Wired says that JJ Abrams promises to "reinvent" Star Trek:
"Effects for Star Trek have never, ever been done like
this," says Abrams, who credits George Lucas’ Industrial Light and
Magic for the visual fireworks.
Abrams was fanatical about Star Wars as a kid. But Star Trek?
Not so much. Directing the new movie, he tells the Associated Press,
"was an opportunity to take the characters, the thoughtfulness, the
personalities, the sense of adventure, the idea of humanity working
together, the sense of social commentary and innovation, all that stuff
and apply it in a way that felt genuinely thrilling."
Without a lot of context, it’s tough to puzzle out exactly what this means for guys like us who’ve loved Trek forever and ever. If he’s just talking about bringing modern special effects to Star Trek, which totally would make it more thrilling to watch, this is great news.
However, if this "reinventing" — which is such a loaded term in this post-Episode One world (5-19-99 never forget!) — extends to some of the fundamentals of the Star Trek mythos, and if he wants to make Star Trek more like Star Wars, we could be looking at the biggest geekriot in history.
On one hand, this could be Abrams saying, "I’m going to take Star Trek and make it relevant to an audience that hasn’t loved it and watched it for 40 years." That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
On the other hand, it could be him saying,
"Look, Trekkies, I know you’ve been watching this show for 40 years,
but I’m JJ Fucking Abrams and if I want to ‘reinvent’ this thing that
means so much to you, I’m going to do it. So don’t get your spacesuits
in a knot when I put turbines on the Enterprise, okay? They look cool!" That would be a very bad thing.
Speaking as a lifelong geek, my knee-jerk reaction when I hear someone talking about "reinventing" something like Trek is that it will be a tower of suck, built out of an endless supply of Jar-Jars and midichlorians.
However! Ron Moore reinvented BSG, and it’s the greatest thing ever, so reinventing things isn’t automatically horrible. In fact, if the article had been titled "JJ Abrams promises thrilling effects for Star Trek movie" I’d be celebrating right now. Language is important, as they say.
I guess it comes down to who is doing the reinventing, and if their vision builds upon the existing foundation in an interesting way, instead of pulling a massive, insulting retcon on us all. In his favor, JJ Abrams is really, really good at starting things (not so much with the keeping them awesome after one season, sadly,) but absolutely awesome at starting things. Since this is the beginning of Star Trek, I’m hopeful. Apprehensive, but hopeful.
So, yeah, not entirely sure how I feel about the "reinventing." At least the people who totally fucked Star Trek up aren’t involved, but why does anyone need to "reinvent" Star Trek at all? There’s a good reason it managed to endure through four decades and several generations of Trekkies and casual viewers alike. I hope JJ Abrams groks that, because I really want to like this movie.
Oh, how about an almost-instant update:
"It was an opportunity to take what I think has been a maligned world _
to sound crass, a franchise _ and treat it in a way that made it
something that I wanted to see"[…]
"The whole point was to try to make this movie for fans of movies,
not fans of `Star Trek,’ necessarily,’" Abrams said. "If you’re a fan,
we’ve got one of the writers who’s a devout Trekker, so we were able to
make sure we were serving the people who are completely enamored with
`Star Trek.’ But we are not making the movie for that contingent alone.
"You can’t really make a movie for them. As soon as you start to
guess what you think they are going to want to see, you’re in trouble.
You have to make the movie in many ways for what you want to see
yourself, make a movie you believe in. Then you’re not second-guessing
an audience you don’t really have an understanding of."
That makes a lot of sense, but, uh, JJ? You should probably understand Trekkies if you’re making a Star Trek movie. Seriously, have one of your minions make you a quickstart guide or something; it’s not that tough.
Anyway, making it for fans of movies instead of exclusively for Trekkies is something I can completely agree with, and shows that he
understands the massive challenge that making a movie like this brings. That’s real good news, as long as he doesn’t go turning Star Trek into Attack of The Four Toed Statues or something.
