The most sickening word in the English Language

[Burt]

Reimagining. God help us all.
I'm not usually one to complain about TV show and movies - I'm usually just glad to have them around. Buffy Series 7 crap? Better than nothing in my book. Enterprise hated? I'll take it anyway. New look Doctor Who not going down well with some? I can live with it.
But.
One thing I can not, can not stand, is this bloody trend of 'rebooting' or 'reimagining' shows/movies.
Like Casino Royle. they...'Reset' Bond. They reset it??? I'm surprised Flemming hasn't returned to feast on the brains of who ever came up with that idea.
It seems they want to Re-imagen Trek. I've no idea quite what they mean, but I'm guessing it will be sod the old story, make up a new one! I do not like this. This is a bad path.
I swear I shall call forth the Ghost (Or Katra) of Gene himself to smite those in charge, if this does happen.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/vie...cle/46176.html
Here's the article. For the record - while I've never heard of them before... I say now... I do not like ' Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci'.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I would have said "morning".

[Zeke]

I would have said a bunch of romance-related stuff, all of it very bitter and none of it very interesting.

I'm not remotely excited about Trek XI, and this doesn't help. Trek doesn't need to be rebooted or reimagined -- look at the success of neo-Doctor Who, which made a clean start without ignoring anything that came before. And if Paramount was serious about giving Trek a break, they need to give it a longer one. I'm as big a Trek fan as you'll ever find, but even I don't think we need more so soon.

I would be much happier if someone who's worked on Trek before were involved in this. The "new blood" thing was never a particularly good point, but the last thing Trek needs is nothing but rookies working on it.

[ijdgaf]

Sorry, Casino Royale and Battlestar Galactica are two very clear examples in my mind where the so-called reimagining equals or trumps the original.

I am a fairly huge Original Series Trek fan who adores about 98% of its televised material and finds the relationship between overall quality and movie sequel number an inverse relationship. Yet this talk about trying to embody Roddenberry's optimistic spirit is good enough for me. It sounds like the heart is in the right place, and I would go as far to say that I'm looking forward to the next film. First time in ages.

We're talking about a huge film with huge actors that will potentially draw a huge audience, so long advertising and word of mouth are positive. That is a good thing. That is exactly what the franchise needs to resurface. Could it be done without a reimagining/reboot? Perhaps. But I can't blame the producers and writers for wanting to de-bog themselves from the hundreds of hours of material that I bet less than 10% of their target audience will have any real familiarity with. These reimaginings are the in-thing right now, yes. But the two successes I mentioned earlier prove that it can work and work well. A critically acclaimed sci-fi drama and a movie that's 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes? Have fun arguing with that.

It can work. It might not. But passing it off because it's a reimagining? Foolish.

[Celeste]

Least we remember they tried to do this with Enterprise and it failed miserably? (even though it was ultimatly a good show) I frankly ain't looking forward to Kick and Spocks academy days. *Sigh* I want a future movie. 29th Century, Damnit!

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by ijdgaf

It can work. It might not. But passing it off because it's a reimagining? Foolish.

Absolutely Right™.

If I'm going to write something off, it will be because of what it actually is, not because of what it might be, and certainly not because some people are tossing around a particular word. (Didn't we already see quite enough of that nonsense with Enterprise and "prequel" alone?)

Besides, getting all in a froth over "reimagining" is silly. Sickening? The word itself is already woefully obsolete, having been replaced with "re-imaging" more than a year ago.

Dunno, maybe the old word confused too many people.

Or something.

As for Star Trek XI, I'm thinking that waiting at least until a few things are nailed down a bit more securely than they are at present -- story, cast, stuff like that -- is probably not a bad thing. There'll still be plenty of time to get excited later.

[PointyHairedJedi]

I think you'll find that it's actually 'custard'.





Ugh, now I feel horribly queasy.

[Burt]

NO no no.
It's the idea I don't like. It's like when a political party say's 'Hey! We're gonna cut tax! And have no scandals! And everything is gonna be rosy!'
You sigh. Because, hey maybe you've become disillusioned or whatever, but you know it isn't going to happen.
It's the same will this I feel. I know the idea that is going thru the minds of these 'producers'. They're gonna try and restart the trek, by changing everything it is. These people really do stupid things like this. Remember the Coke 'incident'? Plus they're gonna do it with a movie. Movies can be dodgy ground anyway. They need to appeal to a wide audience so can't be too Sci-Fi or in-depth.
BSG was different. the old one really hadn't been on that long anyways. And also, the new one is pretty...well good.
Bond? Oh. Well. I can't stand it. It's an action movie, for me. Just another action movie. They took Q and Money Penny...and the things I really love about bond away.
I don't know. I really, really hope I'm wrong about it. I so do, but I just feel...bad about this. I read the article and got a sick feeling in my stomach. I really hope it's me just being foolish, but I really don't think this is going to end well.

