Loved it. Almost every choice was the best possible choice except the odd waterslide incident. And now, below a very large SPOILER GAP, a discussion of how what will be the most successful movie of the summer kicks conventional screenwriting "rules" in the junk.
SPOILERS.
NOT KIDDING.
BUGGER OFF.
FINE THEN.
SPOILERS.
Captain James T. Kirk, the protagonist of the movie, does not have the development executive's beloved "character arc." He has no arc at all.
He starts as an arrogant sonovabitch, and becomes a slightly more motivated arrogant sonovabitch. He does not learn to sacrifice, he does not learn to work well with others -- he takes over the goddam ship. He's right all the time, he never doubts he's right, and the only obstacle he occasionally faces is when other people aren't sharp enough to see how frikkin' awesome -- and right -- he is as quickly as they should.
He never has an end-of-Act-Two "low point." Being stranded on the ice planet? Please. He spends those few minutes dictating a memo about bringing Spock up on charges when -- not if, when -- he rejoins the fleet. Oh yes, and then not one but two deus ex machina's get him back to the ship in time.
Does he learn Spock's precious lesson about fear? No. Does he learn what it was like for his father to willingly stare death in the face and sacrifice himself? FUCK no, that's Spock in the starship in the end, making the kamikaze run.
These are not flaws, by the way. These are the moves of a supremely confident director/storyteller. And it adds weight to an argument I've been making for some time: heroic franchise characters often have revelatory arcs rather thn transformative arcs.
A transformative arc is the classic feel good "a bad person becomes a good person." This is the Disney arc, the classic arc, although frankly many people confuse a character's circumstances changing with a transformative arc. Star Wars is the perfect example. "Luke Skywalker is a farm boy who becomes a hero." Well, sure. But he wasn't a cowardly farm boy. He wasn't an insecure farm boy. As soon as holo-Lea shows up, he is on-mission. He didn't leave his loving family behind, he was burnt out of his shitty hut he hated anyway.
He wasn't a farm boy who never believed in the Force, once he's introduced to the idea. Hell, turning off his targetting computer during the trench run is the least surprising thing he could do. Now if HAN SOLO suddenly showed up believing in the Force, well, that's a change. As a matter of fact, Han's the one with the transformative arc in the movie... Just like Spock's the one with the character story (kinda) in Trek.
A revelatory arc # is one in which the story of the movie is revealing how the hero (and the virtues he represents, which you the writer wish to highlight) is exactly the right person to solve the movie's problem. It's more an echo of the old school morality play. "Behold how misfortune comes unto the world. Now see what kind of man may set it right!" The protagonist of this sort of movie triumphs by holding on to whatever virtues he has, and often by becoming even more confident in them.
Indiana Jones has no transformative arc (and yes, Don, I know what you say, and I call shenanigans). Batman has no arc (Ollie Queen does). Superman is arc-less. WALL-E has no arc. James Bond has that fake "no, I really love her this time" arc in some of the movies, but c'mon. None of the characters in Pirates of the Caribbean have arcs. They become something else, but rarely choose to become something else in direct opposition of their previous character.*
Oh, and Star Trek kicks "Why Now?" in the crotch also. I swear, if I never hear "Why now?" again in a meeting, I'll be the happiest man alive. Why does the story start now? Because that's when the story needs to start in order to tell the best possible version.
Discuss my hack-dom, supporting and opposing examples in the Comments.
# (TM JOHN ROGERS YOU MUST ATTRIBUTE IN YOUR SUPER-FANCY SCREENWRITING SEMINAR AND SEND ME SOME OF THE MONIES YOU ARE TAKING FROM GULLIBLE WAITERS etc.)
* I had the odd experience of seeing Pirates 2 & 3 in near empty theaters back to back, and I'll argue that if you strip away what you expected those movies to be, the entire trilogy works as a pretty spiffy magical fantasy novel.
171 comments:
Holy shit, Rogers.
Without getting into details, you may have just saved my life.
You are an arrogant idiot and see no meaning to JJ's "new" branding and the, dare I repeat the word, rebooting of the franchise. Grow up and get a life! The movie was fantastic. Kudos to JJ and his wonderful company for making something that I enjoyed watching.
Uh, Anonymous...
I think he did say that he liked the movie. In fact, he spent a number of paragraphs talking about what the movie did right while explaining what they did in screenwriting terms.
Suddenly, my Ninja gaffe doesn't seem so bad.
Thanks for this. It gives licensed characters, the ones who are marketed forever, a little more literary credit.
Folks get nervous around the revelatory arc-- do it wrong, and you're headlong down the path that leads to Mary Sue and Gary Stu.
Fortunately, Orci and Kurtzman (and Abrams, and Lindelof) did it right in high style this time around. Hopefully that'll continue.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but know the basics from spoilery discussions.
The problem here is your premise, which appears to be the standard view of ST in Hollywood (as seen, for instance, in "Galaxy Quest).
You think Kirk was the hero -- or at least the protagonist -- of the Original Series, and Shatner was the star. But in fannish reality, *Spock* was always the hero, Nimoy was the star. There's a reason the very first ST fanzine was called "Spockanalia". That's one reason we fans found Shatner a big buffoonish in the early years: he still thought the show was about him!
It's about Spock. It was *always* about Spock. If Kirk is the protagonist (which can be argued), he is so because he's looking at the hero and we are following his gaze.
JJ Abrams gets this: he's put in a Spock character arc on steroids. He saw TOS and what made it endure, and pulled out the critical thread. That's why TOS fans are so happy -- he sees what, and who, we've been seeing all along.
arrgh, I meant to say "a bit buffoonish" -- though what came out isn't far off the mark.
Respectfully, if you haven't seen the movie your opinion is, as a wise man once said, worth precisely dick.
"I haven't seen the movie but I heard some people talking about it." Seriously, shut the fuck up, see the movie, and get back to us.
Put it this way, Rogers: the movie was SO freaking good that it shot straight past all the analytical left-brain writer-mode walls I put up when consuming entertainment and I can't even START getting into the nitty-gritty of it like you did. And this was from about five minutes in, we're talking. Just... incredible.
Going I wanted to hate this movie, I really did - not because of some misplaced "they broke my toys" nerd rage, but because MI3 was so unremittingly awful I didn't want JJ to ruin Star Trek. God, what a fool I was...
My one coherent thought from a story analysis mode: the conversation on the bridge, when Kirk and Spock are explaining how the time travel has not only changed the past, but changed their future as well - the moment where it basically becomes Ultimate Star Trek - I sat in the theatre and said out loud, "oh my god, that's brilliant." (I went to an 11:45AM show and the theatre was mostly empty.)
The license that one scene gives them for the rest of the series, great googly moogly, whoever thought that up should get free hookers for life.
"Respectfully", eh? That word does not mean what you think it means. But then, "dick" doesn't either, and it's shorter.
I can't see the movie for a week, but I can still argue about Rogers' premises and the nature of ST:TOS. Which you have not addressed.
The brilliant narrative economy of handing Uhura Christine Chapel's TOS plot arc blew me away, too-- no more reasons for Spock to be loitering about in sickbay, no wasting screen time on a character who's not in the main bridge crew, and no pissing off Trekdom by recasting Majel Barrett Roddenberry's second-most-defining role.
That's smart storytelling in an estabolished canon, that is.
Where the hell was Finnegan? How do you make a movie about Kirk's academy days and there's no Finnegan?
The brilliant narrative economy of handing Uhura Christine Chapel's TOS plot arc blew me away, too-- no more reasons for Spock to be loitering about in sickbay, no wasting screen time on a character who's not in the main bridge crew, and no pissing off Trekdom by recasting Majel Barrett Roddenberry's second-most-defining role.
Actually, for a moment, eliminating Chapel's arc like that pissed me off because it eliminated Chapel. (I suppose I should have prefaced this with a statement that I love the movie except for the production design…) But I've been watching my TOS Blu-rays that just came out, and I'm seeing, well, most of these episodes for the first time; I only had the Blish novelizations before this. Turns out that Uhura had that character trait in TOS. Seeing that scene destroyed the only other reservation I had about the movie.
