despit
Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Um ... no. We're still having trouble with automated docking :)
However since we're obviously discussing fiction the problem here is that it is inconsistent and a jarring change to the story, not whether it can be brought into the story with a bucketload of offscreen technobabble to excuse it after the credits have rolled.
It's just as bad as the teleport to Klingon homeworld thing, Klingons being seen as a pushover the first time they fight, starships landing on planets when they never did before - a plot that is full of pretty well nothing but twists on the viewers expectations until they have no fucking idea what the setting is supposed to be, which is a massive weakness because the only reason people are lining up to get tickets is because it is a well know setting.
Suspending belief is one thing. Having a story that goes in all directions where only the names are the same as what people remember is another and is just a cash grab on brand recognition for what should have been something original (or never made at all). Galaxy Quest is far more consistent even though in that setting all the Trek stuff is fictional.
Personally I just sat there hoping that Spock would cut the top off somebodies head or Khan would solve crimes - neither actor had anything to work with in Star Trek: The Franchise - vanishing into oblivion.
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Which is why I wrote "a jarring change to the story, not whether it can be brought into the story with a bucketload of offscreen technobabble to excuse it after the credits have rolled"
The setting is broken multiple times with no on-screen excuse to try to convince the audience that it is still in the same setting. All we can do is grasp at straws thrown up by other continuity errors in the past and call them canon. One of two huge inconsistencies doesn'
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Canonical! Now we know why the movie sucked, Mark Shuttleworth has something to do with it!
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Even in the future we have security through obscurity!
BTW Khan put his own men in the missiles, he was trying to smuggle them.
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Was the big problem with Star Wars that it didn't have enough action or glitz and glamor? I don't think so.
Close. The Original Trilogy had Vaseline under the hover cars, but not much elsewhere. In other words: It was missing Saturation Filters and Lens Flares.
Re:Designer Prescott Harvey... (Score:5, Insightful)
Star Wars, when you see it when you're young, looks cool. A later analysis of the text shows that the writing is crap. People that were young when they saw the first films are not anymore, they see the second set of films after having developed a sense of taste, and realize that the writing was crap -- but just the new ones, the original ones that they loved for so many years must be perfect after all!
Re:Designer Prescott Harvey... (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I saw the original Star Wars in theaters. I saw of the original trilogy in theaters, and then the special edition re-releases in theaters when I was in college. I still enjoyed the movies then just as I had before, then again, I had an absolutely cool Rocky Horror Picture Show type crowd in the audience. The movie could have been Manos: The Hands of Fate, and everyone would have been just as awesome.
Looking back, Star Wars really wasn't good except for the special effects. He is right about the frontier aspect, but more importantly, Star Wars was a combination of swashbuckling Errol Flynnn and Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns wrapped up in a WW2 war movie. There was a universality to the stories in the original trilogy. The conspiracy aspect of the new trilogy is very black helicopters and tin foil hat in nature, and seems to naturally fit in our era today. Whereas the original trilogy was largely a light heroic high fantasy adventure, the new trilogy was a dark tale about corrupt governments, secret alliances, and a shakespearean tragic hero. Darkness isn't bad; it is the standard now, but the dark serious aspect of the new trilogy is greatly hampered by the cuteness that appeared in Return of the Jedi and was turned up to 10. All the jokes C3P0 made during the first film was unbearable to me, more so than Jar Jar Binks.
But looking again at the original trilogy; the acting was largely cookie-cutter. The dialogue was intentionally comic bookish in order to make the film fit within its heritage. That's fine. There were a lot of sci-fi fantasy movies you could have watched then, and the acting was pretty much on par. The original trilogy's greatness comes in the nostalgia. I actually know adults who have never seen the originals, and upon watching them, thought "Meh, that was fun." And that's it. Star Wars was fun. And it was made more fun by the fact that we were kids when we saw it.
Re:Designer Prescott Harvey... (Score:4, Interesting)
All the jokes C3P0 made during the first film was unbearable to me, more so than Jar Jar Binks.
I understand why you posted as AC.
As for the rest of your comment: I can only advise you to watch the hilarious and spot-on review of The Phantom Menace by 'Harry Plinkett':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI [youtube.com]
It's a more rewarding watch than any of episodes 1 to 3 and will leave you with a greater understanding of movies in general.
