Young Kirk n Spock + Lost = new Star Trek movie

star trek was SO much better than benjamin button (but not the other two). BB was an "adult" movie in the worst sense of the word, exactly the kind of "oscar bait bore" you were decrying a second ago!

opinions, it has been established, are hugely split on that.

Dammit, why didn't Milk make $200 million?!

s1ocki, you are aware that "Star Trek" with all its flaws used to mean an approximation of thoughtful mainstream science-fiction, riiiight?

Mainstream sf of the 40s and 50s perhaps; the mainstream of sf had moved on a little by the time Star Trek arrived, and a lot more by the time it actually got popular. One of my personal gripes with ST fandom is that its more rabid adherents don't seem to have read any other sf but the tie in novels and therefore have no idea that sf is about a bit more than zooming about in a starship blowing up a succession of bumpy-foreheaded humanoid aliens and occasionally stopping to discuss the odd philosophical question at the level of a 12 year old.

yes to all that, but when you consider the Lost in Space / Fantastic Voyage TV/film norm of the '60s etc.

Ah, sf in the mainstream rather than the mainstream of sf... I see your point.

"Hollywood films have never been worse."

I defy you to find a hollywood movie today worse than BioDome. I think you would have to go back 20-30 years before you could find a time when yesterday's crap was better than today's crap, and even then I'm not sure if nostalgia isn't the winning factor.

"sf is about a bit more than zooming about in a starship blowing up a succession of bumpy-foreheaded humanoid aliens and occasionally stopping to discuss the odd philosophical question at the level of a 12 year old"

I don't think SF proper acquits itself much better than Star Trek. What reasons do "serious" writers have to stay in the SF ghetto these days when they are no longer penalized for having SF elements in mainstream fiction? What is this great and serious SF that Star Trek has neglected to appropriate?

Bio Dome was better than Terminator and Wolverine!

Surely, you jest!
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/5964/biodomeboxhirescd.jpg

http://www.ballina.info/cinema/images/movies/ghosts_of_girlfriends_past.jpg

The drive-in where we saw Terminator 4 played this right after and we were bored so we stayed and watched. I think both movies were about the same quality.

As for Star Trek being pop trash, mainstream, scifi crap, whatever, I'm open to any ideas. But The Wrath of Khan should not be touched. That is a film that transcends Star Trek and most other movies.

I don't think SF proper acquits itself much better than Star Trek. What reasons do "serious" writers have to stay in the SF ghetto these days when they are no longer penalized for having SF elements in mainstream fiction? What is this great and serious SF that Star Trek has neglected to appropriate?

You are kidding surely?

As for Star Trek being pop trash, mainstream, scifi crap, whatever, I'm open to any ideas. But The Wrath of Khan should not be touched. That is a film that transcends Star Trek and most other movies.

― Adam Bruneau, Monday, May 25, 2009 5:55 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you know khan doesn't hold up QUITE as well as i'd thought... the scenes with "david" are pretty terrible. when william shatner blows you off the screen...

re: SF vs ST
Do you accept that those Dozois-edited yearly "best of" anthologies represent a reasonable umbrella of proper, excellent SF? On average, they didn't seem so much more intellectually advanced than the TNG episodes that came out at the time. Granted, there were less laser fights and pew-pew-ing, but I remember more than a few TNG episodes poaching from them.

re: Khan
Would you digitally replace 'david' with james spader to have an actor who could go toe-to-toe with shatner?

William Shatner is GOOD in Khan. Mostly. Maybe his best performance since he played the racist in that Roger Corman movie!

no he is good in it. but david dude (RIP) is just terrible

you know though - rewatching the original st khan episode, space seed, recently, made me think it's even better than the movie. more interesting & nuanced characterization of khan...

being in suspended animation for 300 years lets you be more relaxed and nuanced than hacking out life on a crappy planet for 15.

ya in st2 i figure he's just a bit crazed!

(to the point where he thinks he recognizes chekov even though he's never seen him before)

When you watched Space Seed, don't you retroactively think Khan has a pretty good point later on? Kirk really dropped the ball not checking up on them. The whole thing is Kirk's fault.

Do you accept that those Dozois-edited yearly "best of" anthologies represent a reasonable umbrella of proper, excellent SF? On average, they didn't seem so much more intellectually advanced than the TNG episodes that came out at the time. Granted, there were less laser fights and pew-pew-ing, but I remember more than a few TNG episodes poaching from them.

ST, particularly the original series, but also TNG, is quite obviously rooted in 40's/50's golden age SF. If you don't think the genre has changed at all since then I have to suspect you haven't read much in the way of SF.

I read mostly those anthologies that came out at the same time as TNG using stories that were supposedly written that year. Are you saying those anthologies were biased towards 40's/50's flavored contemporary SF? TNG covered a fair bit of styles, as far as is possible within the constraints of the show. They even had a 'steampunk' episode for chrissake.

