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JJ Abrams... the future of Trek
romeowhiskey4
Member Posts: 266 Arc User
Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Universe, Falling Skies, Walking Dead... All got one thing in common... Gritty...other than being Sci Fi of course. Now... If ST Nemesis is anything to go by the fact remains that nice happy endings and Trek writing of that style no longer work...but you make it gritty, loud, flashy and bloody and people want to watch it. So if the last movie is anything to go by and also reading on proposed st series, gritty is the way forward. We may not like the lore JJ has brought about but these things happen... It may even allow Trek to be reborn... A galaxy without Vulcan, the Federation is still there... Maybe gritty is good... No more happy endings... They are so 20th century... I hope that a new trek series is born of the JJ films and follows the grittiness of other sci fi shows...
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Yay star trek and star wars is back
Trek I loved was about stories of exploration and science with added crew interest not big bangs and who will die etc etc
We weren't watching the same shows and movies. Are you from the mirror universe?
Oh I totally get what you're saying but let's face it... sex and violence sells... And that's what Trek is all about... I don't want to burst any bubbles or insult his good name, but Gene Roddenbury didn;t create star Trek because he had no mortgage to pay or family to feed... he did it because he wanted to pay his mortgage and feed his family... the benefit being that it was an amazing idea... also sorry but ToS was all about sex... because sex sells... But now we have true grit... And that is something that star Trek has lacked for a long time BUT it can dish out in bucket loads IF written properly within Trek canon... Lets forget Abrams idea of the Trek Universe... someone should stand up and say 'Abrams, fair play, thank you for trying BUT your films are NOT Canon and is purely hollywood... just like The Star Wars Christmas special is not SW canon... Lets just put it to one side and get back on course...
I want to see a happy future for our race. If the future is gonna be all doom and gloom, then we might as well just all jump out our windows right now. Who wants to imagine that sorta thing in their free time? A hopeless, desolate future where the only redeeming feature is feeling a little better about your own excuse for a life when you turn it off... blah.
"But Hort, grimdark is a more realisitic future to think about." -slap!- No! :mad: If things around you are really so bad, then go get a bag of seeds and plant some flowers, raise bunnies, and do something about it, dang it! Don't just bask in despair and drag the rest of us down with you!
The fan-voted favorite episode was the one with the Tribbles. No sex. No violence beyond a brawl when Mr. Scott's ship was insulted. It showed a future with people living with unknown beings on a space station. It showed a few of the problems we faced today along with some new ones that couldn't be anticipated. It had humor. It had cute. At no point in watching it did I ever cringe or avert my eyes. At no point *after* I watched it did I dwell on how sad it made me.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
As much as I rejoiced seeing Christopher Pike in his wheelchair, for me that split-timeline just didnt happen.
DS9 was pretty gritty and dark from the very first episode. being dark did not harm DS9. It went through its 7 seasons and concluded itself the way the writers wanted and to this day is still widely loved.
Star Trek should not be predominately dark or gritty all the time as thats not its thing, but it has its place. wrath of khan, best of both worlds, sacrifice of angels all dark and gritty.
if you dont have the darkness then its all just a never-ending stream of happiness. how boring would that be?
BTW, on the JJ-verse, I would definitely say that of all characters in that universe, Pike was the one character who really "won," compared to the rest. I literally almost stood up and cheered in the theater when he came back!
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DS9 was dark from day one, from the moment Sisko blackmailed Quark into staying on the station. It ran for its seven full seasons.
Enterprise had a lot of issues but being "too dark" wasn't one of them. Yes it was cancelled just as it was finding its stride, but it still lasted about three seasons longer than Firefly.
TOS had its dark episodes too. Remember "Balance of Terror"? "Dagger of the Mind"? "A Taste of Armageddon"? "A Private Little War"? I could go on.
Yes, "Trouble With Tribbles" is the number one fan favorite, but number two is "The Best of Both Worlds." You can't get much darker than the captain of the Enterprise getting assimilated and forced to kill 11,000 people.
I like the concept of Star Trek, the idea that humanity can put aside its petty differences and expand its horizons, that there's no limit to what we can do except the limitations we put on ourselves. But Star Trek also captures the reality that the galaxy is a dark and scary place, as is the human mind, and that often times the best choice is the lesser of two evils.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
I like the way BSG and the walking dead are filed both good shows, falling skies I've not seen and then there's SGU which was so bad.
Not the point though , I see what your saying but trek was built on happy endings and well just what you have all seen all, I'm not sure it would be the same watching a darker trek, not nesesarly a bad thing.
Star gate shot themselfs in the foot with SGU I thnk, It took everything that was good about stargaze away and left you feeling like a bad knock off.
As for jj movie I liked it but it just doesn't feel like trek, infact there's a few movies over the years that I felt don't feel like the franchise there part of, other than trek I'd have to say the newer Bond films just don't feel like we'll Bond( ill not include skyfall into that though as it fitted more back into the right style).
Lol not so sure I'm explained myself very well so I hot u all get what I'm saying.
It also had the Magnificent Ferengi. :P
One thing I've noticed, is that everyone want's to do dark and gritty stuff, but no one want's to bring back what made gritty sci-fi popular in the first place. That saddens me.