Where the hell was Finnegan? How do you make a movie about Kirk's academy days and there's no Finnegan?
Very easily, when Kirk entered the Academy about five years later than he did in the Prime universe. :)
Ardaniel Collier: I don't think fandom would be averse to Majel being recast at all. In fact, my LJ flist was up in arms over the lack of Number One, despite the fact that she can't be XO, cos Spock has to be XO for the plot to work.
Anyway, inside my head, she was safe in the LOL-whatever quadrant on the Yorktown. SO she can be in the next movie, played by Jennifer Garner. Who will also play Chapel, in a blonde wig.
SHUT IT. IT'S CANON INSIDE MY HEAD.
I loved Uhura HARDCORE in this. I love that the Spock & Uhura relationship in TOS was not just acknowledged, but that she is to Spock what McCoy is to Jim: the most significant relationship he has. I love that she is kickass awesome at her job, and I love that she has Spock wrapped around her little finger, and I love the nuTrek canon for giving us such fantastic potential for MORE STORY and I am still stupidly gleeful, even as the Old Skool anorak inside me kept going "Where the hell is George 'Sam' Kirk jr?" which si the one bit the canonical AU new timeline *doesn't* fix.
(I found out later the answer was "the cutting room floor" and I'm okay with it--that massive chip on Kirk's shopulder is nicely streamlined by making him an only child)
Liked almost everything about the movie except the sets, which were either futuro-flashy or Dr. Who cheap. ("Hey, I got us five weeks in a brewery . . . put a couple LED panels on distillery vat and we got us a warp drive!")
This is such a damn busy movie that I can forgive Kirk not having an arc; becoming a motivated SOB is enough to get him on the bridge and perhaps that's all we need this time around.
I do hope they do a series. Make the stories about exploration and discovery, not that grim genocidal cloak-and-raygun clash-of-empires stuff we've been getting. It's entirely possible to have real and growing characters and bad ass adventure and sensawunda stuff.
So help me, I ordered a copy of the novelization from my bookstore this weekend because I can't wait for the DVD. I can't remember the last time this happened.
I hope that the Powers That Be decide to do more with this canon. I'm certain I'd buy novels, I'd probably track down comic collections. This is genuinely exciting to me and I'm feeling quite fanboy about it, dammit!
Haven’t seen it yet, will stick to the general question:
I always appreciate when a story skips the “my dad was an abusive drunk and my mother died when I was young” pop psychology and just assumes the characters are the way they are and OOOOO LOOOOK, EXPLOSIONS!!!
On a tangent, this reminds me of Patton Oswalt’s take on the Star Wars prequels:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDCjIjsZp_Y
“I don’t care where the stuff I love comes from, I just know that I love it”.
Damn right.
Vader was cool because he was an intergalactic bad-ass in black with telekenesis and a light sabre who didn’t think twice about crushing the losers. THEN we got the joy of spending $15 and 160 minutes to see him as a junior Jiffy Lube attendant in a green screen drama who blows up a star ship by accident. WTF? In the right hands, Vader’s a tragic hero->villain transformation might have worked over one film*, but instead it became a poorly written excuse to squeeze blood out of the franchise three times over. And it succeeded in doing that much I guess, so what the hell do I know?
I haven’t seen Star Trek yet but take heart in the fact that it doesn’t pussyfoot around with exposition and gets on with the good stuff. Hopefully a few more films (reboots or otherwise) decide to take the same approach.
*I always though a III-IV-V trilogy would have been far more interesting, but that’s another story
…even as the Old Skool anorak inside me kept going "Where the hell is George 'Sam' Kirk jr?" which si the one bit the canonical AU new timeline *doesn't* fix.
Only if you assume that George was the older brother. "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" didn't establish their relative ages (when it established George's name and three kids); I haven't seen "Operatiion—Annihilate!" yet, so I don't know if it sets George as older or not.
If George is younger—in contradiction to most of the literature, I think, but I can't think of anything else in canon it would affect—problem solved. :)
Andrew: considering the ages of Sam's kids (I think Peter had to have been at least 10 or 12? Ish?), either he married WAY young, or Kirk was a lot older during the original 5 year mission than I remembered.
I'm okay with Sam being gone, for the sake of the story. Most of my memories of George, Winona, Sam and Jim's childhood come from Diane Carey's novel, and the novels aren't canon (except for _Vulcan's Glory_ cos that's DC Fontana and I decided long ago that anything she writes about Vulcan = WIN).
Honestly, I'm experiencing the kind of pure geek glee that's equal parts joy of rediscovery (Trek was my first real teenage fandom, and the first con I ever attended was a cheesy packaged Creation con at the age of 15) and breathless anticipation for which different directions nuTrek takes us.
Sam was there. He's the kid that Young Kirk drives past and shouts at while he's having his joyride in his stepdad's car.
This is fantastic! I agree with Richard Jensen, suddenly I don't have to squeeze everything into a hero's journey coz the hero has aready gone and done it, nice.
The debate about story arc are as big as the debate in this comments file about Star Treks history. What is TOS? (There you go Richard Jensen there are those of us willing to make bigger gaffes)
Thing is I'm FREE to tell the story I want to tell, cheers Mr Rogers.
Catherine Randle:
Happy to be of service.
And TOS means the Original Series.
I should know better... I really should. Oh well, it has to be said...
I didn't think it was that good a film. I'm not a trekkie, although I've watched each series and enjoyed them... more or less. So maybe, I'm just missing something obvious, but...
I thought the entire plot was pretty contrived. Space miners from the future want to blow things up? Ok. Sure. So, um... I hate to point out the obvious, but what good do they figure that will do? If my 8 year old nephew can grasp the basic mechanics of time travel and paradox, I find it hard to believe that a grown-ass Romulan from the future fails to see the futility of his actions.
I'm sorry, John, but Kirk's lack of an arc just felt like lazy screenwriting, and I generally felt no connection at all toward the character. He was a Gary Stu.
Those two deus ex machinas were eye-rollingly bad. I didn't expect to go see a Trek movie that would redefine cinema forever, but I really felt like Abrams was phoning it in on this one.
Don't get me wrong, it would make a pretty good television program, but I tend to expect more from a feature length blockbuster. For my quibbles, there were some things I liked.
I thought they did a fair job of setting the nuTrek universe in a place that could inspire some cool sequels. I thought Simon Peg was perfect (although Winona Ryder could have been replaced with a cardboard cutout and I'd have been fine with it).
I thought Spock and Uhura had some cool moments and interactions, and that kept me interested in the outcome.
Unfortunately, though, the outcome was never in doubt. None of the characters ever did anything surprising, which is a major failure. Remember your blog post a few weeks back about exactly that? Why change the standard because the script says Star Trek?
I know my opinion might be in the minority on this one, but I really don't understand why the movie is being raved about from coast-to-coast.
If someone could explain why they feel this movie was better than say, Iron Man or Armageddon, I'd be glad to listen. I'm just not sure it was worth more than 7 out of 10 if you replace the Star Trek branding with anything else.
Glad to see Paramount stuck to what they know how to do with Trek. The characters (even the Enterprise) are each an archetype drawn from modern development of Jung's theories.
There isn't a hint of the side show that seems to be an obsession of so many theorists and writing classes - The Hero's Journey. OK it works for Lucas' Star Wars and you can analyze (shoehorn) lots of other stories into fitting it but every other bit of fiction doesn't needs to be based on the same theory of creating fiction to work.
Kirk goes from being delinquent Kirk to very focused Kirk in the film. To put it in the theory Kirk went from being the Hero with a bit of the Outlaw in the mix to being the Hero.
Did I find this nice bit of theory in a writing course or book? Unfortunately not. I came across it in a marketing class taught by a psychologist when we were looking at how Paramount market Trek.
