Well I'm not sure about this movie. I hope to be surprised (in a good way). Maybe the feeling will be very different from what we are seeing in these stills, think Space Odyssey kinda.. :P
Well, going from past experience. Since we're blasting a movie before it's even released, that means it'll be really really good when it finally hits the theaters and will join the ranks of one of my favorite movies of all time.
You guys are better than the critics! At least here I don't have to wait for the movie to come out!
-----------------------------
And if you can't tell, yes, the above is sarcasm.
In all seriousness, I agree with Space Ghost. TOS COULD use a refresher. Sure it's a classic of SciFi TV, but at the same time, it *IS* a 40 year old series. Some of the things on the show were "B" grade at the time, and are completely cheesy by todays standards. While having some sense of continuity would be nice, continuity in Star Trek movies was pitched out the airlock by the 2nd movie, and just snowballed from there. I think most people at this point would be surprised if there was any real sense of continuity with the movie.
I for one am actually quite interested in seeing it. If for no other reason than to have my SciFi thirst slaked with new content (even if it's a retelling of old), that doesn't involve some kind of horror plot or apocalyptic scenario, even if it's something that's just SUPPOSED to be a startrek movie. Who knows, it may actually turn out to be pretty good in its own right. But you're joking with yourself if you think you can tell that just by looking at screenshots. I seem to remember you guys saying pretty much the same things about Transformers before it was released too. And that turned out to be a very good movie without being completely true to the original. Hence my initial, sarcastic, statements
Last time they tried to emulate Space Odyssey, we got the first Star Trek movie.
Worf
RubberEagleWhat's a rubber eagle used for, anyway?
[QUOTE=Space Ghost;176517]I'm cautiously optimistic about this one. I don't want to be let down like I was with Indy 4, but I'm really excited to see a modern version of TOS. To be perfectly honest, I find TOS itself to be extremely dated and not really enduring. Of course, I grew up with TNG, so I'm biased. On the other other hand, I felt that TMP era movies were much stronger than those that followed, so maybe I'm not as biased as I let on. [/QUOTE]
The reason, why the TOS movies were much stronger than the TNG movies is, IMO, quite simple. The TNG movies had more or less the same crew (behind the scenes) as the TV-show, while the TOS movies were done by completely different people than the series. Even Gene Roddenberry was only involved in a consulting way after TMP.
The TNG movies had against it that they didn't have a strong producer. Otherwise Genereations wouldn't have started production while TNG was still finishing it's last season (thus they would have had more time to work on the script and it wouldn't have felt like a mediocre 2-parter), and Nemesis wouldn't have had a script that read like fanfiction from a 12 year old...
(IMHO First Contact and Insurrection are both strong movies)
Insurrection always feels weaker to me than Generations. Both ended up feeling like two-part episodes, but Generations really felt a lot more comfortable being where it was than Insurrection and carried the story with a great deal more fluidity and screen-sense. And while Nemesis managed to function very well as a movie, it was terrible. Had it been well written, I think we would have easily seen the overall best TNG-era film.
[QUOTE=Entil'Zha;176532]First Contact may be the strongest of the movies, even people who don't like trek at all enjoyed it.[/QUOTE]
Well I can agree that First Contact was the best Trek film, I think that philosophy applies more toward Wrath of Khan when talking about the general population. I've heard tons of instances where complete non-geeks actually enjoyed the film.
Though I could see it working for First Contact too, it is a very action oriented movie.
It's not action so much as a story that works well on the cinematic level and ties in well to what people expect going in. Khan had a story that was well beyond the "limits" of Scifi as a genre, and it could just as easily have been set on submarines near an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Too often, writers make the critical mistake that the setting is the single most important component to a good story. It's not. A setting rounds off a story, makes it whole and compliments the plot to the fullest extent possible.
I can't be the only one to have found 2001: A Space Odyssey incredibly boring.
My favorite ST movie is The Undiscovered Country, and I liked Generations, First Contact, and Nemesis more than Insurrection.
