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Did Jar jar Abrams get something right?
messahla
Member Posts: 1,160 Arc User
Ok im not a fan of JJ abrams or JJTrek but i on a dare took upon a task to see what did he get right....i was kinda surprised.
so at the risk of being tar and feathered and stoned and flamed by the trekkies on this forum this is what i found.....may god have mercy on my soul
1) Romulans
Ok in JJTrek 2009 we are introduced to JJs romulan well first thing no head ridges or atleast not so pronounced.
In TOS and dare i say Trek V romulans are shon with NO head ridges case in point balance of terror the romulans have no head ridges they are vulcans that did not embrace logic.
I later discovered the head ridges was a TNG addition to the trek lore so those players wanting to role an original rommie might wanna ditch the head ridges
2) The enterprise
Now i know this is a touchy subject and what not but im not going to talk about the way the ships look im gonna talk phasers.
JJ got it right when his ent fires its phasers its like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5sfQtMbvxw
Now i know some gonna say "Its not because its not a steady beam" well hate to break the news to you but
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I4GGorJZB0
The video is crappy but go watch balance of terror then tell me abrams did not get phaser fire right.
anyways there ya go something this abrams and JJTrek hater will tip his hat and admit he got some things right
so at the risk of being tar and feathered and stoned and flamed by the trekkies on this forum this is what i found.....may god have mercy on my soul
1) Romulans
Ok in JJTrek 2009 we are introduced to JJs romulan well first thing no head ridges or atleast not so pronounced.
In TOS and dare i say Trek V romulans are shon with NO head ridges case in point balance of terror the romulans have no head ridges they are vulcans that did not embrace logic.
I later discovered the head ridges was a TNG addition to the trek lore so those players wanting to role an original rommie might wanna ditch the head ridges
2) The enterprise
Now i know this is a touchy subject and what not but im not going to talk about the way the ships look im gonna talk phasers.
JJ got it right when his ent fires its phasers its like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5sfQtMbvxw
Now i know some gonna say "Its not because its not a steady beam" well hate to break the news to you but
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I4GGorJZB0
The video is crappy but go watch balance of terror then tell me abrams did not get phaser fire right.
anyways there ya go something this abrams and JJTrek hater will tip his hat and admit he got some things right
Post edited by messahla on
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Comments
Among them is his way of making the enemies scary.
My character Tsin'xing
You can blame Michael Westmore for that who was the worst thing to ever happen to Star Trek. His head designs became so common in every episode that by Voyager Star Trek had become a laughing stock with critics. No matter how good the show was (which wasn't very often with Voyager), all that was talked about was the "bumpy heads".
So like you said, JJ got it right.
I was personally not a fan with some of the things about the Klingons in this movie (namely, the weird ears, and the way they all looked like Predator from a distance with that helmet).
I did love some of the background aliens though, like the weird android-looking guy on the bridge.
As an aside re: JJ Abrams, I love how nobody talks about Kurtzman and Orci... you know, the writers. Abrams is responsible for the way the movie looks, but all of the story things (the things people seem to love to hate on) are on them.
Like making all the bad guys friends with the Federation and after that painted in a corner moment came up with space zombies.
Oh and they need special ships, um lets quickly glue a bunck of model trees around a light. Oh the people like that so all Borg will have geometric shapes then.
Oh and we have Mr. Data, He's not Mr. Spock.
Data was a social buffoon, whereas Spock dominated every room he was in.
Point goes to the Vulcan.
1) In Balance of Terror, the ship fires "proximity phasers" and in that early episode they used the effects later used for photon torpedoes; not only the visual but even the sound effects. (This makes sense since the analogy was depth charges, in the submarine hunt metaphor that this episode was.) This is simply just one of those cases where continuity was not yet established. Furthermore that episode is the only one where we ever see "proximity phasers" used.
2) In JJ-Trek '09, the phasers are blasting all over the place, not only not a single beam but more like cannons firing scatter volley. And again like cannons, the fire is in bolts or pulses.
Not sure how you can say "he got it right" when JJ-verse phasers are not beam weapons, period. This is likewise true for the hand phasers.
Bottom line is: in every series and every movie prior to '09, Starfleet ships fired beam weapons. (Except the Defiant and it's DPS cannons.
The entire TNG bridge crew were Spock knock-offs.
