None of those movies actually happened so it’s ok
The problem with the Kelvin movies is they are all pale imitations of Wrath of Khan. Dude has a problem with Starfleat. Dude enacts revenge. Wrath was a shiny red button you press once. They’ve pressed it four times now and each iteration keeps on getting shittier. As much as I love Star Trek, it’s time to take it off life support. At this point it’s more Weekend at Bernie’s than Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.
Which quite possibly started the idiot bandwagon in Hollywood/StreamingLand of hiring people who do not like the IP. “It made money one time, so we should do it forever” - High Level Business Executive Thinking. So many promising projects ruined.
I would so watch a Star Trek parody made by Kevin Smith.
Spock has to fight a giant spider in the third act
This feels like it plausibly could have been done in TAS already
Burton’s Batman films are top tier, though. If I get a great director with a solid vision for the character/story, I don’t care at all if they were a fan before hand or not.
The first one was a great reintroduction to batman given the campiness of the 60’s show it was trying to shake off.
Yeah it really got the Batman atmosphere well. I wonder if it’s because Batman was such a cultural icon that even if you “didn’t read comics” you till knew who Batman was and what he was about?
Possibly. Most people’s first thought when they heard “Batman” at the time was probably still the '60s series, but Dark Knight Returns had gotten a bit of press already pushing back on that. But really, Burton’s sensibilities just work with the character. Maybe it’s whoever convinced him to give the job a chance we have to thank.
now working for the white house
Sheldon or the executive branch of the federal government?
(Made sense before they changed “whitehouse” to “white house”)
I will give JJ Abrahams one genuine heartfelt compliment about his Star Trek movies: they delivered on the sense of scale.
Particularly the opening scene in the first film, the cinematography (sans overused lens flares) and sound design was excellent and showed both the awesome spectacle of the sheer size of the ships and the awful danger of space combat.
That’s something there wasn’t the budget or technological capability to show until Abrahams-Trek and then Discovery and Strange New Worlds.
Particularly the opening scene in the first film, the cinematography (sans overused lens flares) and sound design was excellent and showed both the awesome spectacle of the sheer size of the ships and the awful danger of space combat.
For their flaws, the Abrams films delivered in visual spectacle.
The intro in the second film, where the Enterprise rises out of the oceans, to the awe of all below, is pretty much one of a very small handful of times where the Enterprise is shown to be quite impressive. It’s a really good show of how a religion could form around it if someone is just a little careless with the prime directive. For its weaknesses, it’s still a cutting-edge Federation starship, with advanced technology beyond our ken.
The first film had the fast-paced nature of Star Trek combat, but it fell into the trap of doing things like Star Wars, by having only warp engines be fast, and keeping a small distance between the ships. Impulse engines can trivially reach a decent fraction of the speed of light (full impulse can go to the moon and back in minutes). They should be no less agile at typical engagement distances.
Have you seen the Expanse? They had to come with narrative excuses to make combat interesting, otherwise it was just lobbing volleys of missiles from thousands of miles away.
Abrams*
Abrahamlincolns*
Arby’sms*
hinged rant incoming (this one actually makes sense). not very good (it makes sense), lots of bile and, uh, bile
oh your god don’t get me started on sound design. sound design should be like IT. the only time we should notice it is when it’s AMAZING. like, Baby Driver had amazing sound design. every step lined up with a beat in the music. that kind of amazing. lately you NEED subtitles or you’re going to miss half the dialog. WHAT THE FUCK FILM INDUSTRY?
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For what it’s worth, I found Star Trek dreadfully boring as a child. The trailers for '09 did nothing for me either because it seemed to be all references to a show I didn’t watch. Wasn’t until everyone at school was talking about how fun it was that I finally saw it. I had a blast. It made me want to understand more about the lore. ‘I’d heard about Kirk and Spock my whole life, but who the hell is Bones?’ Etc. Baby-stepped up to Wrath of Khan. ‘Oh wait, this is a sequel to an old episode? Well I gotta see that episode.’ Watched that and found the show way more gripping at an older age, so I went back and did TOS from the beginning. Then on to TNG and so on…
Slop still serves a purpose.
I’m a life long trek fan and I still haven’t been able to watch more than a handful of TOS episodes
It’s honestly my favourite to revisit. I’ll put on TNG episodes that I love, but TOS is the one where I can throw on any episode and have a good time in one way or another. I love the balance of retro camp paired with that era’s version of the philosophical stuff the show is known for. And the colours on the bluray pop so much more. I love the later shows (tbf I’m still only on DS9), but I do find TOS to be the most visually pleasant to look at.
Agreed. TOS has so much greatness. Episodes do such an amazing job of setting up a mystery and then exploring why [mysterious thing] is. Like the setup of Lost but with an actual payoff for watching.