The voyage home is also great. A couple of years ago we had a discussion that the even numbered Star Trek films were better in oh, so many ways than the odd numbered ones. That was before Nemesis, however.
Undiscovered country is my favorite. It is such a different type of story for Star Trek. I like Wrath of Khan, but I think it is highly over rated. Search for Spock and Voyage home are about the same level for me.
Regarding the next generation movies, First Contact was the most exciting and the least contrived. Generations has a lot of things in it that annoy me. There were an awful lot of plot devices in that movie. For example, the writers/producers got a bug up their asses that for the movies to continue, we needed a new starship, so they felt compelled to blow the big D up. With a 40 year old Bird of Prey? To me, it did not makes sense that any Federation starship would use a non-rotating shield frequency after having encountered the borg. It made even less sense that neither Data nor Geordi would come up with that solution. And made even less sense that even with the shields up on that little Klingon ship, that the flagship of the Federation would have a hard time taking it out. Very bad plot devices in my mind, just for an excuse to blow up the D.
Insurrection was not terrible. It wasn't good, but it wasn't terrible. To be honest, I think Insurrection was the closest to a typical TNG type adventure. Maybe a little too close as it really just felt like an extended two part episode with forehead of the week villains.
Nemesis tried so dam hard to be wrath of Khan it wasn't even funny. I don't know why the writers were obsessed with this "mano a mano" showdown. It was so contrived, and so absolutely terrible. Talk about bad plot devices! Someone please explain to me how SLAVES built a ship more powerful than 2 Upgraded Romulan Warbirds AND the new Flagship of the Federation. How did SLAVES who spent their whole life digging for dilithium and then used as cannon fodder in a war get to be advanced enough to design a "perfect cloak"?? Oh and they can shoot through it, how freakishly convenient.
I would also like to know why Star Ship designers created giant bottomless pits on board their Star Ships. Did they know that Riker would need to drop a bad guy in one at some point in time? It was just silly. It tried to be way to big and incredible and forgot how to be a good story. It honestly reminded me of the scene in Galaxy Quest where Tim Allen and Sigourney weaver go through the "smashers" on board the ship, with her screaming "Whoever wrote this episode needs to DIE!".
Random ChaosActually Carefully-selected Order in disguise
My two favorites have to be Undiscovered Country and Voyage Home.
I liked the visual effects of the last 3 TNG movies, but the the last two both badly lacked a driving plot that interested me. They were all about blowing stuff up. First Contact, on the other hand, was interesting, but a bit over-acted with the characters doing some really stupid things at times.
My ratings (original theatrical releases, not the DVD releases). Also consider the fact I have not seen Insurrection since it was in first run theaters in 1998, while the others I have seen in recent history:
First Contact
Undiscovered Country
Wrath of Khan
Voyage Home
Motion Picture
Nemesis
Generations
Insurrection
Search for Spock
Final Frontier (what...the...hell?)
Isn't The Final Frontier the one where they kill God or something? I've still never seen the first, third, or fifth Star Trek movies, or at least, all the way through. I've only seen parts of them. I really have to watch them all some time.
The Wrath of Khan/The Undiscovered Country
First Contact
The Voyage Home
The Motion Picture
Generations
-rating gap-
Insurrection
The Search for Spock
-rating gap-
Nemesis
The Final Frontier
The movies at the top rank rather closely, with a notably large appreciation gap between the first and second sets, and a *very* large gap between the second and third sets. I define these categories in viewing interest. I will seek out and watch the first set. I will casually watch the second set if I manage to encounter it, but rarely do I actively find it. I will often go out of my way to avoid the third set.
Hmmm seems like the Motion Picture is varied in likability.
From what I heard the director's cut vastly improves the picture. While I like it as it is, a vast improvement can easily make it the best odd numbered movie, even placing it among the 2/6/8 trifecta.