[ijdgaf]

I would say about 75% of one's enjoyment of any given show/movie/book/whatever is expectation. Expecting crap yields crap, expecting greatness yields greatness. Probably something like 1 in 4 movies breaks the mold and offers something truly unexpected, one way or the other. At most 1 in 4.

And really, when you think about it, expectations are exactly what has damned the Trek franchise since... maybe the Voyager premiere? People expect one tone out of a show and get something entirely different. With Enterprise, the producers were damned no matter what. Any fan with a little bit of background with the franchise has expectations about what preceded TOS. How the hell do you satisfy that? You can try to deliver somehow, but you'll never please everyone regardless of quality.

There's just so much in the way of background details and miscellaneus trivia that continuity errors are inevitable unless the entire staff is made up of uber nerds. And such an arrangement, I predict, would hardly satisfy those looking for cleverly plotted/characterised fiction.

They've already tried the "ride it out and say its the same continuity even with a few minor mistakes here and there" approach. This has essentially led to OCD storytelling where there is too much focus on concept and not enough on story or tone or characterisation. And ratings/box office have declined.

So why not do a reboot? Abrams has repeatedly talked about how frakin excited he is to be writing a new story in the spirit of the original series. That sounds damn refreshing to me -- a focus on tone. Making sure the heart is in the right place, and not getting too anal retentive about messy details. Add to that the casting rumors (Damon, Brody, and Sinese), and we've got a tone-oriented approach with some major acting talent. One Oscar winner and two nominees? Sweet.

I really don't understand what there is to complain about here. I realize that, by definition, a fandom has taken all sorts of effort to absorb events and details of what has come before. But that doesn't stop a Star Trek fan from enjoying Firefly, does it? And why not? Both are seperate universes based on entirely different rules and with absolutely no overlap in continuities. So why can't one enjoy both a franchise and its reimagining where exactly the same rules apply?

Trek, as we know it, has seen 30 seasons of television and 10 feature length films. These will not suddenly pop out of existence when the aptly titled Star Trek hits theatres next Christmas. Is it really such a tragedy that the largest(?) continuity in sci-fi history will never grow any more gi-huge-ic? You can still watch the old ones. Nobody has erased them from the timeline.

Why can't people just let go of their expectations and take the new film at face value? If it sucks, it sucks. But that hinges on the strength of the story and characters. Not whether or not it can be fully integrated into an existing continuity.

Apologies for spelling errors in my rant. I'm in a weird state of mind where any word more than six letters in length looks woefully incorrect.

[Nate the Great]

I've already done my rant on where Bond is going, so I'll move on to reimagining and Trek.

Reimagining. I've seen this a lot in the comics lately. Ultimate Marvel, All-Star DC, Elseworlds, What Ifs, and all that. Nice idea, but they've yet to do it right. Not yet. Ever. I don't get that much enjoyment from it, mainly because they HAVEN'T GOTTEN IT RIGHT! I'm continually amazed at how fast they can break their record of "this time we're doing it right." A much fuller rant is available for the e-mail. I'm all for reimagining if they do it right, but they haven't, and I think they can't.

Reimagining and Trek are incompatible. They need to realize that. One reason that Enterprise failed (the main reason, in fact) is that although maybe they never "technically" violated prior canon (a chancy proposition in and of itself, but moving on), but they did violate what we thought canon was. Think about it, they marketed TAS products for years yet never substantiated the captaincy of Robert April or the launching of 1701 in 2245 or the Spock backstory from Yesteryear. For decades legions of Trek scholars wrote about Trek in a way that either supported each other or acted in a way that would never conflict with everything else. It is possible. It is. I know it. You CAN write a movie about the early days of the Trek chronology with absolutely no need for reimagining. Ain't gonna happen, though, but it IS possible.

[Nate the Great]

I have a great many options on reimagining, the folly of reimagining Trek, the reason why Enterprise bombed, and all that, but lets stick to the article.