I also think it has the best pacing of any of the series except maybe DS9. Episodes have more time to breathe.
IMO the movies should be movies.
Tone down the world building, the existential messages and social commentary and make something thats more accessable to a wider audience.
Dont fuck with the show, the show is absolutely for all of that.
This is incredibly limiting as a mindset. Movies can absolutely have strong world building, existential messages and social commentary, and also be accessible and entertaining. It’s just that, you have to be a good filmmaker to achieve that.
movies are for
Movies have to be successful at the box office, and star trek movies had to be Hollywood blockbusters. Completely different production environment compared to TV. I don’t see how that can be fixed, and it has nothing to do with being a good filmmaker. How does an outsider come in, write some fancy script shoehorned into a world that they may or may not be good at? For me as a Trekkie, every single star trek movie was a disappointment.
But that they allowed the shitty Abrahams movies to fuck up the series? The very heart and soul of star trek and the federation? Unforgivable. They couldn’t leave the optimistic fantasy of utopia alone. Too philosophical. Not enough profit. Bastards.
Dune is the number one counterexample.
Strong world building, faithful to the source, existential messages in line with with the original material’s philosophy, social commentary that doesn’t pander and respects the audience’s intelligence. And on top of all of that, an academy awarded financial blockbuster.
It’s just that, it takes a good film maker that actually understands and respects the source ethos.
I think we’re talking a bit past each other. Maybe there are stories that work as movies but not as TV, and some that work as TV but not as movies.
I think Star Trek has something inherently episodic with a Starship (or station) traveling the galaxy (or having the galaxy come to them) that does not translate to “lets make an epic movie story”.
The other way it can probably work better. I kinda liked the Dune: Prophecy. It doesn’t really “harm” the movie. Lots of TV shows for star wars too that do not harm the movies.
But a movie coming in an fundamentally altering the world building? For a single blockbuster? Killing Vulcan for epic scene? Great for a movie, sacrilege for the TV show.
It’s difficult to have that conversation without making assumptions about… Things.
But for what it’s worth, ST is still somewhat popcorn in its subject matter.
i have been enjoying SNW. it was a good jumping off point for the larger universe. we finished a season and my wife asked to watch TNG, with the sole prompting of “what do you want to watch next”, so on that basis alone it is a good show
I’m assuming you’re a Trekkie and your wife is the newbie in this situation?
Picking the entry point of a franchise is a huge consideration undertaking. Lots of possibilities.
🌽 Cornrect🌽 . The best type of correct. We’re both in our 40s and her family is a star wars family. I’m a “scifi is cool” person, during the console wars I thought both Sonic and Mario were cool, yknow?
I think so. In that era, I was PC and just knew Microsoft was a bag of dicks.
It’s certainly many times better than Discovery.
I’m sure discotrek will grow on us once the new hotness is out
i found it too philosophical for me
yea thats why ds9 is the best one
punches omnipotent being in the face
FWIW, Star Trek isn’t the only sci-fi franchise he manages to drive against the wall.
The other big one is known more for action than philosophical discussion. You’d think he’d have been a better fit!
“I didn’t really have a plan for a trilogy” 🤦🤦🤦
We noticed!
Yeah, you would. He’s just that talented a director.
“We don’t like or know the IP and we wrote a script until everyone liked it instead of saying anything because I don’t like philosophy.”
We, the communities, need to start buying IPs of the shit we like before it becomes a target for the mainstream to steal and destroy.
Counterpoint Tony Gilroy who doesn’t like star wars made the best Star wars. So I can’t fully endorse this POV
It’s the circle of life and happens with everything.
Either your favorite thing stays niche and withers slowly, never achieving it’s full potential; or becomes successful and becomes an increasingly derivative cash cow for whatever production company throws the most money at it.
Thankfully there are exceptions.
Mainstream success is not potential fulfillment, it’s cultural appropriation and butchery. Subcultures can and do very comfortably thrive for decades, gratifying their communities, without the need for the attention of the majority.
Ok, hear me out: First, fuck IP. Second, AI is pretty lackluster atm, but a lot of people are experimenting. It can reach an amazing high visual fidelity and FX already, and lackluster things like acting and errors or fight scenes could improve in the coming years.
It could be cool to see sort of like “councils” for various franchises pop up and approve / produce different AI fan projects and crowd sourced directors that tell or retell the story of our franchises.
Like imagine a dozen different fan writers and directors creating different seasons 8, 9 and 10 of game of thrones. Much will be shit, but as technology advances it might be possible to even merge or “remix” the scripts of different productions together to come to an “ultimate edition”.