Riker = First Officer
Data = Emotionless Science Guy, superhuman strength
Worf = Torn between Starfleet and alien heritage, superhuman strength
Geordi = Superhuman powers of perception
Troi = Low-grade telepathic abilities
Kirk had Picard's whole crew in just one guy.
I think he went with the more exciting Phasers rather than the slower boringer Phasers.
Time to change our views on Phasers.
That link to Balance of Terror VFX was a poor example. As that is the poster's animation. Not the original broadcast or the official remastering of the VFX.
As already stated above the original effects were that of the photon torpedoes. Described as phasers set to proximity detonation instead of a steady beam. The true remastering is apples to JJ Abrams oranges.
In Wrath of Khan, the phasers were more pulsed than beam. It's really the only instance we have seeing the movie Enterprise(s) firing their phasers, and the new Enterprise is clearly taking more from the refit than from the TOS Enterprise.
Go back and watch the opening battle between the Kelvin and the Narada, the Kelvin very obviously uses beam weapon phasers and not the cannon/bolt versions the Enterprise has later on in the film. So the old school beam phasers are in the movie, just not on the "hero" ship. You can blame the Defiant for that, since the writers on DS9 wanted to make a little combat escort with "pew pew" be the most powerful ship in Star Trek lore, while making the flagship in TNG a flimsy POS that was made from tissue paper and had trouble taking on a 60+ year old Bird of Prey from Kirk's era.
I am aware of the poor quality but was unable to find a video from BoT where the ent is firing that was the only vid i could find.
Youtube can be limited and thats why i would encourage the readers of this thread to watch BoT and compare the similarities.
I undertook this on a dare from a buddy who loves JJTrek and i went into this wanting to prove abrams trek had nothing in common with prime universe.
I was wrong there are similarities the phasers are just an example im not saying they are exactly the same just similar and can see where some of the insperation may have come from.
So this is this old trek fans way of tipping my hat saying i was wrong about JJTrek not having elements of the old trek in it.
This thread is about the similarities JJTrek to TOS....i didnt even bother with TNG and that era of trek....that era was the voyages of the Uss love boat -d
Sort of right, the Kelvin had phaser beam "turrets" you can see in shots of the hull.
Something that always confused me as a kid was why the banks couldn't have a dual function; in reality contemporary laser emitters can be programmed to fire in sustained beams or in short bursts depending on the job needed; I like to think that the JJ fed ships had something similar.
Theory: When the Kelvin was fighting the Narada, it was trying to shoot down the torpedoes, which required precision and a sustained beam because they needed to deliver more energy in order to pierce the hull of the torpedo (which was probably made from some advanced alloy).
Now when the Enterprise fought the Narada, they were attacking the ship itself, which was massive, and because they didn't know the ship layout or anything, one could assume they set the emitters to do a scatter fire in order to cover as much of the ship as possible in the hopes of hitting something vital. The ship itself was already damaged by the collision of the Jellyfish, and its debatable weather the Enterprise did much damage anyway before the Red Matter ignited.
All very theoretical, but I think it provides a nice explanation to appease canon.
No, the worst thing to happen to Star Trek, IMO, was the Magic Reset Button. It ran particularly rampant aboard the Voyager, where no changes could possibly stick. Heck, they didn't even manage to run out of supplies - while stranded 70 thousand light-years from the nearest Starbase!
The exact specifics of how they fire varies depending on the ship. It always has....
My character Tsin'xing
The Kelvin was attacked by the Narada, a massive ship with advanced weaponry that launched many, MANY missiles at them (and each individual missile broke off into even more explosive parts). As we saw, their phaser arrays, while definitely doing the best they could, simply couldn't handle the sheer overkill of so many.
To adapt to this, they changed from powerful slow-firing beams (relatively speaking) into somewhat weaker-but-fasting firing cannon shots, in the case that they had to face that ship again. And they did
This design influence followed the hand units as well, for consistency.
You can argue that they didn't exactly help (and they didn't, much, due to the very advanced nature of the Narada), but the design does make sense when put into context
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Not trying to argue, because from the '09 movie it wasn't clear what they were firing. The only thing that was clear is it wasn't a beam weapon.