He also says:
"I feel like this is so unlike what you expect, so unlike the `Star
Trek’ you’ve seen. At the same time, it’s being true to what’s come
before, honoring it," Abrams said.
I’m going to commit heresy right now and say what few people are willing to say out loud: most of the Star Trek movies are absolute garbage. There have been ten Trek movies, and I’d say that two of them are accessible to mainstream audiences, another two are great, and the remaining six are nearly unwatchable. If JJ Abrams wants to make his new Trek movie unlike the 80% of Trek movies that aren’t that good, that’s just fine with me. Not that my opinion means anything, you understand, but rambling on and on about things like this is the price of being a geek, and I regret nothing. NOTHING!
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Mmm. Star Trek six was about the only one I ever liked, as it seemed really epic and world changing in a way a movie ought to be. The other movies have felt much more like jumped up episodes, and not always good ones.
So…reimagining of the original series? Could be a lot of fun. There’s only a low chance it’ll be worse.
Russell T Davies reinvented Dr. Who, and so far, is a massive success. Granted, the time between cancellation and the new show (that terrible movie in 96 doesn’t count. half human my ass…) was much bigger than Trek, but I do like JJ and have faith that he’ll bring some fresh ideas to the Trek Universe.
Wil i get your worries, but i totally know where JJ is coming from on this.
I like Star Trek. I’m not afraid to say it. I don’t wear it as a badge of honour or hide it as a symbol of lameness. I like it, but i am not a Trekkie/Trekker. I am a general sci fi geek, and respect Star Trek’s position in the pantheon of great TV sci fi. But with all due respect I do place Doctor Who higher on the list, but then i’m Scottish not American.
You’ve seen Trek from inside and at a very impressionable age as well, lets face it. It is one franchise that you simply cannot excise from your life, and probably don’t want to either.
For a general Sci Fi fan… I found Trek to be really up itself and trying to teach me stuff. it was a bit like school with space suits which made it somewhat bearable.
I’m even more afraid to say but the one you were part of was the most preachy and up itself. It got better as it went on, and I suspect it was the change in producers that did it. DS9 was awesome, because they broke the rules laid out in Trek. They made it not such a nice place. It was more dirty and well… realistic.
Which is where I finally get to my point. The reason Trek started to fail on TV post DS9, is that there was this disconnect from the audience. If you were an uberfan you were so caught up it didn’t matter. But for a more general sci fi fan it just started getting like people talking on the screen and theres a dilemma, and they will somehow get out of it by episodes end. It was all too remote from real life, which consequently is why Galactica is so awesome, and it makes me wonder if BSG is Ron Moore’s reaction to being so constrained on Trek for so many years.
JJ it seems feels somewhat like I do. I want to like Trek. I do to some degree because I will watch it. It just needs to be more general rather than this exclusive club that knows all the jargon, because to get a massive Sci Fi film to make cash, you have to get the casual viewer in. Trek cannot sustain itself on Trekkies/Trekkers alone. It needs a reboot, taking the core idea and concept and cleaning all the other crap out. What you’ll probably find is JJ’s film will be one part reboot, and one part continuation.
Just imagine if he had changed McCoy into a woman though… it would be 2003 all over again! 🙂
Is it my imagination( or wishful thinking), or did someone imply that He Who Shall Not Be Named is no longer in charge of Trek? If so, when did this miracle occur? And can we make that day our Official Celebration of All Things Trek Day?!
Don’t forget, Nicholas Meyer ‘re-invented’ the movie franchise with WOK. He wasn’t a fan of the show, and having watched TOS on video concluded that the Hornblower-style naval adventure was the best thing about it, not Roddenberry’s social moralising. If he hadn’t, Star Trek would’ve stopped dead in the early eighties.
having been a Star Trek fan since TOS (I could watch Balance of Terror 3 times a day!!), and having religiously watched every single episode of every series the franchise has ever produced, I’m very optomistic about this.