Similar to how Hamlet or other classic theater stories are remixed.
Jonathan Frakes never watched Star Trek as a kid either. He preferred Bonanza.
He wasn’t directing the show.
Actually I just mentioned it as related trivia, not to to make an argument for or against anything - although this is always the default assumption - you can take people out of reddit but you can’t take reddit out of them lol.
He directed 8 episodes of TNG, as well as First Contact and Insurrection and some of the newer stuff too, in fact he said that when they brought Riker back for Picard, he was terrified of screwing up, because he hadn’t acted for years, and had only been directing.
He’s directed something like 30+ episodes throughout the franchise. Most recently an episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy this year. He’s contributed a lot to Trek,
Obviously his most important contribution to modern cinema is his voice work as lead protagonist Goliath in Disneys Gargoyles, but the Trek stuff is ok too.
Obviously his most important contribution to modern cinema is his voice work as lead protagonist Goliath in Disneys Gargoyles, but the Trek stuff is ok too.
respectfully disagreed. also have you ever seen a really big dog?
We all agree his work on Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction was a great contribution to society, but I disagree with your disagreement.
Sometimes he was, though.
People are taking this interview out of context.
He said, as a kid, he never liked Star Trek. But as an adult, after rewatching TOS to prepare for the 2009 film, he grew to appreciate Star Trek.
In the text here yes he does say as a kid he didn’t like it. He also describes later how he was in a mix of people, some writers who loved it, one who never saw it, and him, who “was not a fan.”
That’s at the time they were making the movie. The “as a kid” part was just a lame ass excuse for an opinion he seemed to know on some level shouldn’t be uttered without one.
So yeah, no. He said he didn’t like Star Trek, AND moreover that he thinks that was an important opinion to have in the room while making a Star Trek movie!!!
Fuck this guy!!!
he grew to appreciate the money he was going to make from Star Trek.
Fixed.
You wouldn’t guess that from the movies.
But as an adult, after rewatching TOS to prepare for the 2009 film, he grew to appreciate Star Trek.
Right, so he should not have been hired to do the job. He didn’t rewatch it until money, and he likes money. He liked it because of money.
I don’t think it’s inherently bad for Abrams himself to not have seen the show until asked to do it, but there’s absolutely a good question of why the people that commissioned Abrams chose him, when he had no familiarity with Star Trek beforehand.
Thats my main point - Abrams was the wrong choice from the start imo.
There is a weird thing that i think was hinted upon in a ds9 interview that for some reason “they” do not like to have star trek fans working on the set and those that where where supposed to act low profile about it.
I can kinda see how it can be both distracting to get work done and irritating or to have crew argue canon all the time (Henry Cavill in the wincher)
But i also can’t not see how political this might all be.
the wincher
Henry Cavill plays a tow truck driver who repossesses the realms most powerful monsters cars.
Oh god, Gravity Falls Spinoff…
I’d watch that.
i mean just for our boy Hank. But also because i gotta sing
When a humble bard graced a ride along
With Hank of Newark, along came this song
I think arguing canon on set is one thing, I think enjoying the work and understanding it from the start is another.
He wasn’t into Star Trek, he said he was after being paid to be into it. Thats it - and honestly I don’t believe he liked it in his rewatch either - and that is the issue. He wasn’t interested in making a Star Trek movie. He got brought on because “BIG NAME MEAN BIG $$$” and not because it would be good for Star Trek. imo of course.
Indeed. Nicolas Meyer was the same, and most fans seem to love his contributions to the franchise. Being a newcomer isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes a fresh perspective can be a great thing.
Not to say I love Abrams’ work, but in the end he did more harm to Star Wars than to Trek, and by all accounts he’s a life long Star Wars fan.
Nicholas Meyer had never seen Star Trek before he did Wrath of Khan.
People are just crybabies.
He wrote a two part blog about how he was recruited to direct and working with Ricardo. He did his research and found his “in” for the movie which Rodenburry approved of which iirc was Hornblower in space.
…but he clearly came to understand it, and coaxed great performances from the stars. WoK is one of the best films.
Eeh. Most of the complaints I see in this thread about Trek 2009 would apply as well to TWoK if people were being even handed. It’s a pew pew action film. There are no deep philosophical questions being tackled. It’s not utopian – Starfleet is portrayed as a straight forward space navy that works with real scientists only begrudgingly.
There’s kick ass high drama and a decent character study of an ageing Kirk, but the character work on Kirk and Spock in 2009 wasn’t all that bad, either.
I did not like it as a kid either. My most used to watch Voyager when I was a wee lad
And what did your most think of it?
That Janeway has a bloodlust that can never be sated.
kinda doesn’t count, he accepted the job, and was given the job, despite not liking the source material,
him doing basic research later and changing his mind is irrelevant.