If they had a phaser that could shoot like a machinegun, with modern advanced power, they'd rapidly destroy the ship, the city, or anything in their way really, even during the quicker battles. So as their power grew, the high amount of rounds probably fell WAY out of practice
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
My character Tsin'xing
And also they could of been slot worse I mean like Superman returns worse... that was some kind of reboot an old genre gone wrong there (( man of steel looks good though ))
the industry of films ATM are making slot of good reboots or at least I hope they are but from my point of view I enjoyed them
My character Tsin'xing
1. Agreed: Romulans
Above being simply cool to look at, the Romulan design was actually simpler. It removed the need for formal militaristic applications, while maintaining the dangerous aspects of the Romulan people that we've come to expect.
The TNG Romulans kind of lost that, becoming cold and calculating, but hardly frightening. More like what we come to think of Cardassians as; very strict, coded, moral, but shady. Romulans are supposed to be emotional, violent, abrasive, and challenging - but eerily patient.
JJ recreates this new Romulan on that premise. Nero waits 25 years to get ahold of Spock, and dumps him on an ice world to watch his world suck itself into a black hole. He took a staff with about fifty blades on the tip and gutted Captain Redshirt with it. And he forcefed Pike a truth-bug that looked more like a damn scorpion than Khan's little tiny mind-control maggots.
2: Shields that don't do much
We tend to think of shields as an impenetrable barrier that prevents the Enterprise from scratching its pretty paint job. Weeeeell... the only real reason why they avoid that kinda thing in the Original Series, and true, in TNG as well, was budgetary. But to be more fair, energy of any kind would produce heat that is pretty likely to scar the hull. And torpedoes would most logically only slow a torpedo down to reduce hull penetration (which would most likely result in a smaller explosion inside the ship than outside).
3: The scale of the Enterprise
The USS Enterprise is the crown jewel of Starfleet and remained such for almost 20 years - until the Excelsior was launched. Every time a capital Starship class is designed, the name Enterprise is painted onto one of the hulls.
But the original Enterprise was simply too small! At 289 metres, the Enterprise had a crew capacity of approximately 430. How this was at all doable is beyond me.
However, with the budget of the 1960s on television, such an ambitiously large ship would result in the audience expecting more locations and that simply wasn't an option. With today's modern movie budget, you can basically make a ship as big as you want and show off all the locations you can cram into 90 minutes. This gave Abrams a chance to showcase a real Enterprise. 700+ meters, with all the implied space within being demonstrated.
4: Metrosexual Klingons
Star Trek into Darkness reveals Abrams' redesigned Klingons. Keeping in tune with the sleek, sexy tones, the Klingons lose some of these rugged edge. Blue eyes, flatter forehead ridges, no Fu Man Chu thing, and ridge piercings.
There was just no place for the ragged, frizzy mop of hair or the stuffed rubber armour. The crack of leather just wasn't enough to make them scary any more. They needed their actions to demonstrate their strength - which is what Klingons are all about. They don't dress the part; they ARE the part. They forge it from their blood, and carve it into the flesh of their enemies.
This means that we needed to see a Klingon that looked mean because he was ruthless and - even though he got wiped out by one dude with a minigun that he probably ripped off of a Bird-of-Prey - powerful.
Also, the new Bat'leth was gruesome-looking. If you want to pull someone's stomach out in two directions, that's what you'd use.
5: Nimoy, not Shatner
Bill's a good guy. He's got an air around him that others can appreciate. I attribute it to the PR TRIBBLE-kicking he got in the 1980s when he realized the entire Star Trek cast hated him. But he's also a really bad actor. No one called him on it for about 20 years, so it's just something he can't break.
In spite of that, he cast a huge shadow as Captain Kirk, and it's not something he can control, but it is kinda his fault, seeing as he still sees himself as pretty grand. He was also in Star Trek: Generations, which felt more like an attempt to cash in than a Star Trek film.
Nimoy is a more careful actor. If he doesn't respect the material, he won't really do it. He's said repeated that he had respect for Abrams and could see the direction Abrams was trying to take the franchise in. Nimoy is also able to pull himself back and distance himself from a project, to prevent himself from becoming the selling point. Notice that neither film had Spock Prime in the trailers (except for his voice in the Cloverfield-accompanied teaser).
6: The new Phasers
Between the pistols and the ship-mounted weapons, there was a greater sense of These are meant to hurt. In the TV shows, the steady beam Phasers lent to a confusing impression that they were just for baring teeth. The effect was rather sluggish at times. And since the beam connected from the weapon's port to the enemy ship, it was hard to tell how much force the energy was putting out.
