The reverse of that post I’ve made a week ago…
Rules: pick one movie or series and explain why you actually enjoyed it despite the criticism.
For me: The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, by far the best ST stuff ever made, I couldn’t take seriously the original universe with the dated effects and stiff acting, same goes for NG… These movies did ST actually great looking and much more believable, not just the effects.
People hate the JJ Star Trek films? I’ve only ever heard nothing but praise for them.
A lot of Star Trek fans didn’t like them. Star Trek trends more towards, “traditional,” sci-fi, which is more focused on exploring scientific and philosophical concepts in fiction (think Jules Verne or Isaac Asimov). What Abrams produced was basically just an action movie in a futuristic setting. It’s sorta like how, even though Star Wars is set in an advanced galactic civilization, it has more in common with the fantasy genre than traditional sci-fi.
That doesn’t necessarily mean classic Star Trek is better or smarter than the Abrams movies or Star Wars. In fact, a lot of Star Trek is cheesy, dated, and kinda dumb (and not just the original series; even TNG has a lot of cringe in it). However, it does mean that the Abrams films were a pretty big genre shift that put a lot of fans off.
I enjoy both. The original series is so dated (buttons, knobs, switches, and lights on the control panels? Pffff) that even as a fan I find it hard to look at.
No one seemed to take the show that seriously. I don’t think anyone had a clue it would turn into a whole franchise, and the acting is so hammy I can’t stand looking at a lot of the scenes.
All that said that even old start tell movies were more action oriented than a typical episode plot. (Except for maybe the first movie, which unless I’m remembering wrong literally was almost a carbon copy of an episode)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture, aka “The film where nothing happens”
For me, what becomes even more dated than the old tech are the cultural attitudes. The original series is supposed to be an egalitarian, utopian society, but they men treat the women like it’s an episode of Mad Men. TGN, on the other hand, is trying so hard not to be sexist that the romance scenes sound like they were written by a virgin who only learned about sex from HR meetings.
I didn’t mind the first Abrams movie. I thought the story was pretty mediocre, but it looked good visually, and they captured the characters nicely. The second movie went off the rails, though. They invented interplanetary transporters and cured death. It feels like that would have had massive, status quo changing consequences for the entire franchise, but I guess not.
The original movies certainly have more action in them than the series (though they’re definitely not as action-packed as the Abrams movies), and they’re also not as interested in exploring sci-fi concepts as the show, but to me, they’re defined by fan-service more than anything else. They found an excuse to put the characters in modern times, let Kirk create peace with the Klingons, and literally met God.
Yeah that was a bit crazy. But I didn’t really think about it too long because almost everything else is supposedly a whole other timeline now, so it’s a not point.
Also I’ve seen “Beyond” twice now, but got distracted both times so I still don’t know much about it.
One my nerdiest habits is to watch old sci-fi content, especially if it was considered high brow and intelligent for its days, and chuckle at outdated science, disproven hypothesis, and people in the future using technology considered outdated in present.
Star Trek (especially earlier episodes) is a goldmine for this as Kirk is shown test a file with his ESP test results (It was taken very seriously at the time, and still would have its vocally mainstream supporters as recently as the mid-90s. Now it goes back and forth between being considered fringe with some mild evidence that may support it and being entirely written off as complete nonsense or in other words, PSI is bunk), and Spock is seen using what is basically an abacus.
Though I think my favorite “Science goof” on the show, is when tribbles are said to be bisexual instead of hermaphroditic. Simply because I’m literally autistic and still think “lol gay” is funny.
I like watching old sci-fi to see how the tech of the day was reflected in the tech or the, “future.” The original Enterprise looks like it was run on colorful 8-tracks. The TGN Enterprise looked like it was full of microwave touch-screen interfaces. The Abrams Enterprise…looks like an Apple store with a big chrome throttle. The original Alien movies probably hold up the best; aside from the CRTVs, that technology still seems like a plausible future.
Trekkies didn’t like them for being too “Star Wars” of an approach to Star Trek, but people looking for a good sci-fi romp that just happens to have the Star Trek name on it liked them.
Basically “They put breasts and lesbians in Citizen Kane to keep modern audiences from falling asleep, now old people hate it.”
Personally I was never that into Star Trek to begin with but I completely understand the need to “Star Wars it up” a little for a Modern Trek movie
I mean TOS is pretty good if you like old sci-fi (and I do) and quite dry if you don’t (but that’s just 60’s media in general, the line between “Play” and “TV” was still being figured out), TNG is a mixed bag (When it’s good it’s an unforgettable must watch, DS9 is THE ABSOLUTE GOAT AND I WILL DO NOTHING BUT PRAISE IT! I’d worship the ground Armin Shimmerman walks on if I didn’t think the Ferengi would charge to make me pay for the privilege, and Voyager and beyond (Shows currently running on Paramount+ included) you want nothing to do with. (Protip: Don’t namedrop influential figures who are still alive as “people honored as gods in the future”, you’ll look really stupid when everyone’s kissing Elon Musk’s ass on your show as being the “Greatest Mind of his time” but then he buys twitter a week later and declares the Federation to be a Woke Mindvirus ran by socialist transgender money-stealers who do evil unAmerican things like try to feed the poor and judge people based on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. Especially when it becomes common knowledge that he’s the unsexy version of a himbo, and his staff constantly tries to keep him away from the engineers for fear his idiocy will waste their time and/or get them fired)
Voyager especially pisses me off, because how do you steal the premise of Red Dwarf (marooned in space with no way to get home, and getting into shenanigans hoping to find the way back), only decide not to make it a parody, and the result is, I still manage to take Dave Lister more seriously as a character than Janeway?
Lower Decks is okay when it’s not being overly self-referential, when it isn’t it’s a worthy successor to Red Dwarf as far as “Comedy with relatable idiots IN SPACE!” goes, when it is it’s like “Hey, remember on Star Trek when [CHARACTER] did [THING]?” and wondering why that in and of itself isn’t a joke.
It’s ridiculed for the the use of too much lense flare. It’s not hated
Hardcore fans think it’s “dumb”