Since I've not come across this anywhere else I wrote it up for gamers in a Valkyrie article and then reworked that for prose (I hope you'll accept my apologies for a bit of self pimpage but I think it fits nicely with what your post says):
http://www.impworks.co.uk/words/on_writing.php
i really wanted to give this thing a fair shot but i left the theatre wishing harm on the people behind this crap. steamy spock the emotional stud? wtf. i suppose this is the culmination of hollywood's abandonment of ideas. who needs an idea any more when you can exhume the corpse of something that worked once, tart it up with expensive blinking lights, make it loud, blinding and stupid and ta da! its a hit.
and on a purely visual level, what the hell was with the lens flares? in the future nobody can point a camera without catching a light? i can't wait for the sequel lit entirely with strobes. by the end of it the only character i liked was scotty and that's because i like the actor. seems to me i should end up liking at least one of the heroes. i think from here on in anything that can bee called a reboot goes into the never pay for file. watching reboots only encourages sucked out hacks like ronald d. moore and jj abrams.
bah humbug
One of the Doctor Who writers elaborates on this point in his review: http://www.shinyshelf.com/article/3/4/1618
Thanks, Rogers. You finally crystallized something I've been thinking about for a while.
The hero doesn't need to go through the hero's journey in every piece. Sometimes you just want a hero.
Batman's a great analogy. You don't want to see Batman have character development. What's he going to do? Come to terms with his parents' death and go live a peaceful life?
Fantastic! A place where I can FINALLY speak freely about Star Trek!
I was disappointed.
They cut out my favorite line: “You’ve always had a hard time finding your place in this world, haven’t you?” I expect that to be in the Extended Director's Cut. Goddammit, it *needed* to be in the *movie*, not just the trailer!
I didn't like the generic Action Movie score. It could have been slapped on Dark Knight and worked just as well (badly) there. I cry foul because the trailer music was *so superior* and the movie felt like a bait-and-switch was pulled on me.
I didn't like the so-called Engine Room. WTF *was* that?!
It didn't all gel for me. I'd like to see the EDC.
McCoy, however, was the best damned thing this side of Rigel. And yes, there were bits here and there that approached greatness -- and some bits made my teeth ache -- but overall, disappointed. All that trailer foreplay -- no movie orgasm.
Good movie. I hated it. sigh.
I could not get past "how the military works." Simply put: the captain of a ship with plenty of experienced officers puts a stow-away midshipman in as number two? Whereupon I hit the question of: Where are all the senior officers, anyway? It seemed that every single department (except medical) is headed by a midshipman.
I liked the reboot concept. Yes, I think Rogers has some good points. But ultimately it failed, for me, on that simple thing that crashed my suspension of disbelief. I could not swallow the idea that given dozens (at least) of other Academy graduates with the additional benefits of experience and familiarity with the Captain, he puts this butterbar stowaway in the number two slot.
I could not get past "how the military works." One thing I realized over the weekend is that, for all the chatter about Gene's "optimistic" view of the future, people tend to skip over the bits where we nearly killed ourselves several times over.
Starfleet is born out of low-pop post-apocalyptic Earth, and it's attempting to maintain at least a two front detente. The prospect that you'd see command trainees put into command positions straight out of advanced training (and schoolies grabbed to fill out crews), in an emergency is not entirely out of the question. Although it definitely helps if your CO already thinks you're up to the job.
Oh, and Nurse Chapel was in sick bay; McCoy calls out to her in one of the early scenes.
"I had the odd experience of seeing Pirates 2 & 3 in near empty theaters back to back, and I'll argue that if you strip away what you expected those movies to be, the entire trilogy works as a pretty spiffy magical fantasy novel."
I have no opinion about Star Trek, but the Pirates movies were clearly a 7th Sea tie-in novel.
I think at the beginning he was all out to prove himself by rejecting everything he was expected to be.
And then he proved himself by being everything he was expected to be.
It wasn't an arc, but a sort of redirection of his skill set.
Either way it was fun to watch.
It seemed pretty clear that Spock was the hero rising from the ashes. This is also why I freaking love JJ Abrams. Who is the hero? Who is the villain? Lost anyone? Ok, so it was pretty clear who was what, but there are times where I felt bad for the villain and times I wanted to punch Spock and Kirk in the face.
I also think that this was a massive set-up for the sequel. Now I want to see it again and again and again. :)
I cry foul because the trailer music was *so superior* and the movie felt like a bait-and-switch was pulled on me.
This might have a bit more merit were the trailer music composed new and not pulled from an existing TV miniseries score, Children of Dune. ;)
(Whose score I did prefer to Giacchino's. But then, I haven't really liked much of his since Alias.)
Speaking of violating screenwriting rules, I find much more annoying "coincidences" like the "old" Spock, Kirk and Scotty being in the same exact planet (you don't do that without even an hint of explanation, in my opinion), or the fact that nothing is explained because the knowledge of the universe is implicit: the Vulcan nerve pinch is not even named, and would someone explain to me how Chekov says that Scotty "can do it", if they NEVER met before?
I don't have a problem if there is not a character arc. I have it with plot holes/lack of explanations/poor plot points.
But I guess it's only me, since everybody seems to love this film.
I dig what you're laying down (though, it's really that Kirk has the revelatory arc, not that he has no arc at all).
I think the film comes in as a nice example of Plot vs. Story.
The plot needs help.
The story, though, is robust enough that it puts the plot in its proper place, which is trailing the story.
-- Chuck
It was arrogant commercial writing by twits who doesn't give a crap about old star trek fans who could have wanted a bit of respect towards the canon - no screw them.
"Oh yes, and then not one but two deus ex machina's get him back to the ship in time."
Yeah incomptent writing by highschool kids.
"These are not flaws, by the way. These are the moves of a supremely confident director/storyteller"
Or you sucking up to someone you hope will hire you one day.
This run of the mill rubbish shouldn't be hard to top - what's hard is sucking up to all the people who have to in order to get there.
@ Stellar: "twits who doesn't give a crap about old star trek fans who could have wanted a bit of respect towards the canon - no screw them."
Uh? I don't think we watched the same movie.
The Star Trek I watched is basically a "best of" of typical Trek movies (and if you were in the theatre with non-trekkers, you could have told immediately, since some jokes can be appreciated only if you know the old series).
And the only way to respect the old continuity while creating a new one was setting the new continuity in an alternate reality.
And if there is a movie made for fans (and written by two über-fans), this is it.
I think Kirk does make a change, even if it's not an arc, per se, in that he goes from a self-destructive farmboy trying (and failing) to work out his daddy issues to someone that decides to give the whole "making something of himself" thing a chance. But that basically occurs in a few minutes in Act One and then we're off to the races.
As a fresh-out-of-USC kid and a baby writer, I found it really refreshing, watching this, that I was just propelled along, that it turned off my screenwriter-brain, that I couldn't see where the "midpoint" was, where the "low point" was, all that.
And I agree that sometimes the rules (especially the eight-sequence-structure thing, which is helpful but not the end-all and be-all) can strangle, rather than guide you.
Preach it, brother!
Another way of making the same essential point: dramatic characters are changed by their experiences in the world. Iconic characters change the world by remaining true to their essential selves.
The new flick can be seen as one in which the world undergoes a story arc, learning to accept its need for Kirk and his butt-kicking awesomeness.
The truisms of Hollywood story notes come from screenwriting texts which in turn draw from old-school academic analyses of dramatic literature. Serial adventure fiction was never considered worthy enough to merit this level of structural study. Its very different rules were never really articulated and so couldn’t filter up into conventional story wisdom. As a result you see dramatic logic being applied to serial stories, with mistaken results. It’s a category error.
The notion of an arc has also fused itself with the very American notion that fiction must be improving. It must teach us lessons, so our heroes must learn lessons. Serial fiction is also moralistic, but a different way: where there are lessons learned, they are taught by the hero and absorbed by doubting secondary characters. If the iconic hero learns a lesson, it’s be true to yourself.
And as for this Mary Sue nonsense, that’s a critique of bad fan fiction (don’t make your hero a transparently idealized version of yourself) that’s mutated into a completely wrongheaded misunderstanding of serial fiction and the iconic characters that drive it. Is Tarzan a Mary Sue? Sherlock Holmes? Batman?