When you watched Space Seed, don't you retroactively think Khan has a pretty good point later on? Kirk really dropped the ball not checking up on them. The whole thing is Kirk's fault.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, May 25, 2009 7:02 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's actually the whole point of ST2 imo: at the end of the film when they shoot spock's coffin into the genesis project planet, kirk says something like "i'll be back to check on it soon." his whole character arc is about learning to come back and check up on things!

Yeah but doesnt Kirk save Khan's life to begin with and then proceeds to take over his ship? Kirk may have thought about checking up on them and then realized if he did his ship would probably get hijacked again. F that.

I think those space worms had alot to do with Khan doing nutsy-cookoo.

i think the moral of the movie is just "check on things."

i'm looking at that Ghost of Girlfriends poster and thinking it obviously had a lot photoshop work done to it - but they opted to leave his right eye all wonky looking?

Milk is slightly better than Star Trek (which I thought was okay, though all Spock stuff was great), and BB is around the same level-though Zoller Seitz posited an interesting position on the film that might make it better a second time around. Not seen Two Lovers, though I struggle to find what's so great about James Gray (car chase in the rain sequence in We Own the Night was fantastic, but most of the rest of the film was pretty poor).

Well Spock maroons Kirk on an ice planet in the new one. So perhaps in this new timeline, Kirk won't piss Khan off so badly.

i bet new kirk will check on more things

s1ocki, the role of Kirk's son in TWOK is a plot device more than a character, and you can't expect Merritt Butrick to match his immortal Johnny Slash on Square Pegs in every role.

Not seen Two Lovers, though I struggle to find what's so great about James Gray

I wasn't claiming greatness for Two Lovers, goddammit, I was trying to get joygoat into a theater for a visually striking, worthwhile adult movie.

btw, the kind of "energy" I like in a theater screening is the kind where I'm one of 7 people in the audience. None of whom talk.

Philip Nunez:

Instead of trying to determine which particular anthology you read is supposed to represent all SF, let's get back to this bald assertion:

"I don't think SF proper acquits itself much better than Star Trek."

This is rubbish. It isn't controversial to argue, as Stone Monkey does, that the original series was a dinosaur in its treatment of the genre even in the 1960s and that TNG, whilst having a veneer of contemporary SF tropes, is still fundamentally the same thing i.e. a bunch of space adventurers whizz about the galaxy in a massively armed spaceship righting wrongs with nonsensical "science", wearing spiffy uniforms, and loudly explaining the plot to each other.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Star Trek, but for a whole variety of reasons of which its SFnal aspects are quite far down the list. If you are truly of the opinion that the series represents all that SF has to offer, then I think that is a shame and I probably won't be able to dissuade you with a crude list of recommendations. But you should check out some of the SF threads on the ILB board, as there has been a lot of good stuff written over the years that is far more thought-provoking than anything in Star Trek.

^Word.

s1ocki, the role of Kirk's son in TWOK is a plot device more than a character, and you can't expect Merritt Butrick to match his immortal Johnny Slash on Square Pegs in every role.

regardless, he still kind of kills every scene he's in. nice curly hair tho

His hair was the worst part (in Square Pegs and TWOK)! But I guess it was appropriately Shatner-esque.

someone on scotty:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/black/detail?entry_id=40650

I'm glad folks found this movie provocative enough to talk about it at length; I Really enjoyed it and found it to be a dazzling indictment of the UN's stance on the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers.

the kind of "energy" I like in a theater screening is the kind where I'm one of 7 people in the audience. None of whom talk.

but snore.

I don't love audiences with 7 people. In fact, one of my favorite audiences was when I saw Kiarostami's Ten with about 500 people.

best movie audiences in the WORLD are opening-night horror movie audiences in city neighborhoods with a lot of high school kids

yeah, all my best moviewatching happens at Fantasia, which usually involves watching (usually new, and often crap) genre films with hundreds of people, many of them hooting and hollering.

I hate to sound like the old curmudgeon here, but every movie I've seen in the last six months has been borderline ruined by high school kids talking and texting through the entire thing. And you can't politely request that they refrain from either activity, because god forbid anyone try to take away their god-given right to text at all times.

is texting really noisy or something?

Oh noes texting.

Its annoying when the person sitting in front of you keeps holding up a brightly lit cell phone throughout the film, more than a little distracting.

Also, most ppl don't put their phones on silent for god knows what reason, so hearing the chirping responses is also annoying. (The overreaction when you ask for them to stop is also distracting.)

^ this

reason #192039 I am hopefully never buying a cell phone.

At my local multiplex (Romford, in lovely, lovely Essex), the sound system is akin to an artillery bombardment on the opening day of the Somme. Kids could be eviscerating each other with bazookas a row over and you wouldn't even notice.

guys, they have 11am showings for olds like you

Thanks for that solution, I had absolutely no idea! I'll happily schedule my work hours around seeing movies. No reason I should expect inconsiderate asshats to stop being inconsiderate asshats, right?