I’ve liked everything that JJ Abrams has touched (even tho’ Lost somehow got …. Lost along the way). Orzi and Kurtzman are very good writers – havng written the entire Alias Series .. and i think they’ll bring a fresh looks and feel to the franchise.
Let’s face it – Star Trek needs a bit of a Face-Lift … and maybe a good Re-inventing is the way to do it. It’s what TNG did – only TNG did it in a way that was very safe — Gene and his staff seperated the original series and TNG by 3 centuries!
Taking something that’s been done and reinventing it is a huge challenge – but one that really worked for BSG — i think i would be exciting to see it happen to Star Trek.
I’m always one to hold my critisisms until after I’ve seen the movie (and/or latest episode of any given show). This allows me the opportunity to watch the movie with a completely open mind, and enjoy it for what it is – and not what I believe it should have been.
We trekkies are guilty of being very protective of our vision of the Trek Universe. Canon is sacred in Trekker-land. Any tampering can bring an uproar.
And tho alot of people are focusing on how this will alienate current fans of Trek – i think a GOOD movie, whether it gets compelete ‘rebooted’ like BSG or not – it can make new fans out of the old fans – and bring an entirely new generation of fans to the franchise. Either way — PEOPLE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT STAR TREK again. It’s been too quiet for too long.
But I remain curious and excited to see what Abrams brings to the franchise. Once I’ve seen it, I’ll be better armed to determine if it sucks or not. Until then, speculation is all moot.
But — let us debate all we want.. At least we’re talking “Trek”! And that tickles the “happy kid” inside me!
If he screws this film up I’m burning J.J. Abrams in effigy. Geeks unite!
Man, if there’s anything you’re going to see tons of differing opinions on with Star Trek fans, it’s definetely the movies.
I saw that you didn’t want to reveal your order, which is a shame (but yet very understandable, consider said passionate differing opinions), but what I was curious on was the two movies that are good for new audiences. Personally, I’m not sure any particularly *are* any.
I know popular opinion seems to say that First Contact is a good way to go for newbies, but when I first tried showing that to my wife in an attempt to get her into Star Trek… she fell asleep. And that’s no foul to her, it was just honestly a lot to take in and be expected to understand if you really had absolutely no previous basis in Star Trek. On the flip side, we tried Wrath of Khan and that really got her into things, so much so that six months later, after she had seen all of TNG, we watched First Contact and, of course, she loved it.
While I can understand your unease with comments from JJ Abrams, I think you should give a whirl towards things he’s said directly to trekmovie.com, which are comments made for the fans and are a lot more reassuring. This is definitely going to be the movie, for better or worse, that’s going to be most approachable to new fans, and say what you want, I think that’s something that the franchise has always lacked and right now desperately needs.
The teaser trailer for the new Star Trek film excites me, however, with J.J. Abrams directing, that means nothing. This article just saddens me more. I like both Star Wars and Star Trek, but obviously, if you grew up with Star Wars but don’t have a clue about Star Trek and you’re making a Star Trek movie… I think it will be a bit messy. I honestly don’t know what to think about that.
I don’t know about you all, but I couldn’t be more disinterested in this movie. I mean I guess you could say their name on this movie is Simon Pegg, and that’s y’know not good. The guy playing Kirk? I have no clue who he is and considering he was in “Just My Luck,” leads me to say that this will be a rent for me. Besides I don’t disagree with JJ’s statements he’s gotta make it applicable to other audience members and can’t make a movie geared only towards the fans. You can’t pander, and you know you shouldn’t fault him if he wants to try something else. Its like all the nutty X-Men fans screaming at Bryan Singer when he made Jean Grey a doctor. BFD.
@ALRO: Gene and his staff seperated the original series and TNG by 3 centuries! Your chronology is off by about 200 years.
