[martok2112]

In a way, Paramount did NOT play it safe at all. There was a very good chance they could've alienated (no pun intended) all the Star Trek fans with their approach to the new movie. The chance paid off, and lots of old and new fans approved....far more than disapproved.

[horatio]

In precisely what way is a mainstream movie that appeals to a lot of people risky? It's the safest type of movie to produce.

I don't like movies that are watered-down in order to appeal to everybody. I know that my essentialistic crap becomes boring but I want Trek to taste like Trek. A sci-fi flick should have a distinctive sci-fi flavour and not be tailored to the taste of the average guy.
This doesn't just hold for sci-fi or Trek but all art. You don't turn down the volume of your rock band in order to attract seniors, do you?

And no, my argument has nothing to do with the popularity of Trek per se. I find it great when Trek is popular unless this very popularity is caused by watering and dumbing down.

[kevin]

The shortest answer to paragraph 1 would be about five words long.

'It was called Star Trek'.

I do understand your refusal to believe that this film was in any way a risk but that doesn't ultimately alter the fact it was. Since those two words had no real strength to them by that point and someone was either going to have to shoot it in the arm with something (and yes I realise this is merely a fresh extension of the previous thread's discussion but since we seem doomed to a cycle around it may as well do it all again) or leave it alone for a lot longer.

Even 'playing it safe' guaranteed little at the outset because of the generally tarnished nature of the brand in the wider sense of the word. It also seems to have 'tasted' just fine to many a fan, since we're not talking about universal dislike for it WITHIN fandom both older and newer either, so the film still seems to be about the same reception-wise as the rest.

Some liked it, some didn't, some were 'meh' on it.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by martok2112

In a way, Paramount did NOT play it safe at all. There was a very good chance they could've alienated (no pun intended) all the Star Trek fans with their approach to the new movie. The chance paid off, and lots of old and new fans approved....far more than disapproved.

And actually, the fact that they haven't slapped together a sequel (which they could have done by now and had it out this summer if they had just hired another batch of folks to do it quicker) but have patiently waited and held off on it, even delayed it, strongly implies to me that Paramount actually intends to treat it a little differently.

[samwiseb]

Originally Posted by kevin

Personally, I wouldn't go around remaking episodes in a direct literal fashion. On the other hand, it's possible that some things could be utilised in a manner that gives them a different bent while still showing up.

I don't know which ones exactly, probably the Salt Vampire isn't going to appear! But stuff like the DM, Talosians, BB, The Guardian (i.e the bigger guns of famous episodes) etc could still be fertile for something that could support or appear in a film.

Well there was that "it will be one of the four" list of familiar characters/things mentioned a while back, when it was believed the script was in a more developed stage than it is. I don't recall who was on the list, although I want to say Gary Mitchel and the Gorn were among them? Which I think could work, as long as they weren't major characters. It's hard to imagine the Gorn as a primary antagonist without recreating 'Arena'.

But casual appearances like "the green Orion slave girls becomes liberated and enrolls in the Academy" are sort of expected from a reboot like this, and I'm cool with them.

The DM I think would be a huge mistake, because it would essentially become the central plot of the movie. It would be hard to keep a planet-swallowing device in the background. And the Guardian would imply yet another time-travel story. I'm not able to think offhand what the BB is, sorry.

[samwiseb]

Originally Posted by horatio

There is nothing wrong with using familiar ingredients in TV Trek as long as they are not used for the sake of themselves. ENT's fourth season set the benchmark for how to make a point with weaving things together, e.g. the Klingons and the Augments.

From what I've seen of S4, I think it leans a little far toward using familiar ingredients for the sake of themselves. As if overcompensating for Berman Trek's prior tendency to ignore much of TOS (which in itself has always been more of a fascination for me than an annoyance). I still don't see quite what weaving together Klingons and Augments achieves besides giving the Klingons human-shaped foreheads (so much for "We do not discuss it with outsiders").

But movies are hardly a suitable place to delve into such issues, remaking TWOK/NEM ad infinitum is becoming tiresome and blunt story repetitions like in the case of these comics (there is really an audience for this crap, there are really people who buy comics of TV episodes?) are simply pathetic.

Are you familiar with the TOS novelizations by James Blish? Or the 'Log' books by Alan Deen Foster for that matter? Speaking of which, I wonder what I did with mine.

I don't usually follow comic books, so I don't even know what tie-ins ST has produced in the past. However it seems to me TNG, of all series, had a published cross-over with the X-Men of all things? All I can figure is, maybe it was after Stewart was cast in the movies.

Despite the reboot the franchise is still too obsessed with its past which wouldn't be a bad thing if this were a productive force like in 2004 and 2005.
But as mere fanwank is hardly productive the franchise needs another Meyer, somebody who isn't afraid to piss people in their faces. As such a figure is antithetical to Paramount's current business strategy concerning Trek the question becomes whether the next small screen Trek incarnation will be contaminated by the blockbusters of the next years.