I guess if you're the type to like 2001, you'd like the Motion Picture as is. Its main problem was pace but otherwise it had a decent story.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
The Undiscovered Country
The Wrath of Kahn
First Contact
The Voyage Home
Generations
The Motion Picture
The Search for Spock
Insurrection
Nemesis
The Final Frontier
I happen to love 2001, of course, i'm also a huge fan of the books, 2001 and 2010 are great, 2061 not so much and 3001 was pure dreck IMHO.
I also happen to like TMP, but TWOK and First Contact are my favorites, The Voyage Home, for the sheer brilliant humor (Nuclear Wessles? come on! brilliant!)
Oh yeah, and I read the reason why the blew up the Enterprise D was because of the poor quality of the model. For the series they had 3 different models that they used, a 2 foot, 3 foot, and 6 foot. They rarely used the 6 foot, only for extreme closeups and saucer seperation.
When filmed under motion picture lights with motion picture cameras, the 6 foot model was the only one that could be used, and it barely held up, so the producers felt like if they were going to continue making films they'd need a new ship that was more detailed that was designed for the big screen.
That is true in part. the D was not designed for big-screen use in any way. The hull itself was built with a level of detail in mind slightly above the requirements of television production (anticipating close-up shots as necessary). Build quality was never an issue, nor was detail on the various smaller models. The biggest problem was that the D simply didn't work as well on the big screen. Its proportions were inappropriate for the aspect ratio and its interiors were all wrong, designed around a high level of fill lighting that produced poor focus and shitty highlights. The attempt to rig this set for filming produced the very odd environment that we saw in Generations, which appeared as if every major light source had been replaced with a spot "just because."
Anyway, I love TMP. I just don't feel it quite holds up to the expectations of a mainstream film, and flopped largely because of its leisurely pace. The director's cut was an improvement over what we were first presented with, but it didn't do much to speed things up. Overall, I felt more imminent peril in nearly every other trek movie. But at the same time, I loved the core story, its scope, its mystery, and all that it brought with it significantly more than many of the other films.
Also, I like The Search for Spock, but it's best when viewed as part of the "Trilogy" it was the center of. My biggest issues were the contrived villain and the seemingly random events happening far too often for no reason other than to advance the plot. It was neither as fun as TVH nor as exciting as Khan and added too much needless emotional dillydallying.
Well according to Entertainment Weekly, "The Inspirations for a Whole New Enterprise" came from:
Balance of Terror
Star Trek II
Unification
Yesterday's Enterprise
Best Destiny Novel
Jeff Jensen (writer for EW) says that "these influences provide some intriguing clues" to the plot. Well, I never read Best Destiny, but I think the rest are wonderful places to start if you want to make a good Trek movie.
Though I also have to admit that even Final Frontier has grown on me quite a bit in recent years.
If I were to rate them, I would probably go something like:
Wrath of Khan/First Contact
Undiscovered Country
Search for Spock
Final Frontier
The Voyage Home
Insurection
Generations
The Motionless picture
And Nemesis somewhere in the jaws of Cerberus
About the destruction of the D though, I'm pretty sure I remember reading/hearing not too long ago that another big reason for it was that the people writing TNG wanted to do a saucer crash as the season 6 cliffhanger, but could not aford it.
And Patrick Stewrart is a funny man.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
The Ent-D was really good looking, but to be honest, if the Ent-E was what we ended up with because the D model wasnt good enough then I aint sorry. I'm a big fan of the E design, second only to the A model
Comments
Well, going from past experience. Since we're blasting a movie before it's even released, that means it'll be really really good when it finally hits the theaters and will join the ranks of one of my favorite movies of all time.
You guys are better than the critics! At least here I don't have to wait for the movie to come out!
-----------------------------
And if you can't tell, yes, the above is sarcasm.
In all seriousness, I agree with Space Ghost. TOS COULD use a refresher. Sure it's a classic of SciFi TV, but at the same time, it *IS* a 40 year old series. Some of the things on the show were "B" grade at the time, and are completely cheesy by todays standards. While having some sense of continuity would be nice, continuity in Star Trek movies was pitched out the airlock by the 2nd movie, and just snowballed from there. I think most people at this point would be surprised if there was any real sense of continuity with the movie.