@DavePress: I’m actually glad they’re going with a relative unknown for Kirk. And just because we haven’t seen Simon Pegg do a serious role doesn’t mean he’s incapable of it — give the man a chance. He certainly sounds, in interviews, like he respects the role and the canon. (And he certainly does his comedy well, which Wil can attest is a LOT harder than it seems.)
Weighing In…
So I think that I have waited long enough to weigh in on this new Star Trek thing. The reason I refer to it as a thing, is because I am really not sure what it is going to be as of yet. JJ Abrams has done a semi-wonderful job with things…
Weighing in…
So I think that I have waited long enough to weigh in on this new Star Trek thing. The reason I refer to it as a thing, is because I am really not sure what it is going to be as of yet. JJ Abrams has done a semi-wonderful job with things…
@Andrew: Oh yeah man, that’s what I’m saying. Pegg is awesome, its just the rest of the cast and my levels of ambivelence in regards to Star Trek that makes me not honestly care about it in anyway and that’s why I agree with JJ here in that it is something that has to be brought to a new audience and that requires certain things to change. Its better this way considering this movie is like the premise of Smallville, which in itself is a reinvention. And a highly successful one so I really don’t understand the beef.
jj had me at pegg. but like many of you, i’ll withhold judgement until the film is out. i WANT to believe.
i’ve enjoyed seeing publicity photos of quinto and nimoy together. the casting makes surprising (to me) sense, side by side.
Also? I just love the fact that Shatner got snubbed from a cameo.
@Andrew: Gene and his staff seperated the original series and TNG by ONE CENTURY!
*hangs head in shame and bends over for his spanking*
I was thinking two-thousand-THREE-hundreds – and the 3 STUCK in my head… I was momentarily struck by an I.D-10-T virus… i stand corrected!!!
IMDB RT dd
I 6.1 55 vb
II 7.7 91 g
III 6.4 76 okay
IV 7.3 88 g!
V 4.8 23 awful
VI 7.2 83 g
VII 6.4 48 vb
VIII 7.5 91 g!!
IX 6.3 62 b
X 6.4 37 awful
vox populis,
dd
I’m withholding judgement on the newest Trek. Reinvention made BSG fantastic. Mission Impossible was a great TV series, especially for its time, but the movies sucked. Superman Returns kinda sucked despite having fanboys as writers and the director and despite of having Kevin Spacey and Lex Luthor (perfect casting). Batman Begins was great. Bionic Woman sucked hard. The only good thing in it was the villain, whom they should have cast in the main role to give her edge and personality.
I sometimes wonder if suppressing your accent also makes it very difficult to make the character lively and interesting. Jamie Bamber is probably the most boring thing in BSG. And the actress playing Bionic Woman was terrible. They were both Brits playing American accents. Of course it hasn’t affected Rachel Griffiths (Brothers & Sisters and Six Feet Under) or Hugh Laurie (House, M.D.) from portraying dynamic characters.
I also would have loved a DS9 movie. Even a TV movie to tell us what happened to Sisko. Although the last season of DS9 was a masterpiece (with a few exceptions), and the final episode was very satisfying.
I think if they ever return Star Trek to TV, they should do an anthology series. You could have TOS generation stories, TNG/DS9 Era stories, and beyond. You could have Klingon and Romulan stories. Maybe stories about the Bajoran Resistance, or stories about about Section 31. They could see which stories resonate with audiences and bring those ones back for further stories. It will never happen, of course. It would be too expensive and too hard to write.
I worry that JJ will abandon some of the underlying ideas that made Star Trek really cool. In an era where people either flock to DS9/BSG’s humanity-is-hopeless-we’ll-always-be-retards attitude, or they flock to Casino Royale’s there’s-no-message-here-but-it-sure-looks-cool, I really hope that Star Trek XI will continue to mix the elements of a sophisticated future, the power of scientific exploration to unlock the imagination, and tiny mini-skirts into a tale that is accessible to the audience but will still carry a relevant message throughout time.