Reading the comments over, I think the people giving Doc Science a hard time should lay off, because I *have* seen the movie, and I think DS made a really good point... I think it possibly *is* Spock who is the real protagonist, in a way. Hmmm.
(BTW, Will in POTC goes from hating pirates and thinking they can only be evil to becoming a pirate. Sort of.)
Oops! Comment above is by me.
@ :A:
Old Spock and Kirk were both on the ice planet due to it's proximity to Vulcan--Nero puts Spock there to see his world die, while Young Spock maroons Kirk on the nearest intact planet as they leave Vulcan. Scotty's presence is still coincidental.
@John Rogers
I don't get how you can say that Pirates of the Caribbean never had a story Arc. Will Turner has a pretty obvious hero's journey thing going on during the first movie.
All very good points Rogers, except, Kirk isn't the main character, Spock is.
Spock is our hero, Kirk is the lancer.
This is an inversion of the normal Star Trek archetype but it works. My god it works so awesomely!
("Hey, I got us five weeks in a brewery . . . put a couple LED panels on distillery vat and we got us a warp drive!")See, I really liked the engineering set. It was the first time you got a sense of scale for the ship from the inside. Engineering should be a freeking maze of cables and tubes and look industrial, not just be an art deco pillar surrounded by a catwalk.
The film we saw is from a script interrupted in mid-rewrite by the strike, isn't it?
My guess is that a lot of the stuff that bugged me about the script — and there's plenty — could have been solved with a few lines of dialog to patch holes and explain things like why the Enterprise gets nowhere at warp while Kirk is hiking on foot across Hoth. Lots of great ideas, weakly rendered and wonderfully portrayed.
What bothers me is not that people are pardoning the film's script based on an understanding of how it might have been impacted by the circumstances of production, but that people are actively praising it for being dumb.
I liked Star Trek a lot, but a little bit could've made it a lot better.
"I had the odd experience of seeing Pirates 2 & 3 in near empty theaters back to back, and I'll argue that if you strip away what you expected those movies to be, the entire trilogy works as a pretty spiffy magical fantasy novel."
I'd actually argue that the entire trilogy works perfectly well as, *four* films, really. IOW, the entire story contained in 2&3 should have been spread out over 2&3&4. What grousing there was about the ultimate result would have been stillborn, and we would have had a few minutes more awesome Jack Sparrow.
Also, I'm very much looking forward to seeing Star Trek. Very interesting analysis, Rogers. Makes me even more desirous to see the film.
It's fair to say that franchise characters don't have transformative arcs, but I don't think it's such a good thing. For me, the best Trek movies will always be Wrath of Khan and First Contact, specifically because they give the main characters an arc. This is the reason why the Nolanverse Batman is better loved than even the Animated Series, and why Casino Royale was the best Bond in decades.
But that being said, those things all worked because those movies were trying to be darker and realer than anything else in the franchises. You can't put that into something that's just supposed to be fun. Look at Spider-Man. That series had more arc than the Pont du Gard aquaduct and you could barely watch it at times. They were trying to be so deep and character-heavy that they forgot it was about a guy that dresses up like an arachnid that doesn't let the horrible tragedies in his life get in the way of making jokes faster than the speed of sound.
I think that the best sort of balance for all this was Superman II. You had a transformative arc, where Superman decides to give up his powers for his love, and then decides that he needs them back to save the world, and then you had a revelatory arc where you show that yes, Superman is EXACTLY the kind of guy that would give up his happiness to save the world.
I am indeed sucking up, in the hopes that after Damon and the lads write STAR TREK 2, they'll let me write STAR TREK 3. Because complimentary blog posts are how you score in Hollywood.
Although, to be fair, I became friendly with Damon after I spent a thousand words slagging him. so it may actually work that way ...
I will note two things:
1.) Admittedly, you have to ride the fun train pretty hard on this movie. Fail to make one buy, and it's allllll over. I purchased the all fun train Eiropass, and YMMMV.
2.) Yeah, this was the strike-interrupted script. It shows in a few spots. Ice. Monster.
And the Nolanverse Batman has no arc.
RE: Finnegan
We never got a proper name for Security Officer Cupcake, did we? I latched on to the idea that he was Finnegan about the time Kirk hit the table.
I disagree. The first Nolanverse movie was about showing how Bruce Wayne started as an angry young man, learned control over himself, learned to reject his past self, learned that he can't ever have a normal life if he continues to pursue his quest and learns about the darkness he'll have to go into to achieve his goals. The Bruce Wayne of the opening was a foolish, angry young man with an ego problem, a chip on his shoulder and wanted nothing more than to take revenge on the man who wronged him. The Batman at the end was a brilliant, calm adult with a sense of what he can do and what he has to do, and is willing to give up everything he wants in order to help other people. His motivation goes from a quest for revenged - "I was wronged" - to a quest for justice - "This is wrong."
As much as I liked this essay -- and I did like this essay a lot -- I must respectfully disagree, vis a vis the Heroic Journey.
I have some problems with the movie; the villain was weak, most of the ice plancet was badly in need of a rewrite - the ice monsters were a real lowpoint and descent into Star Wars bollocks - and I would have been more than happy to see the horrible child-Kirk cut. That scene made me retch in the trailer, and it was made only slightly more bearable by having him play The Beastie Boys. You could easily establish everything you need to know about Kirk in the bar fight.
Overall though, I really enjoyed myself, and I thought the actors absolutely nailed the parts.
"I had the odd experience of seeing Pirates 2 & 3 in near empty theaters back to back, and I'll argue that if you strip away what you expected those movies to be, the entire trilogy works as a pretty spiffy magical fantasy novel."
I'd argue that the sequels should be set on fire, and the remains buried at a crossing lest the hideous things rise to haunt us once more. World's End in particular was an interminable, directionless borefest, and easily the worst movie I saw in 2007.
(Alright, Death Proof actually did give it some stiff competition.)
The first one was alright though, although it needed Roger Corman to go over it with a hedge trimmer and take out twenty minutes.
I don't think that the revelatory arc and the hero's journey need to be so distinct. After all, Star Wars is practically an essay on the hero's journey, and it does a revelatory arc. You could say they're the same thing. Was Thomas Anderson, the rebellious hacker disgusted at the social order yet still fundamentally a good person all that different a character from Neo, the god-like meta-hacker trying to tear down the machine-constructed order to save the people within?
Actually, ignore that last one, I was TOTALLY missing the point. Sound and fury and all that.
I echo what the above poster said about Nolan's Batman. BB does have a very strong transformative arc. He goes from not being Batman to becoming Batman for christ sakes. The Dark Knight however works exactly as you described. It reminds me of a quote--
'Reasonable men adjust themselves to their environment. Unreasonable men attempt to change their environment to suit themselves. Therefore, all progress is the work of unreasonable men.'
—George Bernard Shaw
Transformative arc heroes adjust to their environment. Revelatory arc heroes change the environment to suit themselves.
Well, Dark Knight's arc is smaller, yes, but I think it's there. The most important thing is that Batman saves the Joker this time. The Batman at the end of Begins would have let Joker die, Ra's wasn't nearly as loathsome as the Joker.
It's small, but it's there.
It's more of a character stiletto than an arc...
I think you just saved my script.
And I also thought Pirates would be an awesome novel!
>>>This might have a bit more merit were the trailer music composed new and not pulled from an existing TV miniseries score, Children of Dune. ;)
Which, of course, I never saw. But I'm glad to learn that. Thanks.
By the by, you people complaining about coincidences realize that Trek is FILLED with them, right?
How many times has the Enterprise been the *only* ship close enough to deal with a major threat?
How fortunate was it that Kirk *happened* to be on the Enterprise when Khan escapes from Ceti Alpha to track him down? Wrath of Khan is a ton of convenience coming together for one big submarine battle in space.
Man, I'm glad that Genesis' gravity well had been in "flux" and pulled Spock's coffin onto it so Kirk could somehow steal the Enterprise, find him, save Saavik and get Spock away JUST AS IT BLEW UP. What timing! And Spock just HAPPENED to have aged JUST BACK TO WHERE HE WAS WHEN HE DIED!!!! And boy, I'm glad the Vulcans knew how to perform the right ceremony RIGHT WHEN ASKED even though they hadn't done it in a REALLY LONG TIME.
