"There really was nothing to it. I believe we were promised a film this time. Instead we just got yet another freakin Episode that wouldn't pass for a good Voyager episode."
Appologist replies:
Wouldn't pass for a good Voyager episode? Come in, Voyager had people evolving into lizards. ANYTHING passes as a good Voyager episode.
I constantly hear the tagline that it's just a "bigger budget episode" but I've yet to hear what that really means. I think it's just a nice little slur critics used that the general public naively disects. If we believe the episodes of TNG were top notch stories, WHAT CAN YOU DO BUT HAVE BIGGER BUDGET STORIES?
Benno returns with:
Episodic television usually relies on it's established characters and follows a close formatte that allows the story to be told within a space of time, while also giving us a 'tune in' next week feel by the end.
A feature film does not do this - A feature film is generally required to be large in scope and free to spread it's wings. It goes beyond the confines of anything that can be slapped together for a TV episode. Thus, how many Trek films could be an hour long episode? Maybe 3 and 5, Definately Generations and Insurrecton.
Generations and Insurrection could be two parter cliff hangers between seasons - I'll give them that! But The old films were well beyond television quality.
Benno originally wrote:
"He had these enormous lips, and his voice was croaky... and his nose was all to obviously prosthetic - but I gotta give them credit, he did tell Picard that he'd been savagely beaten in the past."
Usless comback dude writes:
What actor would you have used? Did the boy playing Spock in Star Trek III really look all that much like Leonard Nimoy to you? Does any character picked by any film to play an older one (Young Indianna Jones anyone?) really like all that much like the older model? I think this one was closer than most, and he had talent too. This is just nitpicking.
Benno triumphs with:
You're absolutely right. Trek 3 lossed out with Spock, it also lost out with Savik (Big time!) I don't give a toss about young Indianna Jones, But they nailed it with River Pheonix.
Trek 3's spock still had something Nemesis didn't have, a plausible reason for putting in a younger version of the character. He was Re-generated by Genesis - this is Sci-fi. Nemesis should have used a full grown Picard played by non other than Patrick stewart in both roles. Give the man a bad guy role! lordy knows Spiner gets to do it a little too often!
Benno Originally wrote:
"I lay blame squarely down on Berman! Yet again!"
Intruder claims:
A stupid thing to do since there is so much more involved with the ideas than Rick Berman, but . . . that's the risk of being at the helm of something. I wonder if we would give "The Inner Light" credit to Rick too, or "First Contact."
Benno distinguishes:
Rick Berman has to have his hand in every single Trek Cookie Jar. The man is so obsessed with making a kick arse Trek film that he always uses the old films success as his template "Trek 4 had Time Travel" "Trek 2 had Space battles" "Trek 4 had heaps of Comedy and was set mostly on a planet away from space" "Trek 2 and 6 had great Villians". But like a poor marks man he keeps missing the target! - You know what the secret ingrediant is to making the next great Trek film? - Giving the Job over to someone who knows how to make a FEATURE FILM!!
Benno Originally wrote:
"But Trek is not these suger coatings. The Trek I fell in love with had substance. A deep underlying philosophy that seemed different, yet adding to the great overall view of the universe."
And then HE wrote this:
In case you missed it, this one was very much focused on being a human epic. We haven't had a film like that since, hell I don't know, six?
Benno scratches his head:
Huh?
Benno originally wrote:
"Look at what Trek films have given us,
*TMP The almost destruction of the Earth by a massive entity that turns out to be a probe we sent out to search the galaxy for us. (Brilliant!)"
Non Trekazoid dude writes:
My God man. That was a fuckin' joke for a movie meant to be a comedy more than a drama. That's the only reason a story, which McCoy himself intutively noticed in the film, about a probe sent millions of light years to talk to a whale passed go.
Your "for us" comment admits you're a stupid whale. Why am I not surprised?
Benno Thinks a moment, then replies:
Nahh, You gotta look at it in context. you watch every episode of the old series... then watch the first film. They got it write! People hated it because it was in the shadow of Star Wars. It was actually more in the realm of 2001 and Bladerunner.
Benno originally wrote:
"*TWOK A device that can regenerate a planet and be the answer to saving billions of lives - but in the wrong hands, the ultimate weapon (Fuck-ing-A)"
Dipshit struggles with:
A device that can regenerate or destroy a planet. Okay, I'm not saying it's dumb, but I bet plenty of kids in their backyards imagine toys like this.
Benno laughs really hard and says back:
You say this in one breath and Defend Nemesis in the other. It's not supposed to be mind bending... it's supposed to be compelling. At least Genesis gave us a plot devise that could be worked around the 'It must not fall into the wrong hands' system of story telling. It also gave us quite a lot of room to move with story telling - two films were stretched over it. Nemesis.... We had a weapon that could also destroy an entire planet... but what was it?? Shit.... it was Technobabble.
"Oh my god, you mean his ship has 10 Triwhats of Quantum singular ionic green stuff.... My God, that's enough to destroy an entire Solar System!
Mr. Awesome defense concludes with:
You go on and on to list ideas, but none of them are keep from being cliche unless some amazing writing is doen. You want to critique writing, fine, but essentially Nemesis is about two people squaring off, a villain, and a hero, both with something to lose and game and sacrificing their friends and surroundings at all cost to win. Dumb idea? Maybe, but it should sound familiar because it was also Star Trek's VI and II, and a hell of a lot of other films as well.
Benno concludes his retort with:
Yeah, Nemesis had everything that Trek 2 and 6 had.... except the compelling reason for us to all be in this situation. It's like i said, Berman just feels that this is what Trek is, and that this is what the audiance wants. No. Fucking No! We want to see the characters get themselves into exciting death defying situation that are built up over the course of the film, or the course of several films. When Next Generation went to the big screen, not only did we loose any continuation of the character archs, we didn't even get new character archs.
Data gets emotions... does he really do anything but laugh or get frightened?
Riker and Troi get back together. It all happened off screen!
Geordi gets eyes. whoop-ty-do, what does it all mean?
What about Picard and Beverly - on again off again, we can't do this, but we love each other thing happening? what about Geordi and Data and their thing? Riker and Picard friendship, but authority struggle. I'm not talking actual stories.... just atmosphere of the crew on the ship as the films progress.
It was all changed with no thought given for what to do next!
So yeah.... I'm done.
Posted on Jun 4, 2003, 4:39 AM from IP address 210.84.87.80