But, knowing JJ, the first 30 minutes of the movie will be awesome, and then his A.D.D. will kick in and the rest will be ass.
I think you are right on with your concerns about the “reinvent” terminology. The range of possible actions that can be associated with the term “reinvent” is cause for wariness. Rick Berman, who did a fine job with Deep Space Nine and Voyager, created the train-wreck that was Enterprise and then proceeded to blame the failure on Trek fatigue which implies that Star Trek needs reinventing. The truth is that Enterprise lacked solid backstory and made the fatal mistake of going backwards in time when Trek has always been a forward looking phenomenon. The new movie has the potential to make the same error.
One problem we’re having with all the happy talk from JJ is that he’s talking mainly to the mundane press, not us, so his comments are aimed primarily at convincing them to come see this thing, not to keep us on the reservation. It’d probably help a bunch if he’d stop in somewhere and talk directly to us (trekmovie.com, trekbbs.com, wherever).
Another troubling bit is the goddamned secrecy. This isn’t Lost or Cloverfield, this is Star Trek, and we like our spoilers fresh and hot off the spies’ cameras and fax machines and we like a lot of ’em. So far, all we’ve got is a teaser trailer with a bloated monstrosity posing as the Enterprise, that may or may not actually be from a more violent alternate timeline.
Y’see, some of us need certain assurances that this “reinvention” doesn’t result in about forty years’ worth of continuity getting flushed down the crapper just because someone thought the Enterprise needed a pair of big ginormous engines with the tailfins from a ’58 Cadillac.
We already know who the cast is, so a group photo of them in uniform wouldn’t spoil anything, right?
And this is supposed to respect canon, so by all rights, the ship should look pretty much the same as she did during the run of the series, right?
SO WHY IN THE FLYING FUCK ARE WE NOT GETTING EVEN A TENTH OF THE KIND OF PUBLICITY THAT IRON MAN GOT!?!?!
I don’t need a copy of the script, or even a TV Guide synopsis of the plot.
Just show me the fucking ship, the way she looks at the end of the movie. If she looks right, I’m there.
Here’s my breakdown of JJ Abrams projects:
Felicity – Great beginning, got lame after a couple of seasons.
Alias – Seriously awesome for two or three seasons, the rest was lame.
Lost – I couldn’t even finish out the first season. I felt personally annoyed that Abrams wasted my time.
Armageddon – Embarrassed to say that I enjoyed this movie. What can I say? I like Bruce Willis as the father who saves the day.
MI:3 – Buckets better than 2, not as good as 1. Meh.
Cloverfield – Amazing, despite the sickening photography.
So basically, I think the movie will definitely appeal to the general public. This guy knows how to make hits. But I am not confident that I will lurve the whole thing.
Someone asked what would be the Trek equivalent of a Jar-Jar. Have you read the “New Frontier” books? That series has several possibilities. Wiki linkJanos (a furry creature who “went wild” and now lives like an animal on some random planet), Burgoyne 172 (a hermaphrodite with fur), Zak Kebron (Frontier’s version of “Thing” from the Fantastic Four), or Morgan Primus (the mother of Wesley’s first kiss, Robin Lefler, who’s mind is now integrated into the computer of the ship).
Looking at JJ Abrams other work, Felicity and Alias are complete suckfests, only Lost is good but he only hung around for the pilot. I credit all of Lost’s greatness to Lindelof & Cuse. Lucky for us Lindelof is involved in this trek so there is a real chance it will be good. The only major wild card is that they’re recasting established characters and re-envisioning an established universe. Star Trek is unique in the world of TV to Movie in that they used the original cast and the story was very much a continuation of the TV series’. I guess we’ll find out what happens.
BTW if you want to see what TNG would’ve looked like had abrams/lindelof produced it – watch this!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq9UB5j8U5s