I'm also glad that they stole the Klingon Ship, so they'd be flying home on their own JUST AS A MYSTERIOUS PROBE STARTED DESTROYING EVERYTHING LOOKING FOR WHALES!! I'm also glad that despite arriving at a general date in Earth's past, Spock was somehow able to GUESS CORRECTLY how to get them back PRECISELY TO THE RIGHT MOMENT IN THE FUTURE AFTER THEY LEFT.
I'm also glad that Spock just HAPPENED to think ahead to put a tracking device on Kirk before Kirk left the Enterprise to save Gorkon.
Bitching about coincidence in Star Trek makes me wonder if you've actually *seen* it. It's part of it. A universe of destiny if ever there was one.
I almost wonder if that's part of the statement about the Trek universe that this movie makes: the rules don't apply to these demi-gods. They are awesomer than you and you love them for it.
Spock stares down the kamikaze run, but Scotty makes the WIN play. And that's what happens in Trek. These guys face the darkness and make it frickin FLINCH. That's how it's always been.
I almost wonder if that's part of the statement about the Trek universe that this movie makes: the rules don't apply to these demi-gods. They are awesomer than you and you love them for it.
Spock stares down the kamikaze run, but Scotty makes the WIN play. And that's what happens in Trek. These guys face the darkness and make it frickin FLINCH. That's how it's always been. Heck, yeah. And that's a quintesentially American character trait. Not that they ARE the good guys, but they work like hell to make it happen...
Excellent take, man!
Kirk is just an embodiement of Roddenberry's vision of one of the most important themes in Trek: what man can imagine he can achieve.
I love the scene in Spock's ship where Quinto starts voicing doubts about how the plan will work. Chris Pine seems so damned certain when he stops Spock and just says "it'll work."
The positive stuff that Abrams and company kept talking about in reference to this film wasn't just the vision of a future where the people of earth work together. It was a Kennedyesque vision mankind setting out to achieve great things and then doing so, despite the odds.
Great movie.
Um. I think Kirk has an arc. Yes, he's a sunovabitch through the whole movie, but he is a listless, aimless SOB at first, and he has to find purpose. He never thought his fighting, his rebelling, his go after the baddies ideas fit in well with tight-shirt Starfleet, ultra PC. And yet, it is a Kirk who transforms Starfleet.
The Kelvin is an example of a ship without the kind of Kirk it needed in the Captain's chair...
Spock gets Kirk to activate the part of himself that he felt didn't fit in. In fact, Spock carved out a place in Starfleet for Kirk-types. And if it werent' for the peptalk KFM, Kirk would have just been pissed, not been the Captain of the Enterprise. His arc was in Pike's speech to him--"have you ever felt that you should have been something more."
The arc is for every viewer who believes that despite the wonking of your destiny by a half-crazed romulan, you can still find your destiny if you grab it by the balls.
At the movie's beginning, Kirk is out of joint with the world and Starfleet. The kicker is that Starfleet had to be broken down in order to accommodate a Kirk...and it is better for it.
Loved it. But was there any reason (other than the Nokia ad, of course) not to cut the entire sequence with the young Kirk in the car?
The only "arc" Trek had to worry about was that Kirk, Spock, and bones had to be KIRK, SPOCK, and BONES by the end. This was the movie that establishes what the new status quo will be going in... which is a helluva lot like the old status quo, only without 40-odd years of chaff.
As for the coincidences... I noticed them, but it's to the film's credit that I could of cared less. And, yeah... that's always been a part of Trek. The Enterprise may as well be the only ship Starfleet has. It's a singularity of awesomeness from which no cool shit can escape.
Also, I liked the sets. But then, I have no taste.
Ardaniel:
The brilliant narrative economy of handing Uhura Christine Chapel's TOS plot arcIf by that you mean no chance of them accidentally passing the Bechdel Test, then yeah.
This analysis is absurd. Kirk is extremely poorly written in this film. He’s a fat-handed loser. In the film I watched, he gets rejected by Uhura, thrown out of bed by the green chick, and EVERY time he gets into a fist fight, he gets his ass kicked.
How many times did somebody have to save Kirk’s life in this movie? Sulu saves him, then Chekov saves him, then Old Man Spock saves him. He’s depicted as a clumsy wuss. Why would anybody want this guy to lead them as Captain? This isn’t Kirk as hero; this is Kirk as a punchline. If it weren’t for one of the lamest TREK villains ever, Kirk would be the low point of the film.
Perhaps adhering to a few screenwriting “rules” might have saved this script. But then again, this comes from the guys who thought TRANSFORMERS didn’t need a villain for 2/3rds of the movie. Ah, but it makes money, so who cares.
Last summer at Convergence,(a Minneapolis based con that you would really enjoy, Mr. Rogers) Robert Meyer Burnett, director of Free Enterprise, expressed exactly this in terms of his fear of the new Star Trek film. He did NOT want to see the dramatic arc of James Kirk, as he learns how to be a star ship caption. To Burnett, Kirk was born a leader, and did not need to learn shit.
Star Trek works so well for precisely the reason you state - it breaks the rules of the hero's journey.
Hey Nonny Nonny:
Don't worry 'bout me. I scrape worse than that off my gardening boots every week.
It *is* interesting to come here and see the free-range Macho Sue in his native habitat, though. Talk about Why Are We in Vietnam, though. TOS looks more radically political by the year.
Wow. Nice.
Your brain casts a bigger shadow than my quarter pint, Rogers, so I hazard this with some trepidation, but it's silly to praise J.J. Abrams for his supreme storytelling skills on this.
Who needs to follow rules when much of this pre-branded story was simply required to play as an extended inside joke for the audience?
My own knowledge of the Star Trek mythology comes from the movies more than the series, yet I was able to follow the story beats because I (all of us) came into the theater pre-wired to understand most of the resonant story/character points.
I won't bore everyone with a list, but dozens of beats in the movie "worked" only because we were all in on the joke. Try that trick in your next spec, monkeys, and watch how quickly your readers abandon ship.
LEVERAGE is outstanding. The pilot would have been much easier to write if you knew going in that your intended audience was already hooked on your characters. Since that wasn't the case, you had to work your effing ass off to sell it. You had to earn ALL OF IT.
ST was fine for what it was, but to praise this creative team for their supreme storytelling skills seems a bit much.
E.T., Close Encounters, Back to the Future, etc... none of those movies get made today because the studios wouldn't get the joke... but remake 'em, hell yeah!
[apologies for length of post]
I think Kirk has an arc in as much as he turns the massive chip on his shoulder from something that PREVENTS him from reaching his full potential, into something that HELPS him realise his full potential.
Just contrast Uhura's derisive line-reading of "Captain" during the Kobayashi Manu test, with how she addresses him as "Captain" on the bridge after the final battle.
Kirk has finally won her respect as a superior officer--and in doing so, also makes the audience believe this man is actually fit for command.
As for Kirk getting Pike's Enterprise 8-11 years ahead of schedule... bear in mind, 6 ships and potentially 2400+ experienced officers and crewmen were lost at The Battle of Vulcan. Including every member of the Starfleet Academy Class of 2258 who wasn't assigned to Enterprise. Starfleet is going to be desperate for warm bodies to crew ships for a while.
(And the whole reason Enterprise was crewed by cadets was because it hadn't been launched yet--Pike specifically mentions it's her maiden voyage. They may have cut the orders for her crew, but not everyone would have been on Earth to board her to go to Vulcan, as she was launched ahead of schedule.)
Lastly, we have no idea how much time actually passed between the Narada's demise, and the commendation ceremony. Could have been days--could have been weeks. Since Uhura had a rank of Lt (j.g.) when she was assigned to Enterprise under Pike, I'm wondering if she and Sulu and Chekov had already graduated...
