Focus

While I've noticed quite a few people speaking up against the movie, and most do indeed bring up all the salient points defending why they hated the movie, and why it was indeed, a crapfest spectacular...

There's no focus. I myself am guilty of this. I can rant about how bad this movie is from every direction, for unlike Khan, my thinking isn't merely two dimensional.

The thing is, we need to focus on what really makes this movie so awful.

Story, or rather, lack thereof.

When we rant on about lens flares, slapstick humor, pointless jar-jar sidekicks, Kirk being a sociopath, the nonsensical redesigns of sets, ships, unifroms, props, the characters being merely caricatures, or how the only real message and values this movie has is "Pew Pew Pew! BOOM!", we look a bit... well... like obsessive nerdy trekkies.

Which we are, and I'm proud to see I'm not alone here. But, the fact remains that pointing out these flaws makes us look a bit silly. We are a bit silly. Never the less, we also love trek, and have until now, many great reasons to. Paramount has now decided that we stalwart and faithful fans, many who have dedicated ourselves to Trek for thirty to forty years, aren't paying THEM enough. We aren't who they want trek to appeal to.

I can't blame them. Steven Hawking and Bill Gates are trek fans, how many geniuses or fantastically successful nerds are fans of, say... Independence Day (I can't help bringing up that stupidly mindless movie), or the new version of Star Wars? We're proud of having critically minded highly intelligent nerds in our midst's. We're elitists, we demand a certain bare minimum and we always have. It's probably why Trek appealed to so many of us in the first place.

How do you appeal to such people? Hire good writers? Good directors? Technical advisers? But... why bother when you can just skip all that, hire whoever the flavor of the month is, get some hack writers, and release whatever crap they put together in the summer, along with loads of advertisements, and make millions while laughing all the way to the bank?

The problem is Paramount, but, we need someone between them and us, to firmly say NO, that's not star trek, slap another name on it, this one isn't for sale.

Until then, we need to make our voices heard, and we need to FOCUS on what it is about the movie itself that was so dreadfully horrible.

Again, it's the lack of story. The entire movie rests on the fact that Nero, after going into the past, for no rhyme or reason, WAITS 25 years for Senile-Spock to show up. Then, after he does, WAITS another three years before doing anything. Couple that with the preposterous Hoth scene, and you see; this story lacks any actual thought.

When questioned directly, Orci and Kurtzman, the writers, said nothing about this massive oversite. 'What did Nero and his crew actually do during the better part of 30 years?'

The answer? They don't know. "It's a rich field for fan fiction." A-holes. Base your movie on something you gave no thought, that's brilliant.

I could go on about how even waiting to begin with makes no sense. They could've at least thrown out a line of dialogue to help try and explain why they waited, even if they clearly didn't give any thought to the how they kept that ship up and running, and how a crew full of angry and distraught Romulans didn't mutiny just to go back home and try to start anew...

See, it's easy to rant about how DUMB it is, and it starts bringing up a whole host of other issues. This is exactly why we need to focus on that one little fact.

25 years of waiting followed by another 3? This should be our chief concern. What else could make these self styled 'writers' squirm more than pointing out that they based their entire film on something they gave no second thoughts to.

We know why. It was convenient; it shows Kirk as a sociopathic barhopping perv, it allows him to enter starfleet on a dare, so that he can conveniently meet the entire crew, so that he can get stranded on the same planet as Scotty and Senile Spock, so they can get back to the Enterprise for the willy wonka tube ride and tick off young Spock to take command, so he can rescue the captain so that they can both skip six ranks and we can pretend any of that makes any sense.

It starts off stupid and gets downright retarded by the end. Each dumb idea builds upon the last and just snowballs until we get this giant avalanche of idiocy.

It all starts with Nero waiting 25 years, then another 3. We must reiterate this over and over, and demand that these two hacks never write a Star Trek script again. Yes, JJ Abrams has his coming too, but first things first.

Focus.

Paramount Censoring Critics of Star Trek XI?

My best friend pointed out to me that the Star Trek Magazine asked for criticisms of the new movie, and it was filled with naught but praise.

Taken alone, this doesn't mean much. The Star Trek Magazine isn't necessarily under Paramounts thumb enough to alter it's editing practices. Perhaps... then again, it's quite hard to go against the apparent popular sentiment.

But, taken with the fact that ANY negative comment about the movie is deleted right away from various sites that ARE without any doubts, under Paramount's thumbs, I do think something quite foul is afoot.

