Moderator: Falconer
T. Foster wrote: Will Ferrell's movies are mostly lame, but this sketch from his SNL days continues to crack my shit up.
No love for Wrath of Khan?Falconer wrote:I just think Star Trek is a bad fit for the big screen and belongs on TV. “There, I said it!”
C'mon, Falc!Most definitely and I think that's the biggest flaw of the new movie: it's very timid. For all the things it changes, often gratuitously, the film is ultimately one big callback to the only version of Star Trek to ever truly be a cultural phenomenon -- The Original Series. It's completely parasitic on a vision that's over 40 years old and I mean that literally. Its time travel/divergent timeline plot hangs on both the existence of The Original Series and widespread pop cultural knowledge of its situations and characters for whatever limited dramatic power it possesses. There's nothing the least bit "bold" about it; it's the 4e of Star Trek movies.Ghul wrote:I think Gene would have let all be damned and went forward with all new characters, all new challenges. I think the time has come for new Trek.
TWOK is the Star Trek movie par excellence precisely because it sheds the big screen pretentiousness of TMP and just tells an “episode” that’s the sequel to another episode from the show, and kicks off a series of sequel episodes of its own (III, IV, VI). That’s the best way to do it, but it still doesn’t overshadow the actual TOS.Ghul wrote:No love for Wrath of Khan?
The notion that Shatner's Kirk is some paragon of virtue is just mind-boggling to me. He's often wrong, he's stubborn, bullheaded, steals entire starships in contradiction with direct orders he's received from Starfleet Command. If the rebirth of his best friend is reason enough for it, understanding what's going on with Vulcan and the whole federation at the hands of a Romulan madman who killed his father and made him who he is isn't enough?Dan wrote:But the biggest part that ruined it for me was the way they handled Kirk. That character as portrayed in the movie had no redeeming qualities. He wasn't just brash, he was immature and entitled. He demonstrated behavior that in any of the other movies or TV episodes, regardless of TOS, Next Gen, or so on would have been a character used to show the folly of insubordination. Instead, they make him captain as a reward for acting like a jackass. It just made no sense to me. His character was boneheaded, had no respect for authority, and was stubborn not in an admirable way but in a way that sort of makes you scrunch down in your seat because you feel a little embarrassed for him. This isn't the Kirk we know from TOS, this is just somebody who needs a solid bitchslapping. You see, to make this whole "bad attitude" thing work the character has to actually be right about something. He acts brash but is actually right even when authority won't give him the chance to show it. It wasn't like that at all in the movie. Kirk was just a jerk. Granted, Spock's action of stranding him on a planet isn't consistent with Starfleet....ok, we have a prisoner. Let's see, we could put him in the brig or leave him to die on a barren world. Hey! I know what we'll do! Please.