I humbly think the jury's still out on this one. The movie seemed fairly productive to me.

[jerhanner]

Originally Posted by horatio

In precisely what way is a mainstream movie that appeals to a lot of people risky? It's the safest type of movie to produce.

I suppose that if you pissed off the core fans you'd lose lots of convention $$$$. Trek has more than one sacred ca$h cow.

[martok2112]

Originally Posted by horatio

In precisely what way is a mainstream movie that appeals to a lot of people risky? It's the safest type of movie to produce.

Again, it was in that the movie could've potentially alienated ALL Trek fans with its approach. Indeed...it could very well have fallen into the a very real-world trap we've seen parodies of (Geekish uber-Trek fans claiming the movie was too fun, and lacked the long-winded, heady dialogue, and such....or best yet, the Angry Trek fan parody that we've seen on YouTube, you know, the guy who parodied chewing out J.J. Abrams from his mom's basement)

And thankfully, it didn't.

Originally Posted by horatio

I don't like movies that are watered-down in order to appeal to everybody. I know that my essentialistic crap becomes boring but I want Trek to taste like Trek. A sci-fi flick should have a distinctive sci-fi flavour and not be tailored to the taste of the average guy.
This doesn't just hold for sci-fi or Trek but all art. You don't turn down the volume of your rock band in order to attract seniors, do you?

And no, my argument has nothing to do with the popularity of Trek per se. I find it great when Trek is popular unless this very popularity is caused by watering and dumbing down.

I didn't find anything dumbed down about the movie at all. And it certainly tasted like Trek, and a fine steak dinner it was.

And it's these kinds of debates that ultimately end up in the whole "I'm more Trek fan than thou." category. Not saying that you're going there, friend horatio, but it does happen. It's happened on this board on multiple occasions.


And that's what sickens me about fandom.

But more to the point, it is indeed a circular argument for which there is apparently no resolution, no reconciliation. Folks are going to think what they're going to think, and are not likely to change their minds if they're set in their ways.

[samwiseb]

Originally Posted by kevin

'It was called Star Trek'.

Or as car-crash guy called it, 'Star Trek: Th-th-the...Er...Star Trek'

Didn't someone on the other forum cite the name of the movie as being, like, reason #67 (or something) for why it 'supposedly' sucked? I don't think it was Zim; might've been Trekbuff or somebody. I didn't think at the time to ask him to elaborate.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by samwiseb

Well there was that "it will be one of the four" list of familiar characters/things mentioned a while back, when it was believed the script was in a more developed stage than it is. I don't recall who was on the list, although I want to say Gary Mitchel and the Gorn were among them? Which I think could work, as long as they weren't major characters. It's hard to imagine the Gorn as a primary antagonist without recreating 'Arena'.

I can remember three of them - The Horta, The Talosians and Gary Mitchell. The fourth might have been a Gorn. But that was so long ago now that even though it was claimed as definitive by reports at the time that one of them was definitely 'the villain' I'd imagine it was too long ago now to be true.

The DM I think would be a huge mistake, because it would essentially become the central plot of the movie. It would be hard to keep a planet-swallowing device in the background. And the Guardian would imply yet another time-travel story. I'm not able to think offhand what the BB is, sorry.

'Botany Bay' - or Khan.

Originally Posted by samwiseb

I don't usually follow comic books, so I don't even know what tie-ins ST has produced in the past. However it seems to me TNG, of all series, had a published cross-over with the X-Men of all things? All I can figure is, maybe it was after Stewart was cast in the movies.

Seriously? With The X-Men?

Originally Posted by samwiseb

Or as car-crash guy called it, 'Star Trek: Th-th-the...Er...Star Trek'

Didn't someone on the other forum cite the name of the movie as being, like, reason #67 (or something) for why it 'supposedly' sucked? I don't think it was Zim; might've been Trekbuff or somebody. I didn't think at the time to ask him to elaborate.

I think it may have been Trekbuff - I think he felt the film should have had a subtitle along the lines of 'A New Beginning' (which surely would have invited more Star Wars comparisons anyway ) or 'The Future Begins'. Something along those lines. And (I'm not 100% sure but I seem to have this remembrance that) it was to differentiate it from the presumptiveness of them using the straightforward term 'Star Trek'.

Not that I ultimately took half of the contents of those '100 reasons lists' seriously anyway. When you started to get to stuff like 'Lens flares' (just because they existed, apparently) and 'Kirk was BORN in Iowa, not on a starship' (nope, that was never what he said in TVH) sorta stuff I began tuning it all out. Most of them were inevitably subjective to the author anyway.

Though I think in some foreign markets (but not the UK anyway) there was a subtitle attached to the film. I'd need to look up what it was though.