You want to crap all over trek? That's one thing, we trekkies will deal with you in due time.

But, you stick your head in the sand, and pretend no one has anything bad to say about the movie? That's censorship. That's not only anti-trek, it's anti-American.

SO, let us test the theory shall we?

WRITE TO THEM! Tell them what you thought, tell them why you detested this movie!

Star Trek Magazine, Titan Magazines
8205 Santa Monica Blvd. # 1-296
West Hollywood, Ca 90046

startrekmail@titanmail.com


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The real reason I'm ticked off at Star Trek XI

Think about things for a second. About reality, not trek. For all the actual in-universe reasons this movie is bad, and even for all the horrible storytelling... Divorce yourself entirely from these issues and think about Star Trek as it simply exists in the real world.

The reason they can even market a star trek movie is because of star trek fans.

Were it not for us, trek would've been yanked off the air 40 years ago and never heard from again.

That's an indisputable fact. That's reality. That's history.

Why then, would you make a star trek movie, aware of the existence of millions of fans who've made this franchise possible, and then ignore us completely?

The movie was made for mindless drones, it was made to sell Nokia, it was made to appeal to people who have no idea what Star Trek is. It's made to appeal only to people who've heard of Kirk, Spock, Scotty and McCoy...

The movie is filled with nothing but plot contrivances and hollywood cliche. Many blockbusters are.

But, there was no reason to make a Star Trek movie like this.

A non-trekkie wouldn't have heard of Kirk, Spock, Scotty, McCoy, Sulu, Uhura or Chekov... because were there no trekkies; there'd have been only one series that lasted only three seasons.

Again; star trek only exists because of fans. Without us, what would trek have been?

No reruns.
No movies.
No TNG.
No DS9.
No Voyager.
No Enterprise.

No star trek buzzing about in the background of non-trekkies lives. No trekkies to poke fun at. No conventions.

No knowledge of trek at all, because it would've only been a single series that was yanked after three seasons; too few for syndication.

Why would you make a new star trek movie and ignore that fact?

If indeed, our reality was different, then the movie could be made, and honestly, no one would really care. Trek would've been like the brady bunch, or any other number of old TV shows that died out and got a stupid movie made. It wouldn't have even have that much appeal; because these movies were always made of shows that lasted more than 3 seasons, of shows that had fans of one sort or another.

But that isn't what happened with trek is it?

The last movie bombed. Why?

Trekkies watched it and didn't like the story. It was weak, it was full of holes.

Paramount's response?

Remake Trek entirely. Why?

Because apparently, trekkies aren't buying garbage.

But, if you remake the franchise, if you keep it mindless; you can churn out mindless film after mindless film. If you market it right, if you make sure it's released at the right time; you can always make money off of people. You can gain new fans who aren't such critical thinkers and you can hire anyone at all to write, produce and direct, because no one watching will be paying attention.

So why does this tick me off? Because I'm a trekkie.

Because I'm part of the reason Star Trek existed up until now.

But, even if I wasn't this movie would bother me. Gene Roddenberry was extremely protective of Star Trek. He had integrity, and he wanted his show to maintain a certain degree of integrity. Star Trek was his baby. Now, maybe I only know this because I'm a trekkie. Maybe it isn't common knowledge, but I think it is, and if not it should be.

What if they remade Citizen Kane and turned it into a mindless action flick and ignored the entire original plotline?

That is just a single film, but it represents the same thing; one persons masterpiece.

Star Trek as a whole may not be a masterpiece. It has it's share of bad episodes and bad movies, even before this abomination. But overall, Star Trek is Gene's masterwork. And, even the worst movies that came before were as true as they could be to his overall vision.

Even Deep Space Nine, doubtlessly the darkest of the Star Trek series, would have garnered the approval of Gene, due to the excellent story-telling, well developed characters, and it's examination of rather complex human issues. It stayed true to trek because of it's darkness. It was the only way to boldly go where no one had gone before at that time. It touched on issues trek had only implied before, and it showed them vividly.

This movie is quite the opposite. Not just because it's boldly going where we've been while ignoring the fact that we've been there (while telling us we haven't and that this is an origin story), it's mindless.

It's careless with it's characters, it tries to employ canon to effectively erase it (while telling us it's not) and it's story rests on believing one unbelievably convienient plot point after another.

Had it not been made specifically to appeal to uncritical audiences, it would've tanked worse than any other trek movie has.