I would not call Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Universe, Falling Skies a success though? I quite like Walking Dead.
Its not Gritty that makes JJ-Trek popular, in fact I'm not sure where you get Gritty from
I haven't seen the newest Trek movie, and probably never will. It's not Star Trek.
I honestly enjoyed 'Enterprise' (it's my #2 favorite Trek series behind TOS which for me is #1.) that said, 4 Seasons and 96 episodes is a respectable run in today's TV environment; so just because it didn't run 7 seasons like all other 1987+ TV Trek doesn't mean it 'hardly lasted'. Hell, had there not been a major executive shakeup at Paramount and UPN, it might have lasted longer. It's demise was as much political as ratings related as it was one of UPN's shows with better ratings then a lot of other shows they kept. It even had a couple of cable networks willing to pick up and pay for its continued production (similar in situation to how TNT picked up and produced Babylon 5's 5th and final season when PTEN closed down.) - but UPN/Paramount was not interested in even entertaining the idea - they felt the Star trek TV franchise had a long enough run, and it was time to end it.
So, in the end, I don't think it was the 'darker tone' that killed Star trek per se - it was the fact it had been on TV in some form from 1987 - 2004; and the production company atr the time thought they had done enough TV Star Trek.
Nothing lasts forever (and honestly, had JJ Abrams not been the one to pitch a movie idea about a reboot); we may have still been waiting on some sort of new Star Trek project be it TV or film because even Paramount stated they wanted to give Star trek 'a long rest' after 'Enterprise' ended. (And some fans may have preferred that, but IMO, I like the JJ Abrams versions myself, and I've been watching Star Trek first run (I was 6 when I first saw an episode on NBC) since 1969
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
You make some valid points. I suppose just think of the lighthearted moments when I look back at episodes I enjoyed long ago.
And I will concede, compared to the constant emo-fests of BSG, Enterprise was quite tame. I hope JJ doesn't try to bridge that gap.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The next Trek series needs to show a balance between gritty and good nature, story arc and self-containment; The next Trek needs to be different.
Also, Gene's rules went out the window in the second season of TOS, so stop with that nonsense. Gene didn't even follow Gene's rules in TNG season 1.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Although if it is indeed a retread of "Space Seed"/The Wrath of Khan, I may join those calling for Abrams' head... (My pet hypothesis is that since Kirk didn't undertake the mission to cross the edge of the galaxy, someone else did, and didn't have a Spock to tell him to kill his new superhuman crewman while there was still time, so now the Mitchell-analogue has returned to Earth to rule as the god he believes himself to be.)
How was NuTrek "gritty"? It took all the elements that Trekkies and non Trekkies knew about Star Trek and hypercharged it all to make an entertaining movie. The ending was actually pretty uplifting.
"We"? I don't need anyone to speak for me, thank you. I like NuTrek just fine. I'm also an old school Trekkie. In the end, Star Trek is a product and a form of entertainment. It's fine to talk about and debate aspects of it, but there has to come a point when you gotta not take it so seriously...
IDIC fail.
I thought Donatra rocked.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
The NuTrek has all the Trek elements included plus it included stuff from the novels, no other Trek movie has done that.
JJ will be the end of trek the quicker he moves onto disney star wars the better.
i have no respect for someone who makes a commentary for his film saying he doesnt like star trek and wants to make star trek more like star wars. then covers every second of the film with lense flare.
cant wait to get rid of him and get someone that can actualy make a good film or tv show.
dumbing down trek is not the way to make it better.
:eek::mad::D
Try taking the emotional side out of it. you watch trek because you like trek. there is no other reason to do it for you.
to them its their job. they do it, get paid, and go home. I bet you will find the vast majority of actors, crew, writers and directors are not star trek fans.
many may grow to like it over the years, but there is no requirement to be a fan to be a director of something. sometimes it helps, sometimes it hinders it. sometimes it has no effect.
while i doubt JJ cares about whether you respect him or not, that does not mean he deserves scorn because he had the audacity not to watch a show when he was a kid.
Abrams' NewTrek project, however, does precisely the opposite. You learn nothing from NewTrek, except that Academy cadets like Budweiser beer and Nokia is still making cell phones that sound like they did in the 1990s. There's no real engagement with the audience, no attempt to leave them better off than before they saw the movie, nothing to educate or enlighten the audience. Like the rest of Hollywood, Abrams seems to believe that introducing intelligence into the plot will make people's heads hurt.
I could pick apart all of the areas where NewTrek breaks from canon, but it seems to be a useless exercise. Abrams made it clear that doing the movie is just a job for him, and that he didn't like Star Trek in the first place. On one level, I can accept that; ST is not everyone's cup of Earl Grey. However, it would seem to make sense that if you're going to be remaking the franchise, then you should actually see what it is you're remaking.
I saw the 2009 movie more than once. I have tickets to see the new movie before it opens in theaters. I am hoping that "Into Darkness" is better -- hoping that the history of the even-numbered movies being better continues to hold. As far as I'm concerned, though, it is still not cut from the same cloth that Star Trek has been since 1964.