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Is that really that incredible? The Empire has every reason to make the Force seem like a "silly religion", both to hide Palpatine's true power and keep anyone from investigating the old stories and perhaps re-establishing a new Jedi Order. Real world is ripe of examples of just how easy it is to make people believe absurd bullshit.
Re:Designer Prescott Harvey... (Score:5, Interesting)
Star Wars, when you see it when you're young, looks cool. A later analysis of the text shows that the writing is crap.
Well, the first one (IV: A New Hope) is strongest because he based it on a film from a master film maker: Akira Kurosawa. He loved the old movie serials, but he never intended it to be more than a one-off. (The 3rd draft title was: "The Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Starkiller." It was originally released just titled "Star Wars." It didn't get the 'serialized' title until its re-release in "81, after the release of "Empire Strikes Back" in "80.)
Unfortunately, after the success of the first one (IV) he proceeded to make more - but he didn't have any more high quality story to steal from.
Of course - the film he based "Star Wars" on was Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress;" stealing everything from the two wacky robots/Japanese peasants telling the story, to the wipe transitions.
"Star Wars" was so close to "Hidden Fortress" that Lucas actually considered buying the rights to the film.
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It also wasn't startrek. It was, well, a generic action flick with no particular consistency with itself, nevermind the old canon.
this does a decent job describing a lot of it.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/inconsistencies-trekxi.htm [ex-astris-scientia.org]
In fact, all they'd have to do is tweak a few things and it would be a great star trek parody. As far as 'serious' scifi goes, it's awful.
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The term 'different' is not the same as 'bad'. The new trek movies' plots aren't even internally consistent, nevermind consistent with the old canon (your assumption). Take out the character names, and the ship design for the starfleet ships, and suddenly you've got a mundane action flick with lots of shakycam, skydiving, and lense flares.
Quit the shaming language and look at the movies objectively. They're terrible.
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Agree that it's more than just the setting. I'm probably spoiled because I saw the originals at least a decade before the prequels, is the feeling the same for anyone who saw the prequels first? I know it's still considered cool to hate the prequels, but I don't think they were that bad. I mean they were bad, and the franchise deserved to be treated better, but they were at least as good as most of the crap hollywood dishes out these days.
Part of the thrill of the first movies for me is it combined superpow
Re:It's the scripts, stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I just last week did a marathon watching of all six. She hasn't historically been a Sci Fi fan, and she thinks she saw ANH as a child but didn't really remember it. Overall, she enjoyed all six fine. She recognized some of the stilted handling of the romance and such, but in general she liked it fine. She had no preconceived notions or expectations going in.
She'll admit the original trilogy are better movies, but she liked them all fine. As a lifelong Star Trek/Star Wars fan myself, it's interesting seeing her perspective on it all since for her, they're just more movies. She doesn't have a lifetime of expectations or fandom or anything.
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She doesn't have a lifetime of expectations or fandom or anything.
Sure, except for you and your fandom sitting right there next to her the whole time.
Just wait 'till the bill comes due on that one...
Re:Not to bash because our enjoyment is so persona (Score:5, Insightful)
The original Star Wars trilogy wasn't great by any objective measure I can think of, it was just a good product of its time with people involved in its production willing to share the characters and stories and build on the world.
What objective measures of art, or even film specifically, can you think of? If you say, "Amalgamation of movie critic and audience reviews" then I'll say "No, by those measures, the first Star Wars trilogy, and "The Empire Strikes Back" in particular, were great. Check out Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, or whatever if you like. They compare favorably with Casablanca, what do you want, Citizen Kane*?"
But I don't think that's what you meant. I believe that you just hoped we'd accept what you'd said, "The original Star Wars trilogy wasn't great by any objective measure," without thinking WTF an "objective measure" might mean in this case.
*Despite the fact that Citizen Kane is often called something like "best movie ever" and similar, it's actually entertaining -- you should watch it sometime.
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There are plenty of objective measures by which a film can be judged, as can any story. Innovation is a key aspect in which films are judged, although in contrast to this we also have adherence to a form. Star Wars is almost a genre-defining space opera, doing for cinema what series like Flash Gordon failed to accomplish years earlier. The science fiction of the 80s and 90s owes a huge amount to its commercial success, and its release prompted the production and sequels of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, amo
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"What objective measures of art, or even film specifically, can you think of?"
Aesthetics, if we replaced realistic imagery with black and white stickmen and stick buildings/environment, would it still be the same movie?
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The first one was just some fun comic space opera. Then someone started taking himself too seriously.
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