Why accept a job making media you don’t care about. besides the money
First, you’re assuming you have to love the story or the universe to make a good movie set in that universe.
Second, if you could get paid several tens of millions of dollars to make a movie I’m pretty sure you would, and you’d probably do a hell of a good job catching yourself up.
I’m not sure why you’d say it “doesn’t count”.
I also assuming that there are countless talented people who love the source material, and better to give them a chance than giving it to someone who just makes content.
I am not going with “hire fans” bullshit, just that there are so many actual directors in the industry who already have a passion for it, so it is just a marketing choice to hire someone for the name.
Art is art, not content, when it is turned to content we get slop like those movies.
i mean, i’m a musician. there’s music i love and music i hate. from my perspective, about a quarter of the music i make, i don’t really like that much. but you know, i get to make music with people i love, and that is the real point from my perspective. and in my region, there are maybe three or four musicians who can match me technically and none who can match the mental work i put into it. so like, they want me to play even if i dislike the music. and i want to play even if i dislike the music, because i’m still making art.
does hearing the mental process from another field about similar decisions help explain it?
Are you saying he’s not an actual director? What makes someone an “actual director”?
Why do you think it was a marketing choice to pick him? He wasn’t exactly a major director at the time. He was far from unknown but he didn’t have a lot of movies.Which Star Trek to you is art and not content? I assume you mean made as a passion and not for commercial purposes?
I feel like that’s just ignorant of how movies are actually made.Is it content because it’s popular and you don’t like it?
Because its his job.
With art it is a bit more complex than that. Think of a photographer. Many people love photography, not all people love wedding photography, for example. It is not a great idea to have someone who loathes wedding photography as the photographer at your wedding. But, there’s no shortage of photographers who don’t like weddings working it because it is the most predictable and lucrative income source for a professional photographer. The results will depend on the level of professionalism of the party involved, sure they are doing it for money. But it is not hard to imagine that a photographer who actively enjoys the subject matter will turn out a more satisfying result than someone who, however professional, is only going through the motions. This is how many a couple end up with boring cookie cutter photos of the most important ceremony of their romantic relationship and quickly end up burying it in a basement or closet somewhere, never to be seen again.
J. J. Abrams is a hack and I hate that he keeps getting work
Eh, he’s done some decent work he just isn’t always the right fit for the properties he’s given.
Sorry I can’t read your comment. The 20 lens flares he put on screen still have me blinded
Edit: to be clear. I don’t think his movies are bad per say. They’re just painfully mediocre.
*per se
JJ, when the lens flared.
SeductiveTortoise, his fists clenched.What director is that supposed to represent? JJ flares are horizontal, sometimes have multiple occurrences in a single frame, and often are accompanied by a briefly blown out image in case the viewer doesn’t notice the insane distraction.
Michael Bay
The JJ lens flare then made it into DISCO although I think they toned it down a bit for SNW. I checked out of SFA after 3 episodes so I don’t know if they continued to be flare happy there.
For better and worse, Discovery took a lot of cues from the Abrams films, being more action focused, with flashier effects and cinematography, for example.
It got toned down as time went on, but there were parts here and there in Discovery where you can tell they were trying to replicate the films.
Yeah, the Disco premiere was very action-oriented, very JJ coded. I was like, ok, they’re trying to draw in viewers with a flashy beginning, but hopefully they’ll start being a proper Star Trek show soon. Oh, well. Happily, some people liked the show, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
DISCO? SNW? SFA? I guess with concerted effort I can use context clues to figure it out but like, how often are you typing these things?
We’re in a Star Trek community. I think most people are going to understand those without an issue.
He’s always the wrong choice for anything that calls for the bare minimum planning and substance, but that’s what they keep giving him. He has good instincts for cinematography but shouldn’t be trusted with anything that requires an actual plot.
Now I kinda want to see him make an Avatar movie.
(Blue skinned aliens, not ATLA. Although his ATLA would probably be better than what we got.)
He would probably announce a trilogy, spend the first movie setting up some mystery in Pandora’s core and then would never follow up.
spoiler
And somehow Quaritch would return, but Cameron has that covered already.
You can be a hack and still do great work, look at Ridley Scott.
Relatable
As long as you don’t let him anywhere near the plot.
what is this decent work you speak of? did he make a never published short or something?
I thought Super 8 was pretty good.
Like Chris Nolan. Has his name attached to a couple good things and now he’s treated like King Midas
At the time, liked it out of pure desperation for good sci-fi to exist again. As a whole, just a mediocre money-grab with the classic attempt to “appease all audiences” while abandoning the franchise with a parallel universe loophole.