I could not get past "how the military works." Simply put: the captain of a ship with plenty of experienced officers puts a stow-away midshipman in as number two? Whereupon I hit the question of: Where are all the senior officers, anyway? It seemed that every single department (except medical) is headed by a midshipman.Honestly, I think ignoring any concept of a chain of command does the franchise a world of good. Dwelling on rank and the formalities thereof makes the drama too stiff and ritualized. I enjoyed that Pike was all "Okay, you, you're a captain now, I'm off to almost certain doom so try not to break the ship or anything."
I actually slightly disagree with your thesis. Kirk does change a tiny bit- he goes from surly and aimless and James Dean-esque to a leader. But I think relevatory rather than transformative is the way to describe it.
Also, Emma Peel. (John Steed did change a bit, but without any justifying arc- they just wrote him differently.)
As for Kirk getting Pike's Enterprise 8-11 years ahead of schedule... bear in mind, 6 ships and potentially 2400+ experienced officers and crewmen were lost at The Battle of Vulcan. Including every member of the Starfleet Academy Class of 2258 who wasn't assigned to Enterprise. Starfleet is going to be desperate for warm bodies to crew ships for a while. Not to mention whatever was around Earth. Taking down the fixed defenses still leaves mobile defenses...which Nero could still take pretty easily...
And I was just thinking about the things Silence of the Lambs got from character development, but wait.
I thought character development was going on during the film, but now it seems revelatory. The characters circumstances developed but they were largely formed already by things in their past. They explored the "What forms a hero / villain" and showed us moths for us to relate, but the transformation from prisoner to free man, from student to graduate were more revelatory than transformative. The question "What needs does he serve" doesn't seem to change for the villain or hero, but they both help each other on their way.
What fabulous things they got out of revelation.
Or maybe it was their discussion of character development that I was enjoying. For me, this film rings with brilliance, but it's disorienting now.
What does your muscular writers mind make of it?
I know. Silence is like ten years old, but still at the top of my favorite movies, and it definitely dwells on character development/revelation, so I think it's fair game.
It seems to be brushing on the similarity or parallel of cops and criminals. I think of this as the "All the cops are criminals and all the sinners saints" theme. You've got some sinners turned saints. :)
Except for Sophie. She slid back into serving her old needs in the Second David, didn't she. Maybe they all still do, a little. Will she experience a character arc? She could be more intersting if she doesn't.
I can't wait for the DVD's so I can find out what formed these characters. I think I can hear you saying "If I hear one more person ask 'When are the DVD's coming out?'!". :)
You know, I saw a guest on the Craig Ferguson show say "Do you know what they call firemen in Italy? Vigile del fuoco. Vigilantes of Fire."
Just wondering if, in the 40 some odd years of Trek, if Kirk ever had an arc. If he did, I missed it; and I've been a TOS fan since 85.
the distinction is, even if you are okay with Kirk's character not having the traditional transformative arc (I am), he still is the protagonist/hero. the emotional catharsis they set up beautifully -- between his father's own "solution" for the no-win scenario and seeing Kirk "solve" the Kobyiashi Maru test -- doesn't pay off at all because Kirk does not face the same situation as his father and, ultimately, isn't even the person who saves the ship and crew. Thanks Scotty!
it would be as if Sgt. Al Powell in "Die Hard" was the one who came in at the last second and blew away Hans Gruber and saved John McClane's wife. not a horrible way to end it, I suppose. but nowhere near the resolution and dramatic punch that having John rescue her carries. his character too does not transform much from start to finish -- he's pretty much the same street-smart wiseass as when we meet him in the opening scenes. but he is still the one who has to solve the problem.
not Scotty.
Kirk is exactly the sort of person who, when I meet them in real life, I can't stand them. I can definitely relate to Spock much more.
Nevertheless, I was rooting for Kirk in this movie, because, dammit, he's supposed to be the Captain of the Enterprise. That's just how it works. This is a huge advantage for a writer, I think. I think that's what makes all the coincidences tolerable, too.
It can be seen as the hand of destiny trying to mend the fabric of spacetime. Or something. Or just the filmmakers sharing a whole bunch of Star Trek in-jokes with us. Which they certainly did.
One thing, though. At the end, Kirk offers to take aboard survivors and frames it as a nod to Spock. Microscopic perhaps, but also some character movement. He is supposed to be friends with Spock.
I suspect the Kirks of the world feel much the same about Spock as I feel about Kirk. We Spocks are irritating as hell to them.
The thing is, we need each other. Spock figures this out, and so does Kirk. That's the emotional core of the film, to me.
So far as I can tell, *all* of the arcs in the Iliad are revelatory. In reasonably contemporary film, the canonical example of the revelatory arc would have to be Eastwood's Man With No Name.
I always thought of Spock and McCoy as the right and left wings of Kirk's mind. The characters are just extensions of the protagonist, and conversations between them were just a way to get thoughts into the open.
You can get an interesting look at character arcs of real people in the BBC's "7Up" Series, by Michael Apted. It's proposition is "Show me the boy at 7yrs of age, and I will show you the man" or something like that. It interviews a group of people every seven years to see how they have changed.
If I can respectfully disagree here. I understand a need to smack a label on Captain Kirk or even Spock's character arc respectively.
The only rule in writing a good screenplay should be -- does it tell a good story (and hopefully one that avoids all the paint-by-the-numbers scripts that are currently making the rounds).
I'm sitting there in the dark theater to not know what is coming next.
In that respect, this reboots works fine...
I've got no experience in writing. I'm just your regular person who searched out this post because I felt something was wrong with the script and wanted to see what people in the trade think about the script. But fill me in, am I missing something? Because I don't know about all you guys. I think Kirk has an "arc."
In the beginning, Spock is trying hard to control his emotions by denying them. His goal is to think logically without emotion at all times. He almost has his emotions purged except for that small bit of him which won't let his mother be called a "disadvantage."
Kirk, on the other hand, is impulsive and won't think through the consequences of his actions. Even if it means almost death at a cliff or at a bar.
At the end, it is Kirk who, thinking logically, shows compassion for the guy who killed his father so that there can be peace with the Romulans. It is Spock who lets his emotions speak out and advices to forgo that compassion because the guy killed his mother. Spock is now in touch with his emotions so they are no longer uncontrolled spasms of rage.
Both have arcs, and the arcs are definitely related because they are almost mirror images of each other. Even Kirk's dead father is a mirror image of Spock's dead mother.
Their arcs also cross each other when Kirk tries to gain control of the starship by picking a fight with Spock. Except this time, he doesn't try to stage mutiny, but rather talks to Spock to get him to resign his post. Following this fight, Spock realizes that he has emotions and he can't control them. At the end of the scene, Kirk realizes that if he is to be Captain, he has to stop being impulsive and Spock realizes that he can not be Captain with his spasms of rage, and that he will never be able to ignore his emotions.
So they both have arcs, and the arcs are related, and the arcs bring them both from being at opposite sides of a courtroom-like suspension hearing at the beginning to quietly confiding and consulting with each other at the very end.
But that bit about the Spock Prime on the planet coincidence bothered me as I was watching the movie. Then I noticed that this is the top example that is brought up as an impossible coincidence. So I must conclude whoever made the movie knew about it too and they were just too lazy to sift out the problems. In good movies, I find myself afterwards reading and exploring the subjects the movie touches. Here, I find myself exploring its shortcomings.
I guess I'm "old school". I prefer the original star trek series, back
in the day when doing endorsements was unheard of. But if Kirk did
do endorsements, would it be like this cartoon??
http://pastexpiry.blogspot.com/2009/05/cartoon-star-trek-endorsement.html
*CARTOON*
Doctor Science: Does the conversation between Uhura and her roommate about the distress signals count?
I believe so, Vander. I was also thinking of the very short conversation between the nurse and Kirk's mother.
The comic strip Doctor Science refers to mentions Aliens in which the two women talk about the monster. In fact, I think that's the only time they talk to each other if I'm not mistaken (Do the two women need to not be in the presence of a man?). So you need only one instance in a movie in order to pass the Bechdel Test.
I'm back! And now I've actually seen the movie!