I for one am actually quite interested in seeing it. If for no other reason than to have my SciFi thirst slaked with new content (even if it's a retelling of old), that doesn't involve some kind of horror plot or apocalyptic scenario, even if it's something that's just SUPPOSED to be a startrek movie. Who knows, it may actually turn out to be pretty good in its own right. But you're joking with yourself if you think you can tell that just by looking at screenshots. I seem to remember you guys saying pretty much the same things about Transformers before it was released too. And that turned out to be a very good movie without being completely true to the original. Hence my initial, sarcastic, statements
Worf
The reason, why the TOS movies were much stronger than the TNG movies is, IMO, quite simple. The TNG movies had more or less the same crew (behind the scenes) as the TV-show, while the TOS movies were done by completely different people than the series. Even Gene Roddenberry was only involved in a consulting way after TMP.
The TNG movies had against it that they didn't have a strong producer. Otherwise Genereations wouldn't have started production while TNG was still finishing it's last season (thus they would have had more time to work on the script and it wouldn't have felt like a mediocre 2-parter), and Nemesis wouldn't have had a script that read like fanfiction from a 12 year old...
(IMHO First Contact and Insurrection are both strong movies)
Well I can agree that First Contact was the best Trek film, I think that philosophy applies more toward Wrath of Khan when talking about the general population. I've heard tons of instances where complete non-geeks actually enjoyed the film.
Though I could see it working for First Contact too, it is a very action oriented movie.
Too often, writers make the critical mistake that the setting is the single most important component to a good story. It's not. A setting rounds off a story, makes it whole and compliments the plot to the fullest extent possible.
My favorite ST movie is The Undiscovered Country, and I liked Generations, First Contact, and Nemesis more than Insurrection.
The inconvenient truth is that real space flight is incredibly boring. :D
The pacing of the movie is way too slow and I'm sure if it wasn't for the homicidal computer, people wouldn't even remember the film.
I enjoyed 2010 a lot more.
Regarding the next generation movies, First Contact was the most exciting and the least contrived. Generations has a lot of things in it that annoy me. There were an awful lot of plot devices in that movie. For example, the writers/producers got a bug up their asses that for the movies to continue, we needed a new starship, so they felt compelled to blow the big D up. With a 40 year old Bird of Prey? To me, it did not makes sense that any Federation starship would use a non-rotating shield frequency after having encountered the borg. It made even less sense that neither Data nor Geordi would come up with that solution. And made even less sense that even with the shields up on that little Klingon ship, that the flagship of the Federation would have a hard time taking it out. Very bad plot devices in my mind, just for an excuse to blow up the D.
Insurrection was not terrible. It wasn't good, but it wasn't terrible. To be honest, I think Insurrection was the closest to a typical TNG type adventure. Maybe a little too close as it really just felt like an extended two part episode with forehead of the week villains.
Nemesis tried so dam hard to be wrath of Khan it wasn't even funny. I don't know why the writers were obsessed with this "mano a mano" showdown. It was so contrived, and so absolutely terrible. Talk about bad plot devices! Someone please explain to me how SLAVES built a ship more powerful than 2 Upgraded Romulan Warbirds AND the new Flagship of the Federation. How did SLAVES who spent their whole life digging for dilithium and then used as cannon fodder in a war get to be advanced enough to design a "perfect cloak"?? Oh and they can shoot through it, how freakishly convenient.
I would also like to know why Star Ship designers created giant bottomless pits on board their Star Ships. Did they know that Riker would need to drop a bad guy in one at some point in time? It was just silly. It tried to be way to big and incredible and forgot how to be a good story. It honestly reminded me of the scene in Galaxy Quest where Tim Allen and Sigourney weaver go through the "smashers" on board the ship, with her screaming "Whoever wrote this episode needs to DIE!".