I. "Star Trek"? That's it? Are you kidding me? What do you do with the second movie? "Star Trek 2"? Come on.
2. If they're outright reimagining Trek, then it ain't Trek. Star Trek is our universe. It needs people from what DC calls Earth-1, what Marvel calls Earth 616, what Sliders calls Earth Prime, or what have you.
3. Star Trek has never been about action as the primary driving force. Even the war years of DS9 were never about the battles, it was the motivation for the battles, the aftermath of the battles, the way people were changed by the battles, and so on. You don't need score after score of starships blowing up to accomplish that.
4. "Reimagining" and "100% true to the fanbase" are mutually exclusive. They're losing right from the start. "100% true" needs no "reimagining."

[Burt]

Infinite Improbability:
You're my guy in this matter. I defer to you.
To be honest, I feel tired. I feel abit of a let down, cos...I just really don't think it's gonna go well.

[Nate the Great]

That tends to be one of the most depressing experiences in life these days, I've discovered. That feeling of being tied to a tree on a hill. You can see the trains driving toward each other on the same track at top speed. You know that they're going to collide. You know that the hill obscures their view of each other, so they're gonna be totally ignorant, then the engineers are gonna have five seconds of blinding terror before both go up in a huge fireball of shrapnel. Star Trek XI is going to be like that. You know it, I know it. Lets just hope that they FINALLY learn their lesson.

[ijdgaf]

Hmm...

Suddenly, I'm wondering why doom-and-gloom fandom still gets to me after all these years.

[Burt]

But thats it! I'm not a doomy fan guy. I love everything about the shows I watch! I could sit and watch static if they called it Star Trek and still give it a 6/10. Loved Enterprise, and still do. Like new directions. Like new ideas. Go new ideas!
It's just... the way they were saying things in that interview... It just sounds to me more an attempt to make Trek profitable again. Big names, Action...all of which I can handle... but I just don't think it will be done well...
ominously
I feel a dark power rising...

Really though. Not just hating something because it's new or being changed. But feel like I've heard this kinda thing before. Like with Enterprise. ( I did like it). They were all positive about it before hand. Now, they say...oh yeah, maybe it wasn't a good idea... didn't think it through yaddda yadda.

hhhmmmm

[Nate the Great]

That's just the point. Having "marketability" be the primary point of Trek has always failed. Always. Okay, fine, not always. Trek IV worked well as an attempt to widen the viewer base, but you've all heard about the exception that proves the rule.

Trek is about Trek. It always has been, it always should be. Turning Trek into LOTR or Star Wars or whatever just can't work. If you stick a starship named Enterprise into a Star Wars/LOTR/Harry Potter/whatever plot, you don't get Trek, you get a starship named Enterprise in a Star Wars/LOTR/Harry Potter/whatever plot.

[ijdgaf]

These examples are completely absurd. Are you really expecting a plot with elves and/or wizards?

Sorry, but if Paramount wants to bring back Trek and have it stick around for any half-considerable length of time, they need to be focused on profitability. They need to be thinking about how to expand the fanbase. Otherwise, just what the hell is the point? They can't limp on forever you know. The dwindling ratings of Enterprise proved that.

Just be glad that movie-goers these days are less likely to be distracted by pretty explosions or balls-to-the-wall action. They actually tend to favor good, entertaining stories. And I hate to bring back old examples, but Batman Begins and Casino Royale are case and point, respectively.

[Burt]

Oh heavens...!
Batman Begins I'll give you - that was rather deep (Too deep if you ask me).
But Royale? That was an action movie. Bond is deep. Royale was not. It was just another american action movie.

[Gatac]

...you're kidding, right? The most unflattering thing that can be said about Royale is that it's not exactly a "classical" Bond movie, but I've never heard anyone compare it to the others and have it come out as the bad one. In most everyone's eyes, Royale was a big damn improvement. It's not even just a good Bond movie, it's a really good movie, period.

Honestly, if you wanna talk about how messed up remakes are, how about I Spy, Charlie's Angels or Starksy & Hutch? You know, remakes that were actually bad? Instead, you're railing on those few remakes where pretty much everyone thinks that they came out well ahead of the old version.

Gatac

[Burt]

I think you missed my point.
I didn't say Royale was bad. I'm saying it wasn't Bond. I'm not a huge Bond fan but I did go to see it with a couple of big fans. After they just sighed and said that it wasn't bond anymore. It was (Their word) an american action movie.
Batman Begins, I've been told, is just what the fans wanted. That said, I'm really not sure if I would be happy seeing another guy play Kirk and redoing the begining of Trek.

It's not so much remakes that are bad, I'm thinking of. More one's that missing the point of the show itself.

But seriously, guys, you need to stop thinking this is some sort of attack or moan or something. It's just a worry I have. I like Trek. I love Trek. I just worry what they're gonna do with it.