Vander: Does the conversation between Uhura and her roommate about the distress signals count?Marginally. The Bechdel Test required both women to *have names*, which Orion Girl does not. There's a significant discussion going on in FanGirlLand about whether the fact that the conversation in question takes place while the two women are undressing is meant to reassure male viewers that their manly protrusions will not, in fact, actually fall off if they have to watch two women having a conversation -- "We're passing the Bechdel Test, but don't worry, guys! We don't *mean* it!"
But on the other hand, the conversation is not only not about a man, it is an important plot point that Kirk has to remember -- that is, while you (the slavering male audience) are presumably distracted by OMGBOOBIES!!1!!!, Kirk is actually listening to what they *say*.
Which, as a long-time student of the character of James T. Kirk, strikes me as very Kirk-like: he is not actually distracted by his d*ck, he uses it to distract other people.
Chris: the distinction is, even if you are okay with Kirk's character not having the traditional transformative arc (I am), he still is the protagonist/heroAnd I submit that he is *not*, not in the way you seem to be saying. An adventure is about a character who does stuff and has a transformative arc. A romance is about two characters who change *each other*. The fact that we have both boy!Kirk *and* boy!Spock sequences is proof: ST:Reboot's emotional arc is a romance, as Anonymous@8:15 so lyrically said: they both have arcs, and the arcs are related, and the arcs bring them both ... to quietly confiding and consulting with each other at the very end.Now, I have some pretty serious issues with ST:Reboot, especially the lack of coherent world-building and the many, *many* Star Wars references (does anyone have a clue why so many? Not just throwaway lines, like "I am not our father", but settings, blocking, alien design, the look and feel of a whole bunch of scenes.). But I have no problems with the characterization, the casting, or the acting -- Chris Pine in particular does an *outstanding* job of putting in a lot of Shattner's physical mannerisms, without going after his too-easily-parodied speech delivery.
Uh, I got that her name was Gaila. I can't remember if Uhura mentions her name as she's coming in the room or just when name's are being called off as they're about to board the ship. Or maybe I just got it off the internet and don't remember.
Where does it say that both women have to have names again? Was it another strip? An extended list of rules for the test? I'm guessing it follows the spirit of the rule, but I didn't get that memo.
Yeah, the Star Wars-iness bugged me too, particularly the bit where Young Spock is flying the futureship. I'm not sure if that's because it's a sign of laziness/pandering/whatever from Abrams, or if it's just because of the infamous feud between Trekkers and whatever Star Wars fans call themselves.
Vander,
Perhaps it has less to do with the writing and direction and more to do with the fact the Industrial Light & Magic did the special effects for this movie too?
Their style is very pervasive in movies that they contribute to. They have very showy look-at-me graphics that tend to distract the audience (I know sometimes this is done on purpose to distract attention from a poor story). It does annoy me sometimes because it affects the atmosphere and style of movies that just aren't supposed to look like Star Wars.
Noticed this in Pirates of the Caribbean too.
Where does it say that both women have to have names again?It turns out I was quoting the standard, later form of the list, as seen e.g. in the crucial Hathor Legacy article Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test.
Their style is very pervasive in movies that they contribute to. They have very showy look-at-me graphics that tend to distract the audience (I know sometimes this is done on purpose to distract attention from a poor story). It does annoy me sometimes because it affects the atmosphere and style of movies that just aren't supposed to look like Star Wars.
I know it's been a decade since their most recent contribution to Trek, but I don't think that's a charge that can be leveled against any of their six previous entries in the series (nor the TNG pilot).
Andrew Timson,
To be fair, though, 10 years is a long time in the world of special effects. For one thing Episode One only came out 10 years ago.
I think if I took their stock background alien models and put them all on a site randomly, you wouldn't able to tell which ones were from the latest Star Trek, the new Star Wars episodes, or Men in Black 2. Their styles just don't change from one movie to another anymore.
On the other hand, now that I've thought about the whole stock alien models thing, I admit that some blame rests with the directors and perhaps writers again.
If the directors says "put a random green alien here" or "give us a scary alien here" and gives no thought to how it should look beyond that or its importance to the scene, then IL&M will probably just put the best-looking model they have in that scene.
It's up to the director to keep from over-relying on special effects and distracting their audience in the end.
Reiterating the idea that Spock has a character arc, if not Kirk. The friendship between the two has an arc. But the general point is right. As long as the obstcbles are compelling, the "character arc" isn't necessary.
Oh, and I continue to maintain that the Pirates of the Carribean movies are Marx Bros movies. There's a young couple we don't care about, spectacle that you can only get at the movies, and a brilliant comic performance that is the real reason to see the movie.
For mutual reference, I put up a list of Star Wars references in ST:Reboot. Very few of these elements can be explained by the choice of ILM to do FX: these are writing/directing/story-telling decisions.
I have a theory (which is mine) about *why* Abrams et al. chose to do a Star Wars version of Star Trek, but I'd be interested in hearing what the pros here think.
Is it a strictly business calculation, i.e. "a bad SW movie makes more money than a bad ST movie, so let's make a SW movie out of Star Trek"? Or is there something else at play?
Despite the involvement of iLM, it's simply not a Star Wars version of Trek. It's a Michael Bay version of Trek. This (and the frankly retarded plot) is why some of the dissenters hate it. It was always a mediocre formula and by now is on the point of becoming a punchline.
Most of the "references" are just Abrams' usual, rather shallow Easter Egg gimmick (at least it's not as bad as M. Night Shyamalan's signature gimmick) masquerading as fanservice. It's the sort of thing that looks like authentic cleverness until you examine it closely. He even worked Slusho and Tagruato in, for Christ's sake... though AFAICT we were spared the Dharma Initiative logo turning up anywhere.
What saved the film from being a complete disaster were the performances. The central trinity -- Spock, Kirk and Bones -- were pitch perfect and in Quinto and Pine's cases even improvements on the originals. The rest of the crew were excellent (save Sulu), even the bit players sold it well. Eric Bana was wasted in the worst crime against a fine actor since Tim Burton foisted that one-note General Thade role on Tim Russ, but that's a function of the plot being so obsessed with slam bang action that there was no leisure to develop the villain.
IMO, Abrams has a real gift for characterization and bringing out the chemistry in a cast, and generally speaking, wherever he really applies himself, he tends to produce magic. If he'd interested himself a teensy little bit more in the plot instead of farming it out to the more Trek-interested, it would have been a really, really good movie.
Thanks for the link to the Bechdel Test article and SW references, Doctor.
re: Bechdel test, NY Expat at Pandagon argues:
One last thing: Yeah, it’s not very enlightened about women, but it did pass the Bechdel test (baaaarely) when Uhura was talking to her roomate about the Klingon distress call.
NY Expat on 05/20 at 12:58 AM
"it did pass the Bechdel test (baaaarely) when Uhura was talking to her roomate about the Klingon distress call."
Her roommate's only engaging her in conversation to distract her from the man under the bed. At least one of them is therefore (meta-)talking "about" a man. Doesn't count.
While Kirk puts us through the proposed Revelatory Arc (good term, btw), Spock has a Transformatory Arc for sure. There are good arguments for Spock being the main character of the original Star Trek, just as there are good arguments for either Darth Vader or Hank Solo as the main character of the One True Star Wars series. This makes me think that a combination of these two arcs is a better choice than using either alone . . ..
I promised you a theory (which is mine).
IMHO, the many many Star Wars elements in this Star Trek movie are a way of either undercutting or avoiding building a truly ST world. JJA (or whomever) made a *political* choice, whether they're aware of it or not.
Star Trek (especially The Original Series) is profoundly progressive: it's about the future, *our* future, one which makes progress from where we are right now and which requires historical change to do so. ST involves One World Government for Terra at least, pacifism -- Starfleet is emphatically *not* a military organization --, and economic egalitarianism. In ST canon, getting there took a number of wars and conflicts, it required work -- and that work is ongoing, as can be seen e.g. in the quasi-racist ambivalence McCoy has toward Spock.
SW takes place "long long ago, in a galaxy far, far away." It's a mythical place of Princesses and Emperors, bad guys and feisty rebels. Issues like "how do we get along with other people/nations/species" aren't really up for discussion, they're just *there*. It's timeless, if not reactionary: there's no real politics except the personal.