JJ's phasers fire in bursts - a little more like the Defiant's phaser cannons. Because there is space on either end of the energy now, we have a better idea of how fast it's travelling - which gives the audience an impression of how much of a punch these phasers are (supposed to be) packing.
Also, the mechanical element to the phaser pistols is very clever, and would likely lead to a lot of speculation as to how they work. And talking points on technology is a sci-fi nerd's wet dream.
You know what? I get the craps of people like you. Voyager was a very entertaining series. I didn't watch it when it was on because I was getting married and having kids, but I finally got watch and honestly it is better than TNG in my opinion. Janeway reminded me of a female Kirk and that is what I grew up watching with my dad in the 70s. So forgive me for saying this but shut your pie hole. Voyager was no worse than the others. You want to mock something, mock Enterprise which turned the whole first contact with Klingons on it's ear.
you seem to be forgetting ENT where romulans had head ridges there as well, well before TOS and their uniforms reflected what a true romulan looks like. if there is ever to be a reboot of TOS, it must be done exactly to the storylines from TOS, if it successful, may as well make a few more seasons of the reboot TOS as long as it makes sense and is considered canon.
i doubt the klingon first contact would of been much different considering the opinion klingons have about a potential enemy in additon to this it is stated that klingons are slow to adapt to changing circumstances.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
In both cases I can't wait for the movie that rights the ship. (And yes Man of Steel might just do it for Supe.)
The screams of "Its not Star Trek" especially
Which Star Trek isn't it? Because the last 3 "Treks" have been jokes.
Enterprise? To Boldly Retread The Entire Premise of TOS and then abruptly change course mid mission to try to become some kind of BSG clone all the while completely forgetting the original premise that Rodenberry set out with its rampant sexism and discrimination?
Voyager? The Series that Worf Effected the entire Borg Collective, turning them from one of the all time scariest villains of the Trek-Verse into... well Worf. The Undine are a terribly written, poorly fleshed out Mary Sue race. Nuff said
Deep Sleep Nine? most people couldn't even get through the first season without dozing off, and if you did, you had to listen to the Barjorans constantly whining about the Cardassian Occupation even when it had nothing to do with the episode, Sisko should have spaced the entire station and then sent it crashing into Bajor.
Even TNG has the stigma of Insurrection hanging over its head and to a lesser Extent Nemesis. and the TOS? TMP, again nuff said.
the new Trek may not be "My" Trek, my trek was ToS and TNG because I feel into that weird age group that bridge the gap between the popularization of TOS during its rerun days and movie days and the start of TNG.
But the new Trek is better to me than the last 3 series combined. It shows clear evidence of character development, all the characters have grown into their roles since the first one. Into Darkness was a fantastic homage to TOS, I wont get into that specifically because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.
Not to mention the little things like making the ship to ship battles resemble the naval combat they should by eliminating that really silly concept of phaser banks. The volleys of "cannon" fire between ships resemble honest to god naval combat when a broadside could really ruin your day and makes for much more tension during those scenes than the constant cutting of the phaser banks.
I can actually enjoy the other characters since Pine isn't Shattner and trying to steal ever scene with his terrible hammy acting.
Also New Trek reminds us of just how bad TRIBBLE scary the Vulcans, and by extension the Romulans, can be, the former if not for their emotional control, the later made more menacing because of their embracing of those emotions. Those who have seen the movie know the scene I mean. Since TOS we have all heard about how if not for their emotional control the Vulcans would have destroyed themselves or turned into the Romulan Star Empire, but it was rarely demonstrated why that control was needed. Into Darkness reminded us of why.
and the one telling thing about the new Trek, its making NEW Star Trek fans, people who would never be caught dead being a fan of TOS or TNG because its "nerdy" are being introduced to it and realizing they like it. I dragged a friend to the first one, totally hated star trek before because of the "Stigma" of being a fan, but it was my turn to pick the movie, she walked out of that movie asking tons of questions about Star Trek and wanting to know more about it.
So is it my Trek? no, its a new franchise in the Star Trek universe and makes it watchable without being inaccessible to non fans who forgot to memorize the Starfleet Technical Manual while giving plenty of knowing nods and winks to the long time fans.
Good point.
You must have meant 'bargain-basement' telepathic abilities.