I liked the visual effects of the last 3 TNG movies, but the the last two both badly lacked a driving plot that interested me. They were all about blowing stuff up. First Contact, on the other hand, was interesting, but a bit over-acted with the characters doing some really stupid things at times.
First Contact
Undiscovered Country
Wrath of Khan
Voyage Home
Motion Picture
Nemesis
Generations
Insurrection
Search for Spock
Final Frontier (what...the...hell?)
My ratings:
Wrath of Khan
Undiscovered Country
Search for Spock
First Contact
Voyage Home
Generations
Insurrection
Final Frontier
Motion Picture
Nemesis
Worf
The Wrath of Khan/The Undiscovered Country
First Contact
The Voyage Home
The Motion Picture
Generations
-rating gap-
Insurrection
The Search for Spock
-rating gap-
Nemesis
The Final Frontier
The movies at the top rank rather closely, with a notably large appreciation gap between the first and second sets, and a *very* large gap between the second and third sets. I define these categories in viewing interest. I will seek out and watch the first set. I will casually watch the second set if I manage to encounter it, but rarely do I actively find it. I will often go out of my way to avoid the third set.
From what I heard the director's cut vastly improves the picture. While I like it as it is, a vast improvement can easily make it the best odd numbered movie, even placing it among the 2/6/8 trifecta.
I guess if you're the type to like 2001, you'd like the Motion Picture as is. Its main problem was pace but otherwise it had a decent story.
The Wrath of Kahn
First Contact
The Voyage Home
Generations
The Motion Picture
The Search for Spock
Insurrection
Nemesis
The Final Frontier
I also happen to like TMP, but TWOK and First Contact are my favorites, The Voyage Home, for the sheer brilliant humor (Nuclear Wessles? come on! brilliant!)
First Contact
The Voyage Home
The Undiscovered Country
The Wrath of Kahn
Insurrection
Generations
Nemesis
---
The Motion Picture
---
The Search for Spock
The Final Frontier
I don't own any of the TV shows on DVD though... for one, I just can't justify the purchase price.
I was waiting for the HD release, but I don't really know when or if it's going to happen anytime soon.
I don't think any ST movie is truly bad, but some are better than others.
When filmed under motion picture lights with motion picture cameras, the 6 foot model was the only one that could be used, and it barely held up, so the producers felt like if they were going to continue making films they'd need a new ship that was more detailed that was designed for the big screen.
Anyway, I love TMP. I just don't feel it quite holds up to the expectations of a mainstream film, and flopped largely because of its leisurely pace. The director's cut was an improvement over what we were first presented with, but it didn't do much to speed things up. Overall, I felt more imminent peril in nearly every other trek movie. But at the same time, I loved the core story, its scope, its mystery, and all that it brought with it significantly more than many of the other films.
Also, I like The Search for Spock, but it's best when viewed as part of the "Trilogy" it was the center of. My biggest issues were the contrived villain and the seemingly random events happening far too often for no reason other than to advance the plot. It was neither as fun as TVH nor as exciting as Khan and added too much needless emotional dillydallying.
Balance of Terror
Star Trek II
Unification
Yesterday's Enterprise
Best Destiny Novel
Jeff Jensen (writer for EW) says that "these influences provide some intriguing clues" to the plot. Well, I never read Best Destiny, but I think the rest are wonderful places to start if you want to make a good Trek movie.
Talking about Star Trek...
Though I also have to admit that even Final Frontier has grown on me quite a bit in recent years.
If I were to rate them, I would probably go something like:
Wrath of Khan/First Contact
Undiscovered Country
Search for Spock
Final Frontier
The Voyage Home
Insurection
Generations
The Motionless picture
And Nemesis somewhere in the jaws of Cerberus
About the destruction of the D though, I'm pretty sure I remember reading/hearing not too long ago that another big reason for it was that the people writing TNG wanted to do a saucer crash as the season 6 cliffhanger, but could not aford it.
And Patrick Stewrart is a funny man.