It seems clear to me that making the ST:Reboot universe so much like SW was a way for JJA to avoid all the historical and political questions ST:TOS raised, about what the future is like and how we might get there.
And that, also IMHO, is why there are so many lens flares. JJA has said he put them in "because it's the future, and the future is shiny" -- but if he (or the writers) had done actual world-building to create their future, they wouldn't need the durn lens flares. If they had *showed* us a world we didn't expect, a progressive world, they wouldn't have felt compelled to overuse the most superficial signal imaginable to *tell* us it's the future.
As a matter of fact, Han's the one with the transformative arc in the movie... Just like Spock's the one with the character story (kinda) in Trek.I once wrote a paper arguing that Sancho Panza was the protagonist in Don Quixote because he was the only one who changed during the book. Now I see I was just a prisoner of the idea of character arc. It's all about revealing Don Quixote.
I do think Kirk was willing to face death: he gave them the orders to blow up Nemo's ship if they got the chance right before he and Spock were beamed down, indicating he was willing to die for the greater good.
However, Kirk didn't have a major transformation that turned him into a different person. He just changed by degree.
I agree, though, Star Trek was FANTASTIC!
"I find much more annoying "coincidences" like the "old" Spock, Kirk and Scotty being in the same exact planet"
That's not actually a coincidence, as such.
Nemo stuck Vulcan there because it was the closest planet to Vulcan, which was also why Spock dropped Kirk there.
I'm not sure why Starfleet had a base there, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume Old Spock as dmuped near so he didn't die, which was why Kirk was.
Justin, it's already been observed that, even if there is a reason if old Spock and Kirk are on the same planet, the fact Scotty's there is a little too much of a coincidence.
Peace.
The revelatory arc seems such a good fit for the American taste - "I don't have to change, I just need to demonstrate how totally awesome I am!"
Meanwhile, am I seriously the first person to be bothered by misspelling Leia's name? Are the geeks really running that thin here?
I was contemplating commenting on this thread, but I have to say that it's incredibly off-putting that comments aren't date-stamped. As a result, I have no idea if this conversation took place over one or two days, and is hopelessly dead, or took place over days, or weeks, or what. Did someone comment in the last week? Yesterday? Or not for two months?
Could you please consider engaging in the fairly standard practice of date-stamping, as well as time-stamping, comments? Thanks muchly!
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hello, nice blog, i was also thinking to watch this movie so i Download Star Trek movie and kept it in my collection.
Why now has always irritated the living daylights out of me. Seriously. Why now? Because now is when I got around to writing it.
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This was a fantastic article. Really loved reading your we blog post. The information was very informative and helpful...
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This was a fantastic article. Really loved reading your we blog post. The information was very informative and helpful...
This was a fantastic article. Really loved reading your we blog post. The information was very informative and helpful...
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Penderita Penyakit kondiloma atau Kutil Kelamin yang telah terinveksi disarankan untuk segera melakukan pengobatan secepat mungkin sebelum Virus HPV penyebab kutil kelamin makin banyak berkembang biak di dalam sel darah makin lama dibiarkan akan memperparah kondisi organ vital karena kutil kelamin akan terus membesar sehingga terlihat seperti jengger ayam untuk penderita yang baru tertular kurang dari satu bulan biasanya akan lebih cepat ditanggulangi obat kutil kelamin Paling ampuh dari De Nature dan terbaik ada hanya di http://obatkutildikemaluan.blogdetik.com/ untuk mendapatkan informasi yang lebih jelas mengenai pengobatan kutil pada kelamin silahkan kontak langsung di nomer 0852 808 77 999 atau 0859 7373 5656 Bagaimana mengobati Ambeien itu sendiri. pengobatan yang terbaik untuk Ambeien adalah dari luar dan dalam sehingga Ambeien benar benar tuntas dan tidak akan kambuh lagi. obat Ambeien terbaik "Ambeclear dari De Nature" AlamiAdalah obat Ambeien herbal yang memang terbaik untuk mengobati Ambeien, dan sudah terdaftar di badan obat dan makanan (BPOM) dengan nomer registrasi POM TR: 133 374 041. terbuat dari bahan alami antara lain terdiri Daung Ungu, Mahkota Dewa dan Kunyit Putih.
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Penyakit kencing nanah bisa disebabkan oleh beberapa faktor seperti seks bebas, penularan, virus hpv, lingkungan, gaya hidup dan lainnya, Maka dari itu kita harus waspada dengan penyakit kencing nanah ini, karena penyakit kencing nanah sangatlah berbahaya, Namun untuk anda yang menderita penyakit kencing nanah, maka anda tidak perlu khawatir,
Berhati-hatilah anda yang suka berganti-ganti pasangan seks, karena sangat besar sekali kemungkinannya untuk terkena penyakit kencing nanah atau gonore maupun yang lainnya.
Bagi anda yang sedang mencari obat herbal buat kencing nanah atau gonore, kami sarankan untuk memilih obat herba dari De Nature dengan nama Gang jie dan Gho Siah sebagai pengobatan alternatif tradisional alami untuk kencing nanah atau gonore.
Berapa Harga untuk Obat Wasir Ambeien alami daun ungu Ambeclear – Ambeien adalah gangguan atau penyakit yang terjadi pada saluran pencernaan manusia
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
MANTAB * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
MANTAB * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *******
Cara yang sering di lakukan untuk menghilangkan kutil kelamin adalah dengan cara pembedahah atau operasi, cara ini tentu memerlukan dana yang tidak sedikit. metode Pilihan pembedahan yang dapat Anda lakukan
MANTAB * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **********
wkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwkwk
Bismillaahirrohmaanirrokhiim ???????????????????????????????????
Bismillahhirrohmaanirrokhim.... *************************
Kadang disertai
dengan sakit saat kencing, perih, organ intim terasa panas menyiksa,
gatal,..
Bismillahhirrohmaanirrokhim.... *********************************
Sekitar Vagina Tumbuh Daging, Berbahayakah? Kutil Pada Kepala Penis mirip bunga kol atau jengger ayam, Merupakan Penyakit Yang diakibatkan Oleh Virus.Kutil kelamin, atau disebut juga condyloma acuminata, adalah kutil atau daging berwarna kulit atau keabuan yang tumbuh di sekitar alat kelamin dan
Bismillahirrohmannirrokhim ..................
penyakit yang ditularkan melalui hubungan seks : vaginal, oral dan anal. Juga dapat menular melalui persentuhan kulit dengan daerah yang terinfeksi.
Obat Ambeien Resep Dokter Ambeclear dari De Nature Ampuh Tuntaskan Ambeien Sampai Tuntas
Bismillahirrohmannirrokhim ........................
Sebelum kita membahas tentang pengobatan ambeien, dalam kesempatan ini
saya ingin menjelaskan sekilas tentang ambeien, agar kita semua bisa
memahami benar apa itu penyakit ambeien
Bismillahhirrohmaanirrokhim.... ***************************
Bismillahirrohmannirrokhim ......................................
Bismillahhirrohmaanirrokhim.... ************************************
MANTAB???????????????????????????????
1111111111111111111111111
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obat untuk kencing keluar nanah
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cara mengobati gonore dengan obat herbal
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alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami
Wasir atau dikenal juga dengan ambeien merupakan salah satu jenis penyakit
Wasir atau dikenal juga dengan ambeien merupakan salah satu jenis penyakit
yang sangat mengganggu. Ambeien atau wasir ini muncul..
yang sangat mengganggu. Ambeien atau wasir ini muncul..
obat ambeien wasir paling manjur mengobati penyakit wasir ambeien tanpa efek samping terbuat dari bahan alami herbal seperti daun ungu mahkota dewa kunyit putih
Penyakit kulit adalah penyakit infeksi yang umum, terjadi pada orang orang dari segala usia. Gangguan pada kulit sering terjadi karena ada
faktor peyebabnya, Antara lain yaitu iklim, lingkungan, tempat tinggal,
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