Abrams Trek

[Weeble]

i read somewhere once an opinion that Star Trek is best on the "small screen" and i agree. The problem is the ROI is better on the big screen. We need a new series like, well, the Lerterian Chronicles....

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

J.J. Abrams May Have Taken 'Star Wars' Because of William Shatner Merchandise

[Cogito]

An interesting view of his attitude towards the Trek 'verse - I don't know why I found his work so uninteresting, but I suspect the author has hit the nail on the head: Abrams didn't actually like Star Trek, to him it was just a brand to be exploited.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

More here:

How the Battle Over 'Star Trek' Rights Killed J.J. Abrams' Grand Ambitions

[Distracted]

Just watched Into Darkness. To avoid spoilers, I'll just say this: I'm convinced that no actual writers were involved in the making of this project. Quite obviously the special effects team first devised and filmed every explosion, combat scene, and cool space gadget sequence they could think of. Then, after the fact, the director sent somebody to put the main plot elements of all the episodes of TOS in a hat and then he randomly picked a few to stick in between explosions.

[Weeble]

Tell us what you really think Dis. For myself, I have no interest whatsoever in the stuff produced by Abrams. Star Trek is about plots, characters, character development and sometimes some deep thinking about ourselves. (One of my favorite TOS eps was the one with the two guys with black and white faces, but on opposite sides. I think Frank Gorshin was the guest star.)
Most importantly Star Trek proposed a positive future for us flawed sinful humans. Whether or not you question the reality of such a future is irrelevant. Star Trek is about hope and growth. I prefer that view.

[CX]

J.J. Abrams May Have Taken 'Star Wars' Because of William Shatner Merchandise

More here:

How the Battle Over 'Star Trek' Rights Killed J.J. Abrams' Grand Ambitions

[Hummingbird2]

Tell us what you really think Dis. For myself, I have no interest whatsoever in the stuff produced by Abrams. Star Trek is about plots, characters, character development and sometimes some deep thinking about ourselves. (One of my favorite TOS eps was the one with the two guys with black and white faces, but on opposite sides. I think Frank Gorshin was the guest star.)
Most importantly Star Trek proposed a positive future for us flawed sinful humans. Whether or not you question the reality of such a future is irrelevant. Star Trek is about hope and growth. I prefer that view.

Well said, Weeble!

[Cogito]

The whole concept of the reboot - replacing all the characters I knew and cared about, and invalidating all my past shared experiences in the Trek 'verse - has immediately alienated me from the Abrams version. I feel as if my fondness for things Trek has been dismissed and discarded. I suspect it will have done the same to many other Trek enthusiasts. So, starting off on that wrong foot, I have found nothing in what I've seen so far to interest me. I didn't bother watching the whole of the first film - I think I went off to get a drink and found something more interesting to do - and I doubt I will bother watching this new one. It's Trek, Jim, but not as we know it.

I wonder whether Joss Whedon might be interested in taking over the Trek franchise. Now that's something I'd like to see. (Not as much as seeing him continue with Firefly, but beggars can't be choosers.)

[CX]

Honestly, I have no problem with a reboot, as long as it's done well, but Abrams Trek wasn't done well. BSG did a pretty good job, at least at first, anyway. With Abrams Trek, it's pretty obvious they didn't put much thought into it beyond how to make things look cool (to them and their target audience) and to put little fan servicy nods to previous Trek in there to make the people who recognize them feel smart.

[Asso]

The whole concept of the reboot - replacing all the characters I knew and cared about, and invalidating all my past shared experiences in the Trek 'verse - has immediately alienated me from the Abrams version. I feel as if my fondness for things Trek has been dismissed and discarded. I suspect it will have done the same to many other Trek enthusiasts. So, starting off on that wrong foot, I have found nothing in what I've seen so far to interest me. I didn't bother watching the whole of the first film - I think I went off to get a drink and found something more interesting to do - and I doubt I will bother watching this new one. It's Trek, Jim, but not as we know it.

I would add to what Cogito has splendidly said: and that I am not even interested in knowing. Unless I do not want to know something that, with Star Trek, has nothing to do.

I think, in all sincerity, that films of this kind could be placidly made, but their author should have the intellectual honesty to give them a different title.
Making preposterous and specious reference to Star Trek in order to call out the people at the box office, is thing by brigands (And, please, let me express a wee bit harshly, for once).

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Just watched Into Darkness. To avoid spoilers, I'll just say this: I'm convinced that no actual writers were involved in the making of this project. Quite obviously the special effects team first devised and filmed every explosion, combat scene, and cool space gadget sequence they could think of. Then, after the fact, the director sent somebody to put the main plot elements of all the episodes of TOS in a hat and then he randomly picked a few to stick in between explosions.

I was looking for the "like" button, but then I remembered this isn't facebook!

[justTripn]

I'm going to reluctantly agree with all of you! I enjoyed the movie, like I enjoy other action movies; there are remarkable sets and design; I was not bored. Strangely, I spent alot of the movie admiring the fact that the men do NOT appear to be wearing make-up. They all look like they have fresh-scrubbed pink faces. I theorize that maybe they were NOT wearing make-up, except maybe Spock and the villain, and then they touched them up digitally. But I had a very bad feeling at the end when they say "Space, the Final Frontier . . . . "--like a stab as I noticed the regular Star Trek mission statement totally does not fit in this movie.

I do like the characters, the new Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty etc . . . It annoyed me (and pulled me out of the movie) to hear Paxton's voice and try to think of the actor as a new character.

I would love to see a movie with a slower pace. I would like the crew to actually go explore a strange new world and get into trouble far from home and stay there for most of the whole movie. I would like some moral dilemmas and Kirk explaining to some alien, "We . . . are human!" In general, I would love some downtime, where there is no immediate emergency and people are just talking we get to know them better.

As for the Klingons . . . I'm still deciding if I like the reboot.

OH! And I'd like some good old Gene Roddenberry-style humanism.

[Weeble]

JustTripn,

Here, here.

[Asso]

I think what justTripn says expresses to the best the ambivalence of feelings that watching these films is able to produce.
Our justTripn loves action movies (Oh well, partly, I too love such movies), but then - at some point - she realizes that the movie she is seeing is an action movie, sure, and a very nice action movie, evidently, but not more than this, if I well interpret her words.
justTripn owns the intellectual honesty which I alluded to.